Poematis genus ambigui I concetti di veritas, fictio e visio fra Petrarca e Boccaccio

Abstract

The paper aims to analyse, through multiple intertextual references, the reception of classical and me-dieval theory about relationship between veritas, fictio and poesis through Boccaccio’sand Petrarca’s examples. Starting from etymological and interpretative dissociation between the concepts of poetry and fiction, allowed by the rediscovery of Cicero’s Pro Archia, Petrarca and Boccaccio reaffirm the moral truth as center of poetic discourse, in defense of poetry against medieval accusations of defectum veritatis. A particular case of study is offered by the dialogicity of the elements of veritas and fictio in the new perspective of humanistic reworking of dream-vision’s literary theory in Boccaccio’s Amorosa Visione, and Petrarca’s Triumphi. This study highlights specifically the ways in which each author not only drew upon previous theoretical models (such as Macrobius Commentarium in Somnium Scipionis) and interacted with the genre of religious prophetic visions (like the Visio Alberici, Vision de Tondale)and the allegorism of Divine Comedy in the composition of his own oneiric texts, but also how, through their literary criticisms, they influenced the analysis of the symbols in subsequent literature.