1980 Reviews

Il mondo rovesciato

Barolini, Teodolinda

Despite its title, this book does not belong to the tradition of such studies as James J. Wilhelm's The Cruelest Month or George Economou's The goddess Natura in Medieval Literature. That is, it provides no survey of the topos of the World Turned Upside Down (both Ernst Robert Curtius and the topos as such are mentioned only in passing, 74f.); rather, it is an au courant consideration of some genres which fall within the upside down domain: the Old French resverie, fatrasie, fatras, and-tangentially-the Italian frottola. "Il mondo rovesciato" is, then, not a theme to be pursued, but the author's emblem for specific poetic nonsense forms in which normal function are reversed and the world is plunged into primeval chaos.