Assembling the Lyric Self investigates the transition in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries from the first surviving Provençal and Italian manuscripts (mostly multiauthor lyric anthologies prepared by scribes) to the single-author codex-that is, to the form we now think of as the book of poems. Working from extensive archival and philological research, Olivia Holmes explores the efforts of individual poets to establish poetic authenticity and authority in the context of expanding vernacular literacy. As she moves from an overview to a consideration of particular authors (including Guittone d'Arezzo and Nicolo de'Rossi) and manuscripts, she both demonstrates the narrative and structural subtlety of many of the works and reveals unsuspected phases in a gradual historical shift.
Assembling the Lyric Self challenges received ideas about the origins of a genre (the author-ordered poetry book) and about periodization, including the traditional opposition between medieval conformity and Renaissance individualism. A major reassessment and redefinition of an entire tradition, this book will be essential reading for scholars not only of the Middle Ages but also of the early modern period whose precedents this book realigns.