Serena Piccirillo
Serena Piccirillo
Between Identity and Otherness. The Muslim East and the Construction of the “Turk” in Italian Renaissance Poems (1532–1573)
The project investigates Italian chivalric poems composed and published between 1532, the year of the definitive edition of Orlando Furioso, and 1573, the period of greatest intensity in the poetic production tied to the victory at Lepanto. This chronological span makes it possible to observe, from a unified perspective, the development of the chivalric poem between Ariosto and Tasso, with particular attention to a large corpus of texts now considered "minor" or non-canonical, yet characterized by extraordinary productive vitality and a strong rooting in the editorial culture of the sixteenth century.
At the heart of the research is the way in which these poems contribute to the literary and cultural construction of the relationship between East and West, and in particular to the definition of Muslim otherness and the figure of the "Turk," in the context of Mediterranean and Ottoman-Christian conflict. The project analyzes the narrative, rhetorical, and figurative forms through which the chivalric poem helps shape an imagery of the Islamic East, relating it to the political, ideological, and religious dynamics of the period.
Special attention is given to the material and editorial dimension of the texts: the poems are considered not only as literary works, but as printed books, set within the powerful production machinery of sixteenth-century Venetian publishing.
The project thus weaves together textual analysis, study of editorial devices, and reflection on narrative and symbolic geographies, examining the role of cities, borders, and Mediterranean spaces in configuring the conflict between Christianity and Islam, and critically questioning the applicability of contemporary anthropological categories of identity and otherness to a sixteenth-century literary corpus.
Research Interests
Italian Renaissance literature; Philology of printed texts; Ariostan tradition and dynamics of reception; Chivalric poem; Literature and the construction of cultural identities.
