From Religious Lauda to Medieval Canzone and Sonnet: Poetry of the Senses in 13th and 14th Century Italy

The purpose of this paper is to present the sensory expression impregnated in the medieval religious poetry from the 13th and 14th centuries written by Italian poets originally from the regions of Umbriа, Sicily, and Emilia-Romagna: Jacopone da Todi, San Francesco d’Assisi, Giacomo da Lentini and Guido Guinizelli. Although religious representation is often related to the rationally expressed scholastic message, we can talk about the almost therapeutic dimension of the poem when spirituality is expressed through sensory poetics. Poetry affects not only through the open religious message it conveys but also through the activation of all sensory impressions at the moment of reading or liturgical singing, as empathy between the reader and the poet. Even religious poetry is not immune to these peculiarities, which we will prove in this article. Four poems will be taken as examples: Canticle of the Creatures (‘Laudes Creaturarum’) by San Francesco d’Assisi, The Lament of the Madonna (‘Il pianto della Madonna’) by Jacopone da Todi, Love Is a Desire that Comes from the Heart (‘Amor è uno desio che ven da core’) by Giacomo da Lentini, and Truly I Wish to Praise My Lady… (‘Io voglio del ver la mia donna laudare’) by Guido Guinizelli.