K P Clarke | University of York (original) (raw)

Books by K P Clarke

The first of its kind, this guide enables readers to get as close as possible to the words of Dan... more The first of its kind, this guide enables readers to get as close as possible to the words of Dante's Comedy. Opening up interpretative possibilities that only become available through reading the poem in its original form, it equips students with an enjoyable and accessible grammatical introduction to the language of early Italian. Including a series of passages drawn from Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso, the text is accompanied by a detailed glossary, followed by a commentary which pays particular attention to matters of language and style. Further reading and study questions are provided at the end of each section, prompting new and fresh ways of engaging with the text. Readers will discover how, by listening to Dante in his own words, one may newly and more fully appreciate the breathtaking beauty of the Comedy.

Society for the Study of Mediaeval Languages and Literatures, 2014

K. P. Clarke and Sarah Baccianti, (eds), On Light, Medium Ævum Monographs (Oxford: Society for th... more K. P. Clarke and Sarah Baccianti, (eds), On Light, Medium Ævum Monographs (Oxford: Society for the Study of Mediaeval Languages and Literatures, 2014). ISBN 0907570291

The essays assembled in this new volume explore the fascination of the Middle Ages with the mystery of light, and its central role in the period's thought and creativity. Spanning medieval theology, literature, science and material culture, the topics covered include the history of light (and, inseparably, darkness) as a literary figure, from the Latin Bible to Geoffrey Chaucer; theoretical speculations on colour, sight and blindness, and their unexpected fertilization of fields such as poetic imagery; medieval preachers' evocations of light as much more than merely figuring the moral and religious, from St. Simeon in the ninth century to John Fisher in the early sixteenth; indeed the belief that light possessed not only reality but physical materality, as manifested in artefacts such as the Gloucester Candlestick. On Light thereby reveals not only the importance of this phenomenon to diverse aspects of medieval culture, but profound and unremarked ways in which it helped to bind these into a whole.

When Chaucer came into contact with Italian literary culture in the second half of the fourteenth... more When Chaucer came into contact with Italian literary culture in the second half of the fourteenth century he was engaging with a productive, lively and highly varied tradition. Chaucer and Italian Textuality provides a new perspective on Chaucer and Italy by highlighting the materiality of his sources, reconstructing his textual, codicological horizon of expectation. It provides new ways of thinking about Chaucer's access to, and use of, these Italian sources, stimulating, in turn, new ways of reading his work. Manuscripts of the major works of Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch circulated in a variety of formats, and often the margins of their texts were loci for extensive commentary and glossing. These traditions of glossing and commentary represent one of the most striking features of fourteenth-century Italian literary culture. These authors were in turn deeply indebted to figures like Ovid and Statius, who were themselves heavily glossed and commented upon. The margins provided a space for a wide variety of responses to be inscribed on the page. This is eloquently demonstrated in the example of Francesco d'Amaretto Mannelli's glosses in Decameron, copied by him in 1384. This material dimension of Chaucer's sources has not received sufficient attention; this book aims to address just such a material textuality. This attention to the materiality of Chaucer's sources is further explored and developed by reading the Prologue to the Wife of Bath's Tale and the Clerk's Tale through their early fourteenth-century manuscripts, taking account not just of the text but also of the numerous marginal glosses. Within this context, then, the question of Chaucer's authorship of some of these glosses is considered.

This collection of essays focuses on the ubiquity of the allegorical imagination in pre-modern we... more This collection of essays focuses on the ubiquity of the allegorical imagination in pre-modern western culture, and participates in a recent wave of resurgence of interest in the complex practices and ideas usually defined by the word 'allegory'. The contributors study the impact of the allegorical imagination on the production, reception and interpretation of literature, as well as its function as a tool of philosophical and theological enquiry, and its role in shaping the visual arts. Essays focus on subjects as varied as the general theories on allegory, allegory's relation to the human imagination, its usefulness or even inevitability as a human mode of cognition and its potential for the encoding of meanings that may be political, historical, religious and amorous. They discuss canonical figures such as Petrarch, Boccaccio, Boethius, Hans Memling, Pico della Mirandola, King James I and John Donne, but extend to include neglected but equally important figures such as Stephen Hawes or Thomas Usk as well as thematic approaches less concerned with issues of authority and authorship. As such the collection is a testimony to the variety, complexity, and adaptability of 'allegory' at the heart of medieval western civilisation.

Papers by K P Clarke

Studi sul Boccaccio, 2023

Questo saggio mira all’analisi delle fonti italiane trecentesche di Geoffrey Chaucer, esaminandol... more Questo saggio mira all’analisi delle fonti italiane trecentesche di Geoffrey Chaucer, esaminandole dalla prospettiva della filologia materiale. Nonostante finora non sia stato possibile associare direttamente alcun manoscritto a Chaucer, le sue fonti italiane si distinguono per una notevole ricchezza materiale. L’articolo va oltre le evidenze testuali delle fonti (ormai ben radicate nella tradizione critica) e si procede a una rivalutazione all’interno dei contesti manoscritti del XIV secolo. Viene inoltre trattato l’utilizzo da parte di Chaucer del volgarizzamento di Filippo Ceffi delle Heroides: non solo è ora possibile identificare plausibilmente la tradizione testuale a disposizione di Chaucer, ma la prima diffusione delle Eroidi rivela molto sulle sue relazioni con la cultura letteraria in volgare, come la Commedia di Dante. Tali manoscritti possono essere considerati libri «virtuali» di Chaucer, offrendo una nuova visione delle sue fonti e come si circolassero nel Trecento.

This essay aims to analyse Chaucer’s Italian sources approached from the perspective of material philology. While no manuscript has yet been directly associated with Chaucer, his Italian sources are notable for a particularly rich array of material expressions. The essay moves beyond textual evidence for the sources (already well-established in the critical tradition), and re-examines them in their fourteenth-century manuscript contexts. Filippo Ceffi’s vernacularization of the Heroides, for example, was certainly used by Chaucer, but here the textual tradition used is plausibly hypothesized; the early manuscripts of the Eroidi on the basis of the it here now possible to plausibly hypothesize the textual tradition reveal much about its relationship to contemporary vernacular literary culture, such as Dante’s Commedia.
These manuscripts can be considered Chaucer’s «virtual» books, offering unique insights into how his sources circulated in the Italian Trecento.

Le Tre Corone, 2019

Abstract · This essay examines the vernacular rubrics Boccaccio devised for his copy of Dante’s C... more Abstract · This essay examines the vernacular rubrics Boccaccio devised for his copy of Dante’s Comedy in Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Chig. L. VI. 213, taking account of their wider codicological context. It is argued that these new rubrics seek to address an ever-widening readership for Dante’s Comedy, conditioning the reception and interpretation of the poem. It is further argued that the manuscript can be read in a polemical dialogue with Petrarch, whose RVF is included in an early form, and over which the shadow of Dante looms large.

NB: simply message me for a PDF of the full article.

Italian Studies, Jul 2013

This article examines in detail two nuptial commissions prepared for the Spannocchi wedding in Si... more This article examines in detail two nuptial commissions prepared for the Spannocchi wedding in Siena in 1494. Remarkably, both commissions draw upon Boccaccio's Decameron: a set of three spalliere, now in the National Gallery London, are based on Dec. X. 10 and a play entitled Virginia by Bernardo Accolti is based on Dec. III. 9. This is the first attempt at reading both of these commissions within the multiple contexts of what is known about the Spannocchi family, fifteenth-century Tuscan nuptial practices as well as a wider reading of the Decameron. It is argued that the strong female dimension to the Spannocchi household, in particular the influence of its materfamilias Caterina Trecerchi, provides new ways for thinking about how the Decameron was being read and to what use it was being put.

This article presents a reading of Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS Magliabechiano II,... more This article presents a reading of Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS Magliabechiano II, II, 8, the oldest surviving witness to Boccaccio’s Decameron, comprising the conclusions to Days I–IX, the ballate, Dioneo’s story in Dec. IX.10, as well as an opening compiler’s prologue. It argues that the manuscript represents a significant and valuable early “reading” of the Decameron, guiding the reader’s response in a series of rubricated headings, and responding to key features and deploying techniques of compilatio that blur the boundaries between author, compiler and the figure of Dioneo.

This critical overview of Chaucer and Italy examines the sources he encountered there, such as Bo... more This critical overview of Chaucer and Italy examines the sources he encountered there, such as Boccaccio’s Filostrato, Teseida, and Decameron as well as Dante’s Comedìa. It covers the most important and influential publications on the subject since the early 1980s, as well as highlighting new and forthcoming work. This new work emphasizes the material contexts of these sources, such as the commentaries frequently accompanying the early copies of the Comedìa, and the influence of Boccaccio’s own early manuscripts on subsequent copies of his work. Work on Chaucer’s Italian sources remains vital and stimulating and offers Chaucerians a wealth of new reading contexts for his work.

Notes and Queries, Jan 1, 2006

Talks by K P Clarke

Canto per canto, 2021

Nancy Vickers (Bryn Mawr College) in conversation with Kenneth Clarke (University of York) “Cant... more Nancy Vickers (Bryn Mawr College)
in conversation with
Kenneth Clarke (University of York)

“Canto per Canto: Conversations with Dante in our time” is a collaborative initiative of the Department of Italian Studies and Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò at NYU together with the Dante Society of America, conceived during the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown in anticipation of the seventh centennial commemoration of Dante’s death in the year 2021. Members of the Dante Society recorded conversations with friends and colleagues on their favorite cantos, reflecting on what Dante has to say to us now, in our time. All 100 cantos of the Divine Comedy will be published at a rate of two cantos per week over the course of a year, starting in September 2020.

Lecture delivered at the Lectura Dantis Andreapolitana, Sept. 2015

The first of its kind, this guide enables readers to get as close as possible to the words of Dan... more The first of its kind, this guide enables readers to get as close as possible to the words of Dante's Comedy. Opening up interpretative possibilities that only become available through reading the poem in its original form, it equips students with an enjoyable and accessible grammatical introduction to the language of early Italian. Including a series of passages drawn from Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso, the text is accompanied by a detailed glossary, followed by a commentary which pays particular attention to matters of language and style. Further reading and study questions are provided at the end of each section, prompting new and fresh ways of engaging with the text. Readers will discover how, by listening to Dante in his own words, one may newly and more fully appreciate the breathtaking beauty of the Comedy.

Society for the Study of Mediaeval Languages and Literatures, 2014

K. P. Clarke and Sarah Baccianti, (eds), On Light, Medium Ævum Monographs (Oxford: Society for th... more K. P. Clarke and Sarah Baccianti, (eds), On Light, Medium Ævum Monographs (Oxford: Society for the Study of Mediaeval Languages and Literatures, 2014). ISBN 0907570291

The essays assembled in this new volume explore the fascination of the Middle Ages with the mystery of light, and its central role in the period's thought and creativity. Spanning medieval theology, literature, science and material culture, the topics covered include the history of light (and, inseparably, darkness) as a literary figure, from the Latin Bible to Geoffrey Chaucer; theoretical speculations on colour, sight and blindness, and their unexpected fertilization of fields such as poetic imagery; medieval preachers' evocations of light as much more than merely figuring the moral and religious, from St. Simeon in the ninth century to John Fisher in the early sixteenth; indeed the belief that light possessed not only reality but physical materality, as manifested in artefacts such as the Gloucester Candlestick. On Light thereby reveals not only the importance of this phenomenon to diverse aspects of medieval culture, but profound and unremarked ways in which it helped to bind these into a whole.

When Chaucer came into contact with Italian literary culture in the second half of the fourteenth... more When Chaucer came into contact with Italian literary culture in the second half of the fourteenth century he was engaging with a productive, lively and highly varied tradition. Chaucer and Italian Textuality provides a new perspective on Chaucer and Italy by highlighting the materiality of his sources, reconstructing his textual, codicological horizon of expectation. It provides new ways of thinking about Chaucer's access to, and use of, these Italian sources, stimulating, in turn, new ways of reading his work. Manuscripts of the major works of Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch circulated in a variety of formats, and often the margins of their texts were loci for extensive commentary and glossing. These traditions of glossing and commentary represent one of the most striking features of fourteenth-century Italian literary culture. These authors were in turn deeply indebted to figures like Ovid and Statius, who were themselves heavily glossed and commented upon. The margins provided a space for a wide variety of responses to be inscribed on the page. This is eloquently demonstrated in the example of Francesco d'Amaretto Mannelli's glosses in Decameron, copied by him in 1384. This material dimension of Chaucer's sources has not received sufficient attention; this book aims to address just such a material textuality. This attention to the materiality of Chaucer's sources is further explored and developed by reading the Prologue to the Wife of Bath's Tale and the Clerk's Tale through their early fourteenth-century manuscripts, taking account not just of the text but also of the numerous marginal glosses. Within this context, then, the question of Chaucer's authorship of some of these glosses is considered.

This collection of essays focuses on the ubiquity of the allegorical imagination in pre-modern we... more This collection of essays focuses on the ubiquity of the allegorical imagination in pre-modern western culture, and participates in a recent wave of resurgence of interest in the complex practices and ideas usually defined by the word 'allegory'. The contributors study the impact of the allegorical imagination on the production, reception and interpretation of literature, as well as its function as a tool of philosophical and theological enquiry, and its role in shaping the visual arts. Essays focus on subjects as varied as the general theories on allegory, allegory's relation to the human imagination, its usefulness or even inevitability as a human mode of cognition and its potential for the encoding of meanings that may be political, historical, religious and amorous. They discuss canonical figures such as Petrarch, Boccaccio, Boethius, Hans Memling, Pico della Mirandola, King James I and John Donne, but extend to include neglected but equally important figures such as Stephen Hawes or Thomas Usk as well as thematic approaches less concerned with issues of authority and authorship. As such the collection is a testimony to the variety, complexity, and adaptability of 'allegory' at the heart of medieval western civilisation.

Studi sul Boccaccio, 2023

Questo saggio mira all’analisi delle fonti italiane trecentesche di Geoffrey Chaucer, esaminandol... more Questo saggio mira all’analisi delle fonti italiane trecentesche di Geoffrey Chaucer, esaminandole dalla prospettiva della filologia materiale. Nonostante finora non sia stato possibile associare direttamente alcun manoscritto a Chaucer, le sue fonti italiane si distinguono per una notevole ricchezza materiale. L’articolo va oltre le evidenze testuali delle fonti (ormai ben radicate nella tradizione critica) e si procede a una rivalutazione all’interno dei contesti manoscritti del XIV secolo. Viene inoltre trattato l’utilizzo da parte di Chaucer del volgarizzamento di Filippo Ceffi delle Heroides: non solo è ora possibile identificare plausibilmente la tradizione testuale a disposizione di Chaucer, ma la prima diffusione delle Eroidi rivela molto sulle sue relazioni con la cultura letteraria in volgare, come la Commedia di Dante. Tali manoscritti possono essere considerati libri «virtuali» di Chaucer, offrendo una nuova visione delle sue fonti e come si circolassero nel Trecento.

This essay aims to analyse Chaucer’s Italian sources approached from the perspective of material philology. While no manuscript has yet been directly associated with Chaucer, his Italian sources are notable for a particularly rich array of material expressions. The essay moves beyond textual evidence for the sources (already well-established in the critical tradition), and re-examines them in their fourteenth-century manuscript contexts. Filippo Ceffi’s vernacularization of the Heroides, for example, was certainly used by Chaucer, but here the textual tradition used is plausibly hypothesized; the early manuscripts of the Eroidi on the basis of the it here now possible to plausibly hypothesize the textual tradition reveal much about its relationship to contemporary vernacular literary culture, such as Dante’s Commedia.
These manuscripts can be considered Chaucer’s «virtual» books, offering unique insights into how his sources circulated in the Italian Trecento.

Le Tre Corone, 2019

Abstract · This essay examines the vernacular rubrics Boccaccio devised for his copy of Dante’s C... more Abstract · This essay examines the vernacular rubrics Boccaccio devised for his copy of Dante’s Comedy in Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Chig. L. VI. 213, taking account of their wider codicological context. It is argued that these new rubrics seek to address an ever-widening readership for Dante’s Comedy, conditioning the reception and interpretation of the poem. It is further argued that the manuscript can be read in a polemical dialogue with Petrarch, whose RVF is included in an early form, and over which the shadow of Dante looms large.

NB: simply message me for a PDF of the full article.

Italian Studies, Jul 2013

This article examines in detail two nuptial commissions prepared for the Spannocchi wedding in Si... more This article examines in detail two nuptial commissions prepared for the Spannocchi wedding in Siena in 1494. Remarkably, both commissions draw upon Boccaccio's Decameron: a set of three spalliere, now in the National Gallery London, are based on Dec. X. 10 and a play entitled Virginia by Bernardo Accolti is based on Dec. III. 9. This is the first attempt at reading both of these commissions within the multiple contexts of what is known about the Spannocchi family, fifteenth-century Tuscan nuptial practices as well as a wider reading of the Decameron. It is argued that the strong female dimension to the Spannocchi household, in particular the influence of its materfamilias Caterina Trecerchi, provides new ways for thinking about how the Decameron was being read and to what use it was being put.

This article presents a reading of Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS Magliabechiano II,... more This article presents a reading of Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS Magliabechiano II, II, 8, the oldest surviving witness to Boccaccio’s Decameron, comprising the conclusions to Days I–IX, the ballate, Dioneo’s story in Dec. IX.10, as well as an opening compiler’s prologue. It argues that the manuscript represents a significant and valuable early “reading” of the Decameron, guiding the reader’s response in a series of rubricated headings, and responding to key features and deploying techniques of compilatio that blur the boundaries between author, compiler and the figure of Dioneo.

This critical overview of Chaucer and Italy examines the sources he encountered there, such as Bo... more This critical overview of Chaucer and Italy examines the sources he encountered there, such as Boccaccio’s Filostrato, Teseida, and Decameron as well as Dante’s Comedìa. It covers the most important and influential publications on the subject since the early 1980s, as well as highlighting new and forthcoming work. This new work emphasizes the material contexts of these sources, such as the commentaries frequently accompanying the early copies of the Comedìa, and the influence of Boccaccio’s own early manuscripts on subsequent copies of his work. Work on Chaucer’s Italian sources remains vital and stimulating and offers Chaucerians a wealth of new reading contexts for his work.

Notes and Queries, Jan 1, 2006

Canto per canto, 2021

Nancy Vickers (Bryn Mawr College) in conversation with Kenneth Clarke (University of York) “Cant... more Nancy Vickers (Bryn Mawr College)
in conversation with
Kenneth Clarke (University of York)

“Canto per Canto: Conversations with Dante in our time” is a collaborative initiative of the Department of Italian Studies and Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò at NYU together with the Dante Society of America, conceived during the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown in anticipation of the seventh centennial commemoration of Dante’s death in the year 2021. Members of the Dante Society recorded conversations with friends and colleagues on their favorite cantos, reflecting on what Dante has to say to us now, in our time. All 100 cantos of the Divine Comedy will be published at a rate of two cantos per week over the course of a year, starting in September 2020.

Lecture delivered at the Lectura Dantis Andreapolitana, Sept. 2015

Reading Dante with Images: A Visual Lectura Dantis, 2021

‘Inferno 1: Openings and Beginnings’, in Reading Dante with Images: A Visual Lectura Dantis, ed. ... more ‘Inferno 1: Openings and Beginnings’, in Reading Dante with Images: A Visual Lectura Dantis, ed. by Matthew Collins (Turnhout: Harvey Miller, 2021), pp. 33-53. ISBN: 9781912554508.

Literary Beginnings in the European Middle Ages, 2022

‘Italian’, in Literary Beginnings in the European Middle Ages, ed. by Chris Young and Mark Chinca... more ‘Italian’, in Literary Beginnings in the European Middle Ages, ed. by Chris Young and Mark Chinca (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), pp. 203-227. ISBN: 9781108477642.

Liber amicorum: Medieval Studies, Translation, Creativity, for Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin, 2022

‘Reframings and Accommodations: The Story of Pietro, his Wife, and their Lover (Dec V 10), in Lib... more ‘Reframings and Accommodations: The Story of Pietro, his Wife, and their Lover (Dec V 10), in Liber amicorum: Medieval Studies, Translation, Creativity, for Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin, ed. by Corinna Salvadori and John Scattergood (Turin: Nuova Trauben, 2022), pp. 175-216. ISBN: 9788899312985.

The Decameron Eighth Day in Perspective, ed. William Robins (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020), 2020

Reconsidering Boccaccio: Medieval Contexts and Global Intertexts, 2018

K. P. Clarke, ‘Text and (Inter)Face: The Catchwords in Boccaccio’s Autograph of the Decameron’, i... more K. P. Clarke, ‘Text and (Inter)Face: The Catchwords in Boccaccio’s Autograph of the Decameron’, in Reconsidering Boccaccio: Medieval Contexts and Global Intertexts, ed. by Olivia Holmes and Dana E. Stewart, Toronto Italian Studies (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018), pp. 27-47.

Vertical Readings in Dante's Comedy (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2015), pp. 203-221

in Boccaccio e i suoi lettori. Una lunga ricezione, a cura di Gian Mario Anselmi, Giovanni Baffetti, Carlo Delcorno, & Sebastiana Nobili (Bologna: il Mulino, 2013), pp. 195-207

The Review of English Studies, Jan 1, 2006

Chaucer, Ethics, and Gender. By ALCUIN BLAMIRES. Pp. xi+ 264. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 20... more Chaucer, Ethics, and Gender. By ALCUIN BLAMIRES. Pp. xi+ 264. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Cloth, »50.00. This stimulating book undertakes, the author states in the introduction, a gender-aware study of Chaucer's writings and of his engagement in those ...

The Review of English Studies, Jan 1, 2010

The Review of English Studies, Jan 1, 2007

Notes and Queries, Jan 1, 2008

ROBERT M. CORREALE and MARY HAMEL (eds), Sources and Analogues of the Canterbury Tales II. Pp. xv... more ROBERT M. CORREALE and MARY HAMEL (eds), Sources and Analogues of the Canterbury Tales II. Pp. xvi + 824. Woodbridge and Rochester: DS Brewer, 2005. Hardbound £75.00 (ISBN 1 84384 048 0). THE publication of this second and final volume of the new Sources and ...

The Review of English Studies, Jan 1, 2008

In this stimulating book, Professor Fyler seeks to explore the ways in which Chaucer, Dante and J... more In this stimulating book, Professor Fyler seeks to explore the ways in which Chaucer, Dante and Jean de Meun come to terms with the question of the origins of language and its decline since the Fall of Man. The book sets up the intellectual traditions surrounding such questions in ...

The Review of English Studies, Jan 1, 2009

Notes and Queries, Jan 1, 2009

Notes and Queries, Jan 1, 2010

This is an important and interesting book and will appeal widely. It will also invite (and stimul... more This is an important and interesting book and will appeal widely. It will also invite (and stimulate) further critical work on these texts in their manuscript contexts.