Armando Maggi | University of Chicago (original) (raw)
Papers by Armando Maggi
STUDI PASOLINIANI, 2022
Il testo del saggio è disponibile nel formato .doc in questo sito.
Social Research: An International Quarterly
This essay investigates the pervasive presence of Christian demonology in contemporary American c... more This essay investigates the pervasive presence of Christian demonology in contemporary American culture. After discussing the concept of demonic possession according to Catholic and Protestant theology, Maggi explores the crucial role played by the ritual of exorcism in modern popular culture, especially cinema. After the collapse of traditional historical categories due to the 9/11 tragedy, popular culture has interpreted the early-modern ritual of exorcism as the locus of a nostalgic return to a hypothetical past. However, the ritual meant to bring order to the chaos created by evil is now a performance leading to troublesome and even pernicious consequences.
published in journal "Intersezioni" 2020/2, pp. 203-221
The Journal of Religion, 2004
Modern Philology, 2010
In January 2008, sixty-seven academics teaching at the University La Sapienza in Rome demanded th... more In January 2008, sixty-seven academics teaching at the University La Sapienza in Rome demanded that the visit of Pope Benedict XVI, who had been invited to give the inaugural speech of the new academic year, be called off because, in a lecture he had given in 1990 at the same university (when he was then Cardinal Ratzinger), he had allegedly defended the Church’s censure of Galileo. Speaking of the ‘‘crisis of faith in Science’’ in A Turning Point For Europe?—a book that also reproduces the ideas expressed in that lecture—Ratzinger voices his negative view of Galileo by quoting the Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch, who claims that if we follow the modern theory of relativity, ‘‘the heliocentric world-system, just like the geocentric system, rests on unprovable presuppositions’’ and that only ‘‘an easier calculability’’ makes the former more suitable than the latter. What particularly angered the Italian scholars was Ratzinger’s second citation from the philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend, according to whom ‘‘[the Church’s] verdict against
Modern Philology, 2003
ions, also called mental alienations.”35 Garzoni invites the members of the Academy of the “Infor... more ions, also called mental alienations.”35 Garzoni invites the members of the Academy of the “Informi,” the addressees of his hypothetical discourse, to join him in his upward journey toward the sky of Mercury, which became more luminous when Beatrice entered it after having conversed with Dante in the sky of the Moon. Garzoni transcribes three verses from the final section of canto 5 of the Paradiso, which revolves around the essential theme of free will’s role in the process of human salvation.36 This Dante quotation, which is also the first quotation in L’huomo astratto, is crucial. First of all, the citation has a rhetorical function. L’huomo astratto belongs to the Renaissance genre of discourses and treatises in which allusions to Italian classical poetry merge with learned references to the canon of hermetic and Neoplatonic philosophy. Petrarch, but also Dante and Cavalcanti, are read as forerunners of Ficinian thought. Numerous treatises are constructed as philosophical exegeses of a sonnet or canzone.37 In L’huomo astratto, the brief citation from Paradiso works both as a grand poetic opening and as an introductory allusion to the basic theme of Florentine Platonism. However, Garzoni’s poetic selection has an additional, crucial implication. In canto 5 of Dante’s third cantica, Beatrice’s lengthy speech stresses that “the freedom of will” (della volontà la libertate, 5.22) is God’s most important gift. 35. Garzoni, L’huomo astratto (n. 3 above), in Gli due Garzoni, p. 3: “meravigliose e divine astrattioni, overo alienationi della mente . . . materia non meno difficile e ardua, che grave e seria.” Garzoni wrote this piece in 1588 when he was accepted into the socalled Academia degli Informi (Academy of the formless) in Ravenna. Garzoni died before delivering this introductory speech. In the dedicatory letter to monsignor Offreddi de gli Offreddi, Bartolomeo Garzoni states that L’huomo astratto is “the last product of my brother’s bright intellect” (Gli due Garzoni, n.p.). The Academia degli Informi was founded in 1583 at the house of Gaspare Lotti. In 1655, the archbishop allowed the members of the academy to gather in the archbishopal palace. The “Informi” wrote many works, but only a few were published. See Michele Maylender, Storia della accademie d’Italia, 5 vols. (Bologna: Cappelli, 1929), 3:276–78. 36. Garzoni, L’huomo astratto, p. 4. Dante Alighieri, Paradiso 5.94–96, ed. Natalino Sapegno (Florence: Nuova Italia, 1982): “Quivi la donna mia vid’io sì lieta, / come nel lume di quel ciel si mise, / che più lucente se ne fe’ il pianeta.” Garzoni’s transcription of line 94 is slightly different: “Quivi la donna mia viddi si lieta.” 37. For instance, Della contemplatione dell’huomo estatico (Perugia, 1588) by the “Estatico insensato” [Ecstatic fool] of the “Academia degl’Insensati” [Academy of the foolish] is an interpretation of Giovanni Guidiccioni’s sonnet “Avezzianci a morir, se proprio è morte.” Della contemplatione abounds with citations from the Canzoniere and the Paradiso. Another interesting example is La spositione di Girolamo Frachetta (Venice, 1585), which is an exegesis of Cavalcanti’s “Donna me prega.” I discuss Neoplatonic commentaries on Petrarch’s sonnets in “Il commento al sé oscuro: La dichiarazione di Giuliano Goselini e la fine del sapere rinascimentale,” Italianistica 32 (2003): 11–28. M O D E R N P H I L O L O G Y 268 The act of flying up from the sky of the Moon to the sky of Mercury thus results from Dante’s insight into the centrality of free will. Playing with the double meaning of “mercury,” Garzoni writes that to move upward toward Mercury means to give a definite form to our internal “formless” quicksilver. That is, the ecstatic process of enlightenment revolves around the notion of intellectual freedom, which molds our human identity.38 As a consequence, a truthful alienation of the mind has nothing to do with the images that at times, as Marsilio Ficino writes in book 13 of the Theologia platonica, ravish the mind because of melancholia, syncope, or sleep.39 These products of the imagination, Garzoni argues against Ficino, are in fact “infirmities” (infirmità) and not divinations or intellectual insights because the mind receives them in a state of complete passivity. This is a central point of Garzoni’s argument. Having dismissed Ficino’s different forms of divination as examples of mental or physical disorder, Garzoni holds that the “first grade of the wonderful and divine alienations” is “a pure, simple, and natural speculation.”40 According to Garzoni, Plotinus offers a cogent synthesis of this alienation in a key passage from the Enneads, where he states that the mind ascends to the divinity through three stages of enlightenment, which are symbolized by Mercury, Venus, and the Sun.41 Referring to Ficino’s In Plotinum, Garzoni states that Mercury corresponds to the first stage, in which the mind sees the “consonance and harmony” existing within sensible things.…
Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 2007
Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 2007
... Page 4. In the Company ofDemons Unnatural Beings, Love, and Identity in the Italian Renaissan... more ... Page 4. In the Company ofDemons Unnatural Beings, Love, and Identity in the Italian Renaissance armando maggi the university of chicago press Chicago & London _ ... In the company of demons : unnatural beings, love, and identity in the Italian Renaissance / Armando Maggi. ...
Bruniana & Campanelliana, 2009
Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of …, 2006
... He also uses this technique to 4 mark the beginning and the end of a speech, as when the card... more ... He also uses this technique to 4 mark the beginning and the end of a speech, as when the cardi-nal of Toledo reads out loud the Spanish ... 306 FREDERICK DE ARMAS AND ARMANDO MAGGI Cervantes ... Available shortly at <http://www.h-net.org/ ~cervantes/csa/bcsaf05.htm>. ...
esperienze letterarie, 2006
TDR (1988-)
The object of this study is a unique case in the history of Western spiritual- ... Saint Maria Ma... more The object of this study is a unique case in the history of Western spiritual- ... Saint Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi (Florence, 1566-I607), questions the mean- ... Maria Maddalena's mystic performances had a specific goal: the expression of the Word. The mystic believed that through oral ...
TDR (1988-)
The object of this study is a unique case in the history of Western spiritual- ... Saint Maria Ma... more The object of this study is a unique case in the history of Western spiritual- ... Saint Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi (Florence, 1566-I607), questions the mean- ... Maria Maddalena's mystic performances had a specific goal: the expression of the Word. The mystic believed that through oral ...
PENSER ET AGIR À LA RENAISSANCE Thought and action in the Renaissance sous la direction de Philippe Desan et Véronique Ferrer DROZ, 2020
pp. 493-505
STUDI PASOLINIANI, 2022
Il testo del saggio è disponibile nel formato .doc in questo sito.
Social Research: An International Quarterly
This essay investigates the pervasive presence of Christian demonology in contemporary American c... more This essay investigates the pervasive presence of Christian demonology in contemporary American culture. After discussing the concept of demonic possession according to Catholic and Protestant theology, Maggi explores the crucial role played by the ritual of exorcism in modern popular culture, especially cinema. After the collapse of traditional historical categories due to the 9/11 tragedy, popular culture has interpreted the early-modern ritual of exorcism as the locus of a nostalgic return to a hypothetical past. However, the ritual meant to bring order to the chaos created by evil is now a performance leading to troublesome and even pernicious consequences.
published in journal "Intersezioni" 2020/2, pp. 203-221
The Journal of Religion, 2004
Modern Philology, 2010
In January 2008, sixty-seven academics teaching at the University La Sapienza in Rome demanded th... more In January 2008, sixty-seven academics teaching at the University La Sapienza in Rome demanded that the visit of Pope Benedict XVI, who had been invited to give the inaugural speech of the new academic year, be called off because, in a lecture he had given in 1990 at the same university (when he was then Cardinal Ratzinger), he had allegedly defended the Church’s censure of Galileo. Speaking of the ‘‘crisis of faith in Science’’ in A Turning Point For Europe?—a book that also reproduces the ideas expressed in that lecture—Ratzinger voices his negative view of Galileo by quoting the Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch, who claims that if we follow the modern theory of relativity, ‘‘the heliocentric world-system, just like the geocentric system, rests on unprovable presuppositions’’ and that only ‘‘an easier calculability’’ makes the former more suitable than the latter. What particularly angered the Italian scholars was Ratzinger’s second citation from the philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend, according to whom ‘‘[the Church’s] verdict against
Modern Philology, 2003
ions, also called mental alienations.”35 Garzoni invites the members of the Academy of the “Infor... more ions, also called mental alienations.”35 Garzoni invites the members of the Academy of the “Informi,” the addressees of his hypothetical discourse, to join him in his upward journey toward the sky of Mercury, which became more luminous when Beatrice entered it after having conversed with Dante in the sky of the Moon. Garzoni transcribes three verses from the final section of canto 5 of the Paradiso, which revolves around the essential theme of free will’s role in the process of human salvation.36 This Dante quotation, which is also the first quotation in L’huomo astratto, is crucial. First of all, the citation has a rhetorical function. L’huomo astratto belongs to the Renaissance genre of discourses and treatises in which allusions to Italian classical poetry merge with learned references to the canon of hermetic and Neoplatonic philosophy. Petrarch, but also Dante and Cavalcanti, are read as forerunners of Ficinian thought. Numerous treatises are constructed as philosophical exegeses of a sonnet or canzone.37 In L’huomo astratto, the brief citation from Paradiso works both as a grand poetic opening and as an introductory allusion to the basic theme of Florentine Platonism. However, Garzoni’s poetic selection has an additional, crucial implication. In canto 5 of Dante’s third cantica, Beatrice’s lengthy speech stresses that “the freedom of will” (della volontà la libertate, 5.22) is God’s most important gift. 35. Garzoni, L’huomo astratto (n. 3 above), in Gli due Garzoni, p. 3: “meravigliose e divine astrattioni, overo alienationi della mente . . . materia non meno difficile e ardua, che grave e seria.” Garzoni wrote this piece in 1588 when he was accepted into the socalled Academia degli Informi (Academy of the formless) in Ravenna. Garzoni died before delivering this introductory speech. In the dedicatory letter to monsignor Offreddi de gli Offreddi, Bartolomeo Garzoni states that L’huomo astratto is “the last product of my brother’s bright intellect” (Gli due Garzoni, n.p.). The Academia degli Informi was founded in 1583 at the house of Gaspare Lotti. In 1655, the archbishop allowed the members of the academy to gather in the archbishopal palace. The “Informi” wrote many works, but only a few were published. See Michele Maylender, Storia della accademie d’Italia, 5 vols. (Bologna: Cappelli, 1929), 3:276–78. 36. Garzoni, L’huomo astratto, p. 4. Dante Alighieri, Paradiso 5.94–96, ed. Natalino Sapegno (Florence: Nuova Italia, 1982): “Quivi la donna mia vid’io sì lieta, / come nel lume di quel ciel si mise, / che più lucente se ne fe’ il pianeta.” Garzoni’s transcription of line 94 is slightly different: “Quivi la donna mia viddi si lieta.” 37. For instance, Della contemplatione dell’huomo estatico (Perugia, 1588) by the “Estatico insensato” [Ecstatic fool] of the “Academia degl’Insensati” [Academy of the foolish] is an interpretation of Giovanni Guidiccioni’s sonnet “Avezzianci a morir, se proprio è morte.” Della contemplatione abounds with citations from the Canzoniere and the Paradiso. Another interesting example is La spositione di Girolamo Frachetta (Venice, 1585), which is an exegesis of Cavalcanti’s “Donna me prega.” I discuss Neoplatonic commentaries on Petrarch’s sonnets in “Il commento al sé oscuro: La dichiarazione di Giuliano Goselini e la fine del sapere rinascimentale,” Italianistica 32 (2003): 11–28. M O D E R N P H I L O L O G Y 268 The act of flying up from the sky of the Moon to the sky of Mercury thus results from Dante’s insight into the centrality of free will. Playing with the double meaning of “mercury,” Garzoni writes that to move upward toward Mercury means to give a definite form to our internal “formless” quicksilver. That is, the ecstatic process of enlightenment revolves around the notion of intellectual freedom, which molds our human identity.38 As a consequence, a truthful alienation of the mind has nothing to do with the images that at times, as Marsilio Ficino writes in book 13 of the Theologia platonica, ravish the mind because of melancholia, syncope, or sleep.39 These products of the imagination, Garzoni argues against Ficino, are in fact “infirmities” (infirmità) and not divinations or intellectual insights because the mind receives them in a state of complete passivity. This is a central point of Garzoni’s argument. Having dismissed Ficino’s different forms of divination as examples of mental or physical disorder, Garzoni holds that the “first grade of the wonderful and divine alienations” is “a pure, simple, and natural speculation.”40 According to Garzoni, Plotinus offers a cogent synthesis of this alienation in a key passage from the Enneads, where he states that the mind ascends to the divinity through three stages of enlightenment, which are symbolized by Mercury, Venus, and the Sun.41 Referring to Ficino’s In Plotinum, Garzoni states that Mercury corresponds to the first stage, in which the mind sees the “consonance and harmony” existing within sensible things.…
Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 2007
Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 2007
... Page 4. In the Company ofDemons Unnatural Beings, Love, and Identity in the Italian Renaissan... more ... Page 4. In the Company ofDemons Unnatural Beings, Love, and Identity in the Italian Renaissance armando maggi the university of chicago press Chicago & London _ ... In the company of demons : unnatural beings, love, and identity in the Italian Renaissance / Armando Maggi. ...
Bruniana & Campanelliana, 2009
Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of …, 2006
... He also uses this technique to 4 mark the beginning and the end of a speech, as when the card... more ... He also uses this technique to 4 mark the beginning and the end of a speech, as when the cardi-nal of Toledo reads out loud the Spanish ... 306 FREDERICK DE ARMAS AND ARMANDO MAGGI Cervantes ... Available shortly at <http://www.h-net.org/ ~cervantes/csa/bcsaf05.htm>. ...
esperienze letterarie, 2006
TDR (1988-)
The object of this study is a unique case in the history of Western spiritual- ... Saint Maria Ma... more The object of this study is a unique case in the history of Western spiritual- ... Saint Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi (Florence, 1566-I607), questions the mean- ... Maria Maddalena's mystic performances had a specific goal: the expression of the Word. The mystic believed that through oral ...
TDR (1988-)
The object of this study is a unique case in the history of Western spiritual- ... Saint Maria Ma... more The object of this study is a unique case in the history of Western spiritual- ... Saint Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi (Florence, 1566-I607), questions the mean- ... Maria Maddalena's mystic performances had a specific goal: the expression of the Word. The mystic believed that through oral ...
PENSER ET AGIR À LA RENAISSANCE Thought and action in the Renaissance sous la direction de Philippe Desan et Véronique Ferrer DROZ, 2020
pp. 493-505
Guido Casoni, "Della magia d'amore", 2003
Introduzione alla mia edizione (Sellerio 2003) della Magia d'amore di Guido Casoni.
STUDI PASOLINIANI, 2022
Nella sua riscrittura delle Argonautiche Pasolini ricrea la complessa figura di Orfeo rendendolo ... more Nella sua riscrittura delle Argonautiche Pasolini ricrea la complessa figura di Orfeo rendendolo una presenza sia intradiegetica, o per meglio dire, una 'voce intradiegetica' perché l'Orfeo pasoliniano è soltanto una comunicazione verbale (il suo canto, una sua «meditazione" e soprattutto un «testamento"), sia extradiegetica, come incarnazione della voce autoriale, acquisendo in tal modo una posizione centrale dell'intero progetto Petrolio. 1 Il mitico cantore antico acquista nel testo in fieri di Pasolini un'identità che riflette e trascende i topoi ad essa usualmente collegati, cioè il suo essere figlio di una musa, spesso Calliope, la sua connessione
Studi Pasoliniani, 2020
Analysis of Pasolini's documentary The Walls of Sana'a