Tracing the Medieval Italian Literary Smellscape

追踪中世纪意大利文学的气味景观

• 批准号: 2870617
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Oxford
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2870617
• 关键词: Tracing; Medieval; Italian; Literary; Smellscape

This project investigates how Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio repeatedly employ the sense of smell in their literary works. Descriptions of smell in these works, which range from the stench of Hell to the intoxicating scent of a lover, point to larger questions surrounding cultural significance of smell in the Middle Ages. Smell's indicative and sometimes-contradictory qualities in medical, religious, and intimate settings during this time suggest a new layer of complexity inherent in descriptions of smells and smelling in the works of these authors. The literary depth, broad reception, and vernacular language of these particular authors offer a privileged and wide view into understandings of smell during the medieval Italian period.The key questions guiding this project include: how did Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio (the tre corone) treat smell in their literary works, and how can we use their representations of the scent and the experience of smelling to chart the smellscape of medieval Italian literature? Once established, how does the smellscape offer new perspectives on the key themes of desire, punishment, gender, the body, and the relationship between humans and the Earth in medieval Italian literature?In the introduction, I will establish the olfactory lexicon: what words did the authors use to describe smelling and smells? How do the linguistic, rhetorical, or etymological features of these words function in the context of sensory experience? In the first chapter, I seek to answer questions surrounding the historical smellscape: which smells dominated spaces? How were smells medically, aesthetically, and spiritually harnessed in medieval Italian culture? How could have the meanings ascribed to smell in these spaces influenced their employment in literary texts? The second chapter considers olfaction within the landscape of sensory experience, with a focus on desire and gendered smells. Smell could embody gendered desire in some situations while in others it could also illustrate gendered disgust. In this light, how does smell communicate desire and disgust for the female 'other,' and how do scents-constructed, like perfume, or natural-convey gendered hierarchies of power in these texts?While the second chapter centers the human relation to smell, the questions leading the third chapter situate smell as a mediator in human and non-human interactions. Smells that enter the human body act as a tactile intermediary between humans and their non-human environments. How does smell blur the lines between the human and non-human in its liaison role? Does the process of blurring reflect other barriers between the human and the non-human in these works?To answer these questions, my methods draw from those of Hans Rindisbacher (1992) in particular, who has broadly sketched the use of smell in literature through historicization, sociocultural analysis, and close textual readings. My methodology is similar in that I begin with textual examples of scent and smelling and then work outwards, pulling scholarship from multiple disciplines in order to understand the complexity and depth embedded in the sense's employment. The coalescence of the small amount of current scholarship on medieval Italian literary smell and the burgeoning study of smell in adjacent disciplines underlines the rich potential for a major study of smell in the medieval Italian literary field. While the project most directly falls into medieval Italian literary studies, the project incorporates scholarship from the fields of philosophy, psychology, anthropology, religion, and history in order to address the complexity of the sense of smell in the temporospatial landscape of the three authors. The project will contribute to the field by offering the first monograph work on the sense of smell, building upon the recent wave of sensory scholarship in the medieval Italian literary studies and propounding an interdisciplinary approach to sensory studies

这个项目探讨但丁、彼特拉克和薄伽丘如何在他们的文学作品中反复使用嗅觉。这些作品中对气味的描述，从地狱的恶臭到情人令人陶醉的气味，都指向了围绕中世纪气味文化意义的更大问题。在这段时间里，在医学、宗教和亲密的环境中，马奇的指示性和有时相互矛盾的品质暗示了这些作者作品中对气味和嗅觉的描述所固有的一层新的复杂性。这些作者的文学深度、广泛的接受度和方言为我们了解中世纪意大利时期对气味的理解提供了一个独特而广泛的视角。指导这个项目的关键问题包括：但丁彼特拉克和薄伽丘在他们的文学作品中，我们如何用他们对气味的描述和嗅觉的体验来描绘中世纪意大利文学的气味景观？一旦确立，气味景观如何为中世纪意大利文学中的欲望、惩罚、性别、身体以及人类与地球之间的关系等关键主题提供新的视角？在引言中，我将建立嗅觉词汇：作者用什么词来描述嗅觉和气味？这些词的语言学、修辞学或词源学特征在感官体验的语境中是如何发挥作用的？在第一章中，我试图回答围绕历史气味的问题：哪些气味主导了空间？在中世纪的意大利文化中，气味在医学、美学和精神上是如何被利用的？在这些空间中赋予气味的意义如何影响它们在文学文本中的使用？第二章认为嗅觉在感官体验的景观，重点是欲望和性别气味。在某些情况下，它可以体现性别的欲望，而在其他情况下，它也可以说明性别的厌恶。从这个角度来看，气味是如何传达对女性“他者”的欲望和厌恶的，而气味--如香水或自然气味--又是如何在这些文本中传达性别权力等级的？虽然第二章集中在人类与气味的关系，但第三章的问题是将气味作为人类和非人类互动的中介。进入人体的气味是人类与非人类环境之间的触觉媒介。气味是如何在其联络作用中模糊人类和非人类之间的界限的？模糊的过程是否反映了这些作品中人类与非人类之间的其他障碍？为了回答这些问题，我的方法特别借鉴了汉斯·林迪斯巴赫（Hans Rindisbacher，1992）的方法，他通过历史化、社会文化分析和文本细读，大致勾勒了气味在文学中的使用。我的方法是类似的，我开始与文本的气味和气味的例子，然后向外工作，从多个学科拉奖学金，以了解复杂性和深度嵌入在感觉的就业。目前对中世纪意大利文学气味的少量学术研究和邻近学科对气味的新兴研究的结合，突显了中世纪意大利文学领域对气味进行重大研究的丰富潜力。虽然该项目最直接的福尔斯落入中世纪意大利文学研究，该项目结合了哲学，心理学，人类学，宗教和历史等领域的学术研究，以解决三位作者的时空景观中嗅觉的复杂性。该项目将通过提供第一本关于嗅觉的专著，在中世纪意大利文学研究中最近的感官学术浪潮的基础上，并提出跨学科的感官研究方法，为该领域做出贡献