Poets of Divine Love: Franciscan Mystical Poetry of the Thirteenth Century

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Fordham Univ Press, 2004 - 226 pages
St. Francis of Assisi (c. 1181-1226) and Jacopone da Todi (c.1236-1306) were but two exemplars of a rich school of mystical poets writing in Umbria in the Franciscan religious tradition. Their powerful creations form a significant corpus of medieval Italian vernacular poetry only now being fully explored.Drawing on a wide range of literary, historical, linguistic, and anthropological approaches, Vettori crafts an innovative portrait of the artists as legends and as poets. He investigates the essential features of emerging Franciscan tradition, in motifs of the body, metaphors of matrimony, and musical harmony. Vettori also explores the relationship of Francis's poetic mission to Genesis, the relationship between erotic love and ecstatic union in both poets' work, and the poetics of the sermon.
 

Contents

INTRODUCTION
xiii
Part One
1
Theater of Nudity
3
Mysticism of Sexual Union
40
Harmony of the Cosmos
59
Part Two
78
Origins of the Canon
79
Theology of Ravishment
112
Ecstasy of Agapic Love
145
Symphony of the Ineffable
172
CONCLUSION
193
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About the author (2004)

Alessandro Vettori teaches in the Department of Italian, Rutgers University.

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