Lozinskaya Evgeniya Valentinovna – Senior Researcher at the Department of Literary Studies, Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences
The article traces the history of one of the poetological topoi, a thought scheme in which poetry is juxtaposed with or opposed to theology. This thought pattern has been present in one form or another throughout the history of Italian literary criticism. Some theorists tended to believe that poetry was a “second theology,” or at least had equal dignity and equal capacity for the looking into the higher truths; others, on the contrary, emphasized the distinction between these two kinds of discursive activity. Some of them (Thomas Aquinas, Savonarola, etc.) found the “lack of truth” in poetic work, but later authors (from Bettinelli to Croce) emphasized the inadequateness of theological content in poetry, the contradiction between theological, theoretical perception of the world and poetic lyrical feeling, “intuition,” etc. The article puts forward the thesis that in Italian theoretical thought one or another solution of the question of the correlation between poetry and theology is connected with the concept of intensionality of poetic creativity. Related poetological topoi and topos are also considered: “truth under the veil of fiction”, poetstheologians, primordial poets, divine inspiration of the poet.
poetological topoi; defectus veritatis; prisca poetae; frenzy; dream; rationality; lyrical intuition; theological romance; Thomas Aquinas; Mussato; Croce; Dante; Ficino; della Fonte; Bettinelli