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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.
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Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

Keywords

Programme(s)

Topic(s)

Funding Scheme

HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants

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Call for proposal

(opens in new window) ERC-2022-COG

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Host institution

UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI PADOVA
Net EU contribution
€ 1 931 221,00
Address
VIA 8 FEBBRAIO 2
35122 Padova
Italy
Region
Nord-Est Veneto Padova
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost
€ 1 931 221,00

Beneficiaries (1)