In a time when speech, particularly comedic speech, is called out as a form of violence, Nicolino Applauso aims to uncover something deadly serious underneath the “jokes” of the so-called jokester-poets (poeti giocosi) contemporary with Dante: Rustico Filippi, notorious misogynist, Cecco Angiolieri, of the lengthy rap sheet, and Folgore da San Gimignano, political activist. Applauso stakes out a third way between the naïve realism of the Romantics and the strict literariness of the New Critics to consider how real, historical events do in fact have something to do with documented poetic production and inform their meaning. Applauso provides us with a deep and wide literary history of humor and invective and a reinterpretation, revealing newly unearthed archival evidence, of each of his chosen poeti giocosi. This historically and literarily well-researched study aims to recover the ethical value of these poets’ barbed humor and thereby also the comedic context of Dante’s Divine Comedy.

Alison Cornish, New York University

Taking humor 'seriously,' namely as an ethical performance, Applauso provides an erudite analysis of the invective tradition as a mode of civic communication by considering its reinvention in the hands of Dante and his contemporaries. Wide-ranging in its scope, this book highlights the ethical, theoretical, and historical implications of the interplay of humor and political commentary, one which bears relevance for our times.

Kristina Olson, George Mason University