ABSTRACT
Part Two (“The Figure of Cavalcanti: Intimations of Heterodoxy”) opens by surveying Cavalcanti’s reputation, in his own time and in the several decades following his death, as the exemplary figure of the heterodox intellectual, as a so-called atheist and Aristotelian materialist for whom the Christian afterlife is nothing more than a useful fiction. Turning to a set of poems in which Guido, through addressing or corresponding with other poets (namely, Guittone d’Arezzo and Guido Orlandi), fashions his own figure, we will see that he does consciously aim to establish himself as a leader of the Aristotelian left wing, as an unabashed culture warrior who does not shrink from deriding poets who are not intellectuals and from mocking learned authors who settle for traditional opinion rather than science. Along the way, we see that Cavalcanti’s grasp of Aristotle is firm, deep, and a constant source of poetic inspiration. Through close readings of several poems, we will begin to recognize the extent to which Cavalcanti is intent on insisting that human thinking is driven by imagination, not by intellection.
