{"title":"'Ad modum floris': Petrarch's Narcissus between the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta and Triumphi","authors":"Francesca Southerden","doi":"10.1353/mlr.2024.a916729","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT: This article analyses Petrarch's treatment of Narcissus in his vernacular poetry, focusing on his inclusion of an aspect of the myth not usually found in medieval vernacular rewritings of Ovid's Metamorphoses : the flower which seals Narcissus's metamorphosis. Setting Petrarch's flower-Narcissus in dialogue with passages from the anonymous fourteenth-century Ovide moralisé demonstrates the poet's distinctive treatment of the myth relative to his lyric and romance precursors even as he preserves its significance for dramatizing the ambivalent pleasures of erōs . Desiring 'in the manner of the flower' affects lover and beloved alike, with implications for how we read vegetal metamorphosis in Petrarch.","PeriodicalId":45399,"journal":{"name":"MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW","volume":"58 20","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1000,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mlr.2024.a916729","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
ABSTRACT: This article analyses Petrarch's treatment of Narcissus in his vernacular poetry, focusing on his inclusion of an aspect of the myth not usually found in medieval vernacular rewritings of Ovid's Metamorphoses : the flower which seals Narcissus's metamorphosis. Setting Petrarch's flower-Narcissus in dialogue with passages from the anonymous fourteenth-century Ovide moralisé demonstrates the poet's distinctive treatment of the myth relative to his lyric and romance precursors even as he preserves its significance for dramatizing the ambivalent pleasures of erōs . Desiring 'in the manner of the flower' affects lover and beloved alike, with implications for how we read vegetal metamorphosis in Petrarch.
期刊介绍:
With an unbroken publication record since 1905, its 1248 pages are divided between articles, predominantly on medieval and modern literature, in the languages of continental Europe, together with English (including the United States and the Commonwealth), Francophone Africa and Canada, and Latin America. In addition, MLR reviews over five hundred books each year The MLR Supplement The Modern Language Review was founded in 1905 and has included well over 3,000 articles and some 20,000 book reviews. This supplement to Volume 100 is published by the Modern Humanities Research Association in celebration of the centenary of its flagship journal.