Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CoMoRoC (Comic Motifs in Romances of Chivalry of Spanish Golden Age)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2018-10-01 al 2020-09-30
The study of motifs is significant for its persistence across different cultures and different ages; moreover, motifs represent a permeable structure that is applied to different semiotic languages: the repetition and persistence of certain patterns is one of the links that connect all artistic manifestations, such as literature, visual arts, cinema, theatre, embracing also folkloric tradition, from popular ceremonies and festivities to the ancient oral tradition of short tales and exemplary stories or anecdotes. The study of motifs is therefore important to discover the roots of common images that are still part of today’s culture, art and literature.
The overall objective of the project is the study of those motifs that are related to comic situations to find some categories that are frequently related to laughter in the genre of romances of chivalry; this study follows through an investigation in the poetic and rhetorical treaties written in Italy and Spain during the XVI and XVII centuries; this step is necessary to understand what was actually considered comic at the time and to define the main point of the comic theory of the time from a theoretical perspective.
- comic motifs related to eroticism (the novel Tirante el Blanco is one of the most prolific in this field, that helped sets the tone of how eroticism is presented in chivalric literature through the prism of comedy and laughter);
- comic motifs related to female characters: the analysis of what female characters find humorous led to the identification of two topics that women in romances of chivalry usually jest about: 1. physical beauty and ugliness and 2. romantic relationships;
- the comparison between comic motifs in the Spanish cycle of the Palmerines novels and the comic motifs identified in the Italian cycle written by Mambrino Roseo as sequels or prequels; the main areas analyzed have been comic situations related to female characters. This has led to interesting results in identifying a specific comic tone in the Italian novels, that can be set apart from the humour displayed in the Spanish cycle, due to the influence of a different cultural setting;
- comic motifs related to violence (especially in the identification of examples in Don Quijote that can be linked to a folkloric tradition).
These results have been presented in several conferences and in peer-reviewed scientific publications, both in miscellaneous volumes and in scientific journals.
The study of poetic and rhetorical treaties written in Italy and Spain during the XVI and XVII centuries has resulted in the publication of a book that will be issued the next year by the publishing house of the University of Zaragoza. Some of the treaties that have been examined are Spanish works such as M. Sánchez de Lima, El arte poética en romance castellano (1580); A. López Pinciano, Philosophia antigua poética (1596); L.A. de Carvallo, Cisne de Apolo (1602); L. Carrillo y Sotomayor Libro de la erudición poética (1611); F. Cascales, Tablas poéticas (1617) and Italian works such as V. Maggi, De ridiculis (1550); A.S. Minturno, L’arte poetica (1564); L. Castelvetro, Poetica d’Aristotele volgarizzata et sposta (1570); A. Piccolomini, Le annotazioni alla poetica di Aristotele (1575); A. Riccoboni, De re comica ex Aristotelis doctrina (1579); T. Tasso, Discorsi dell’arte poetica e del poema eroico (1587), to name a few of the most important ones.
The book explores several aspect of comic theory:
- the main elements of comic expression that have been traditionally identified by theorists;
- the expected reaction of the recipient: the development of comedy has been a defining factor in determining the function of the recipient and the expected reaction that comic occurrences were supposed to cause. Moreover, the study explores how the reception of extended works in prose has been influenced by the reception of theater works when facing comical occurrences during the time where the very same concept of novel was born and developed;
- the physical reaction that comic situations, in representation or narration, stimulates, through the study of early works on physiology and physiognomy.
Given that the building of a website with an online catalogue is one of the long-term goals of the project, no website has been developed yet.