In
March and April 2007, Professor Fabian Alfie was invited to
give two talks.
The first, which took place during Spring Break 2007, was in
Madison WI, where he received his PhD in 1995. It was a two-day
conference sponsored by the Department of French and Italian
entitled “Dante and the Medieval Cultural Traditions.”
Professor Alfie spoke on canto 14 of Purgatorio and its relationship
to the medieval literary tradition of invective.
The second, which took place at the end of April 2007, was in
Berkeley CA for a one-day conference sponsored by the Department
of Italian Studies entitled “A ben manifestar le cose
nuove: New Directions in Medieval Italian Studies.” Professor
Alfie spoke on Guido Cavalcanti’s sonnet “S’e’
non ti cagia la tua santalena,” which derides a man for
leaving the city for the country.
Invective is central to Professor Alfie’s field of study.
It centers on a poorly understood and infrequently studied technique,
namely the verbal denigration of another person. The modern
impulse is to read such verse interpersonally; that is to say,
to reduce it to the animosity of the two antagonists. During
the Middle Ages, however, it was part of the interaction between
two identities. People insulted one another not only as individuals
but also as members of two divergent and opposed sociological
groups: as of two different cities, of opposed families, of
social classes, ethnic groups, religions and political parties.
Thus, the two talks dealt in different ways with different poets’
approaches to and understandings of literary defamation.
More recently, in September 2007 Professor Alfie returned to
Madison WI for a one-day symposium in honor of the retirement
of Professor Christopher Kleinhenz, his dissertation advisor.
