Middle Ages in Renaissance

This project aimed at reassessing the views about the “Renaissance”, both by some leading representatives and in emblematic environments related to this cultural movement. The project reappraised their attitudes towards the Middle Ages, focusing on a critical, revealing cultural domain: the vernacular one. It investigated the context in which a selection of Medieval vernacular models were brought during the Italian Renaissance, testing the potential of the following three new interrelated approaches: 1. analysis of the late fifteenth-early sixteenth century tradition of medieval lyrical poems in connection with different perspectives on the poets transmitted through it; 2. comparative analysis of different relevant passages evaluating the medieval vernacular Italian tradition and proposing paradigms of historical development; 3. assessment of the effective influence on Renaissance poets of the early medieval lyrical authors/texts, taking into account the results of the above-mentioned analyses of the tradition of these texts.