Modal Difficulty in Medieval Literature Analysis: the Frame-Notation Correlation in Dante’s Quotations of Fibonacci

Abstract

The investigation of medieval literature poses a number of challenges, even to native speaker researchers. Such difficulties are related to (a) linguistic – syntactical and lexical – obstacles, (b) to the ability to recognise dense networks of interdisciplinary references and, (c) mainly to the cognitive challenges posed by “unfamiliar modes of expression”. The aim of this research is to discuss a methodological approach to deal with these unusual manners of composition, technically known as modal difficulty, in medieval literature. The theoretic setting is represented by Davide Castiglione’s monographic study Difficulty in Poetry (2018) and the specific definition of modal difficulty elaborated by James E. Vincent in the premise of his treatise on American poetry (2003). A study case illustrative of challenges in medieval literature analysis has been chosen to illustrate the speculative reasoning: the references to the celebrated mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci (1170–1242) – known for having introduced the Arabic numbers to the Europeans – in Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. Preliminarily, the author discusses unfamiliar mathematical notations implemented from the 13th to the 18th centuries. Subsequently, adopting cognitive linguistics principles and hermeneutic as methodological tools, several veiled citations of the mathematician’s cogitations – such as the chess comparison in Paradise XXVIII, 91–93 and the quadratic expression in Paradise XXVII, 115–117 – are deciphered and illustrated. The analysis of Dante’s cognitive frame indicates that the recourse to Fibonacci’s formulas is functional to depict the incommensurable multitude of the divine in words. In the conclusions, the case studied is adopted as a model to illustrate how the reflection on unusual forms of expression could be employed to investigate ancient literary texts. A preliminary analysis of the frame-notation relation could help, as an example, to recognise mathematical formulas that were expressed in a verbal and non-symbolic notation.