Throughout the Middle Ages, Sicily remained an important centre of textual production in Greek and Latin. In the 10th and 11th century, Sicily embraced mainstream aspects of Islamicate culture and, through the patronage of the Kalbid emirs, produced an abundance of poetry and prose in Arabic. In the 12th century, Norman Sicily experienced a multi-cultural flourishing, with the production of texts in five languages: Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic and Romance. These texts comprise hagiographical texts, homilies, theological treatises, poetry, as well as geographical, historical, rhetorical and scientific texts. Various types of evidence speak for the transformation of Sicily into an important contact zone between all these literary traditions. Official documents were written in two languages (Greek and Arabic, or Greek and Latin); and the court fostered the composition of encomiastic poetry in four languages. In the 13th century, Hohenstaufen Sicily saw the rise of the Italian lyric in the verse of the so-called Scuola Siciliana while the island’s multiple linguistic traditions persisted. This roundtable aims to explore the entanglements between these traditions by placing a focus on translations and poetry and bringing together scholars who are working on the literary production in medieval Sicily. Questions and topics that our panel will address are: Did different Sicilian literary traditions share common themes, tropes, aims? What kind of translation activities were fostered during this period? Do we have new evidence about possible contacts and exchanges between the agents of these traditions? What social practices bound to the production of the literary texts do we find rememerging throughout the various periods of medieval Sicily?
The epistle In extollendis regiae prefecturae fastigiis—composed by a notary of Frederick II (1190–1250) or his son Manfred (1232–1266)—was written to accompany a series of Latin translations of Arabic and Greek philosophical and scientific texts, produced at the Hohestaufen court. Addressed to the scholars of Bologna (or Paris, if ascribed to Manfred’s reign), the letter…
Kalila wa Dimna (in Greek: Stephanites and Ichnelates) is a mirror of princes that enjoyed great success across Eurasia throughout the Middle Ages. Originating in India between the fourth and sixth centuries, the text was translated and expanded in Persian and Arabic before reaching the Greek-speaking world through the translations of Symeon Seth (eleventh century)…
Within the multicultural context of medieval Sicily and southern Italy, Latin was one of the several languages —alongside Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, and Italian—employed in the domain of textual production. Moreover, due to the prolific activity of translators such as Henry Aristippus, Eugenius of Palermo, Michael Scot, and Bartholomew of Messina, in 12th- and 13th-century Sicily,…
According to Goethe, who visited the island in the late 18th century: “Italy without Sicily creates no image in the soul.” He described it as “the key to everything.” This perspective resonates with a long-standing view of Sicily as a symbol of what A. Gramsci in 1918 defined as “spiritual independence” and yet as the…