Enselmino da Montebelluna's 'Plainte de la Vierge.' The literary tradition of Italian vernacular laments of the Virgin from the twelfth to the fifteenth century.

摘要

The fourteenth-century Plainte de la Vierge by the Augustinian friar Enselmino da Montebelluna's is, I argue, the most important lament of the Virgin of the late medieval period in Italy and one of the most circulated, read, copied, and manipulated of all medieval Marian laments. Today, however, this sophisticated and beautiful Plainte is one of the least known and studied works in the genre. I propose to offer the first comprehensive investigation of Enselmino da Montebelluna's Plainte de la Vierge , drawing on the history of the genre, on the Mariological tradition of the sorrowing Virgin, and on medieval practices of meditation. I do this in order to shed new light on its composition, sources, readership, and modes of fruition (how contemporaries heard or read the poem and understood it), while also offering significant insights into the similarities between the Plainte and earlier laments. The primary object of this study is to reveal the literary sophistication, poetic beauty, and cultural significance of Enselmino's poem in the literary landscape of Italian religious literature and its place in the Western tradition of devotion to the Virgin as mater dolorosa. In a genre that has been critically (and undeservedly so) deemed monotonous, repetitive, devoid of theological content and intellectual depth, a craft rather than an artistic form, utilitarian rather than poetic, contrived rather than creative, Enselmino's Plainte de la Vierge stands tall, a beautiful and beautifully rich witness to a successful merging of poetic afflatus, rhetorical skills, devotional fervor, and literary sophistication. I hope to contribute to the Plainte's rediscovery and to begin to give it the critical attention it truly deserves alongside Jacopone da Todi in the Italian literary canon. Ultimately, I hope that my analysis of the Plainte de la Vierge will also highlight the complexity and literary value of Marian laments in general, and contribute to our knowledge of the meaning and functions of religious literature in the culture and spirituality of the later Middle Ages. Knowing and understanding this genre, and Enselmino's Plainte, opens up the door for current academic research as well as for new questions and conversations.