Strade di charta: viaggi della poesia dall’antichità al medioevo

Abstract

The article proposes an investigation into the associations between the personified book and
the road it travels to reach its recipients, both in Classical Antiquity, when the papyrus scroll
was naturally associated with the image of a road (see Hor. sat. 1,5), and in the Late Antique
and Medieval poetry, in which the transition from volumen to codex required the adoption
of other, more suitable scribal metaphors, such as that of the white field to be ploughed. This
latter, which had already originated in the context of writing on wax tablets, experienced new
vitality in Medieval Poetry, especially in the genre of riddles and in the apostrophe to the
travelling charta of Carolingian poetry.

Key-words: charta, volumen, Apostrophe to the Book, Travelling Poetry, Horatius, Martial,
Rutilius Namatianus, Sidonius Apollinaris, Venantius Fortunatus, Aldhelm of Malmesbury,
Alcuin of York, Medieval Riddles, Gesta Berengarii.