‘Scuro saccio che par lo | meo detto’ (I Know that my Word Seems Obscure): Wordplay and Obscurity in Thirteenth-Century Italian Poetry

"In «'Scuro saccio che par lo | meo detto' (I Know that my Words Seem Obscure): Wordplay and Obscurity in Thirteenth-Century Italian Poetry», Paolo Borsa analyses the peculiar style of the hermetic Italian poets of the so-called Siculo-Tuscan tradition, which flourished in Tuscany in the second half of the thirteenth century. In the compositions of Guittone d’Arezzo, Monte Andrea, and other poets of the same generation, obscurity and ambiguity are explored not only phonetically, but also graphically, in the new and flexible medium of vernacular writing. Borsa argues that the semantic play within their poetry is largely contained within language and text itself, and that this practice later provoked a reaction from Dante, whose phonosemantic associations were intended to stimulate contemplation on the deeper meaning of his text." [from the Introduction by Mikael Males].