Manuscript Poetics

Francesco Marco Aresu is an assistant professor of Italian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

List of Plates Acknowledgements Introduction: Materiality and Method Part 1. Materiality as Narrative in Dante's Vita nuova 1. Scriptor in Fabula 2. The Author as Scribe 3. The Scribe as Author Appendix: Pulcra Metaphora de Quaterno et Volumine Part Two: Materiality and Authority in Boccaccio's Teseida 4. Picture-Book (without Pictures) 5. The Textual Proliferation of the Teseida Part Three: Materiality and Poetics in Petrarca's Sestinas 6. Materiality and Meter 7. Carmina Figurata Afterword: In Praise of Materiality Works Cited

"This insightful and richly detailed book . . . help[s] to bridge two existing approaches to medieval texts with respective emphases on materiality and on theory and interpretation." -Modern Language Review "Manuscript Poetics functions both as a history of medieval manuscript culture and poetry, which will serve as an excellent introduction to and overview of the literary culture of the period for undergraduate students, and as a more focused study of specific texts and authors for specialists." -Rhiannon Daniels, author of Boccaccio and the Book "Manuscript Poetics offers a new perspective on the relationship between textuality and materiality in fourteenth-century Italy and between different kinds of authorial poetics related to the materiality of books and their subsequent publics." -Laura Banella, author of La "Vita nuova" del Boccaccio "The book, in addition to offering a valuable and innovative contribution to studies on the Vita nova, the Teseida and the RVF, provides an interdisciplinary method that can also be applied in other fields of study of medieval Italian literature." -Heliotropia