CFP: Authority and Materiality in the Italian Songbook: From the Medieval Lyric to the Early-Modern Madrigal, Binghamton Univ., May 2015

Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Binghamton University

Authority and Materiality in the Italian Songbook: From the Medieval Lyric to the Early-Modern Madrigal

May 1-2, 2015

Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374) was a key figure in the development of the poetry book, exhibiting in his autobiographical Canzoniere a concern with the material production of texts and a high degree of self-consciousness in the arrangement of his poems into a coherent narrative, setting a precedent for centuries to come. Petrarchism became the dominant idiom of early-modern poetry, as well as the primary thematic register of the madrigal, a genre in which composers increasingly asserted authorial control over the appearance of their songs in printed books.

We invite proposals dealing with the material sources of Italian poetry and music from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries. Martin Eisner (Duke University), and Giuseppe Gerbino (Columbia University) will be keynote speakers, and the conference will include a concert of Petrarchan madrigals by the ensemble Blue Heron. We anticipate publishing a volume of selected conference proceedings.

Topics may include:

• Constructions of authorship in early Italian and Occitan lyric collections
• The 13th-century Italian “divorce” between poetry and music
• Petrarchan reforms in scribal practices and book production
• Evoking song in Petrarch’s Canzoniere and other works
• Composers and poets in 14th-century poetic anthologies and music codices
• 15th-century poesia per musica and “missing” musical sources
• Bembo’s Petrarch: 16th-century sources
• Autobiographical poetic practices and women as petrarchisti
• Organizational strategies in madrigal books
• Lyric poetry and the culture of print
• The rhetoric of authorship in dedications and prefaces
• The commodification of lyric anthologies
• Oral vs. written transmission

Papers should not exceed 20 minutes and may be in English or Italian. Send 500-word abstracts and brief CVs by November 1, 2014, to cemers at binghamton.edu. Inquiries may be directed to Professor Paul Schleuse (schleuse atbinghamton.edu).