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theses

Ever since the publication of “Las Leys D’Amors” in the 14th Century, which provided the first definitions of Provençal forms of poetry, critics have tried to define the Tenso (Tenzone) as a “genre,” and less as an entity of its own. The tenso’s content, its propensity to represent more realistic, personal and historic concerns of medieval life more than any other form of poetry, makes an impelling reason to revisit it, and to define what constitutes a tenso, which is, at best, still confusing. The aim of this study, therefore, is to find out “what constitutes a tenso” by studying what was the poet’s “intention” when writing this sort of poem; and what was the tenso’s historic “evolution” in time and place. It becomes also essential to answer the question: When writing tensos, were the troubadours simply sending missives written in verses, often identified as “ Correspondence Sonnets (sonetti di corrispondenza), ” or were they interested in “debating,” in verse form, the concerns of the day regarding, for example, the nature of poetry itself, of love, or other cultural or even political events of significance? To discover the use and the importance of the tenso during this time, we analyze the tenso production, beginning with those written in Provence and those written in Italy in the Provençal dialect. We further analyze the Italian tensos of the Sicilian School of Poetry and those of the Siculo-Tuscan periods, up to the Stilnovisti and Dante. The first two chapters will bring forth themes, ideologies, local settings and events that molded the Tensos. In the third, we will examine the early experience Dante had with the Tenso, and to what extent he made used of this experience in writing his Divine Comedy. In the fourth chapter we will attempt a more accurate definition of the Italian tenso. As a conclusion, we will demonstrate that during the 12th and 13th centuries, the tenso form was very much in vogue in Italy, that the Italian tenso underwent important and radical changes to merit a distincitve definition of its own, and that its poetic production was much more extensive than today it is believed to have been.

ETD_3850

http://hdl.rutgers.edu/1782.1/rucore10001600001.ETD.000065119

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

Includes vita

by Vito A. De Simone

doi:10.7282/T37S7MQQ

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.

4923904

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ETD

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