Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS

Debunking Eurocentric Literary History: Poetry Across Borders in Medieval Sicily

Project description

Exploring multicultural influences on medieval Sicilian poetry

Medieval Sicily boasts a unique literary heritage that encompasses the traditions of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Throughout the Middle Ages, Sicily produced poetry in Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Italian. This early Italian poetry influenced Dante and Petrarch, and its appeal endured for centuries. Existing studies on medieval Sicilian poetry are confined to disciplinary boundaries. For example, studies on the Sicilian Italian lyric have consistently ignored the possible Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin literary traditions present in Sicily. The result is that we have a mutilated narrative about European literary history, one that does not recognise its multicultural roots. The ERC-funded SIQILLIYA project analyses Sicilian court poetry in Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Italian. It will reveal how these multiple linguistic traditions of medieval Sicily interacted, giving rise to the Italian lyric.

Objective

"
Medieval Sicily occupies a crucial position in literary history: incorporating the three monotheistic traditions of Islam, Christianity and Judaism, it has a repertoire of texts in Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Romance. In the 13th century, Sicily was the protagonist in a pivotal event in world literature: the rise of the Italian lyric. This early Italian poetry was to influence Dante and Petrarch, as well as humanists and scholars throughout Europe until at least the 18th century.

No study to date has been capable of addressing the poetry of medieval Sicily as a whole. Literary studies on Sicily have been compartmentalised according to disciplinary boundaries: a compartmentalisation which has hampered our understanding of the foundational role that Sicily's multicultural past played in literary history.

The proposed project aims to address the complexities of medieval Sicilian literature by studying the totality of the court poetry produced in Sicily in Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin and Italian between the 10th and the 13th cc. The project thus promises to shed light on what amounts to a black hole in literary history: it will document over four centuries of cultural interactions, and allow us to fully assess the role of Sicily's many cultures in the rise of the Italian lyric.

Our team will collect all of the available evidence in an electronic corpus, to be published online under a Creative Commons licence, and then study it using the latest IT tools. Working across linguistic boundaries, our team will approach this poetic corpus as a whole, in order to reveal how the multiple linguistic traditions of medieval Sicily interacted with each other, shaping a unique ""semiotic community"" whose expressions were to contribute to the formation of Western culture.
"

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Keywords

Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants

See all projects funded under this funding scheme

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) ERC-2022-COG

See all projects funded under this call

Host institution

UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI PADOVA
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 931 221,00
Address
VIA 8 FEBBRAIO 2
35122 PADOVA
Italy

See on map

Region
Nord-Est Veneto Padova
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 931 221,00

Beneficiaries (1)

My booklet 0 0