L’antonomasia litanica: origine e prospettive di studio nell’ambito della poesia italiana

Abstract

Antonomasia connects proper names and ways of representing by recalling specific traits of entities and people whose referential aspects can be linked to antonomastic appellatives through, for example, synecdoche or metonymy.

Complex periphrases, used to construct antonomastic attributes, allow emphasis, irony and other semantic shifts related to the person who is named antonomastically.

The concept of litanic antonomasia calls for closer examination. Since it evolved in a context of prayer we will try to adapt the repertoire of existing definitions to a specific discursive situation. It should be pointed out that the status of the addressee of litanic antonomasia implies peculiar attitude. The purpose of the present paper is to fine-tune the definition of antonomasia, using examples taken from early litanies and spiritual lauds written in both Latin and Italian. Its influence on the religious poetry of the Middle Ages is the basis of the poetics of praise, of great importance for the Italian poetry between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries