About the project

In the photo, a folio of manuscript CCCCXLV (288) at the Biblioteca Capitolare in Verona

The ParNov project analyses the lexicon of Dante Alighieri’s lyrical poetry, with special focus on the Vita Nova and his other pre-exile rhymes in a period spanning the last three decades of the thirteenth century. The comprehensive nature of Dante’s complex output highlights the evolution of his lyrical poetry from his early Guittonian style to his later Stilnovistic work. This development is exemplified in narrative form in the Vita Nova, his signature work of the period, written between 1290 and 1295.

The analysis of this corpus will provide a greater understanding of the early poetic career of a cornerstone figure in medieval European literature. It will also offer a fresh perspective on the emergence of one of the most controversial and complex literary movements in late medieval Italy (Stilnovism, or Dolce Stil Novo). The critical tradition has already underlined the use of certain keywords in the lexicon of the Vita Nova (ragione, gentilezza, viltà, onestà, and so on), which take shape as a veritable semantic microcosm. Dante is also known to have been fully aware of the multiple semantic nuances of each of these terms in both the ancient-medieval lyrical tradition and late-medieval Italian languages. The poetry of the Vita Nova is grounded in precisely such mindful lexical research and the work cannot be fully understood unless its constituent language is carefully examined. To date, though, no comprehensive study of its lexicon has been conducted. This project aims to fill the gap.

The first goal is to provide a comprehensive overview of the lexicon of the Vita Nova by creating a database of individual words as they occur in the text. This will be used to focus on the most important terms, comparing the meanings attributed by Dante with the semantic standards of Italian at the time, and analysing the different nuances of meaning in every occurrence of a keyword. Special attention will be paid to the lexicon of the thirteenth-century lyrical tradition, especially those words which occur in the Vita Nova and other related rhymes. The semantic stratification of the lexicon will also be examined, taking into consideration the different cultural traditions that influenced Dante. Finally,  the study will scrutinise the use of technical terms from outside the literary sphere (such as the lexicon of fashion, colour, and so on). On this basis, the project will create individual lexical profiles for the keywords in the Vita Nova, thereby providing researchers with an original and innovative tool for studying Dante’s lyrical works.