Sarah Rolfe Prodan
Stanford University, French and Italian, Faculty Member
- Harvard University, History, Department MemberUniversity of Toronto, Centre for Reformation and Reniassance Studies, Department MemberUniversity of Toronto, Renaissance Studies, Post-Docadd
- Renaissance Studies, Italian Studies, Spirituality & Mysticism, Christian Mysticism, Reformation Studies, Late Medieval Religion, Monasticism and Devotion, and 18 moreMedieval Mysticism, Christian Neoplatonism, Devotional Poetry, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Piety (Religion), Modern Italian Poetry, Renaissance Neoplatonists, Devotional literature, Sixteenth Century Poetry, Psalms, Italian Poetry, Neoplatonism, Italian Renaissance literature, Renaissance History, Christianity and Rome, Culture Contact, Renaissance Rome, and Delio Cantimoriedit
- I am an assistant professor in the Department of French and Italian at Stanford University. An Italianist, a scholar... moreI am an assistant professor in the Department of French and Italian at Stanford University. An Italianist, a scholar of the Italian Renaissance and a Michelangelo specialist, my publications include Michelangelo’s Christian Mysticism: Spirituality, Poetry and Art in Sixteenth-Century Italy (Cambridge UP, 2014) and the co-edited volume Friendship and Sociability in Premodern Europe: Contexts, Concepts and Expressions (CRRS, 2014). At present, I am working on two book projects. An academic book on sixteenth-century Italian poets and spiritual devotion, tentatively titled Poetics of Piety in Early Modern Italy: Religious Reading, Writing and Identity, and a work of historical fiction set in Renaissance Italy called "Imminence: Florence, 1494."edit
In this book, Sarah Rolfe Prodan examines the spiritual poetry of Michelangelo in light of three contexts: the Catholic Reformation movement, Renaissance Augustinianism, and the tradition of Italian religious devotion. Prodan combines a... more
In this book, Sarah Rolfe Prodan examines the spiritual poetry of Michelangelo in light of three contexts: the Catholic Reformation movement, Renaissance Augustinianism, and the tradition of Italian religious devotion. Prodan combines a literary, historical, and biographical approach to analyze the mystical constructs and conceits in Michelangelo's poems, thereby deepening our understanding of the artist's spiritual life in the context of Catholic Reform in the mid-sixteenth century. Prodan also demonstrates how Michelangelo's poetry is part of an Augustinian tradition that emphasizes mystical and moral evolution of the self. Examining such elements of early modern devotion as prayer, lauda singing, and the contemplation of religious images, Prodan provides a unique perspective on the subtleties of Michelangelo's approach to life and to art. Throughout, Prodan argues that Michelangelo's art can be more deeply understood when considered together with his poetry, which points to a spirituality that deeply informed all of his production.
In early modern Italy, lyric poets of spiritual verse experimented with engaging and depicting the divine Word in novel ways. They aestheticized bodies, including that of Christ, and they imagined eroticized encounters between themselves... more
In early modern Italy, lyric poets of spiritual verse experimented with engaging and depicting the divine Word in novel ways. They aestheticized bodies, including that of Christ, and they imagined eroticized encounters between themselves and the Word made flesh. This article examines the sensual spiritual poetry of three early modern Italian women who, between 1530 and 1630, dedicated themselves to crafting and reinvigorating the poetic word and to expressing and (re)presenting the divine Word. Exploring the introspective and subjective spiritual lyrics of Vittoria Colonna (1492–1547), Laura Battiferri (1523–1589), and Francesca Turini Bufalini (1553–1641) in the context of the Italian literary Renaissance and Counter-Reformation, it aims to highlight and to elucidate the conflation of the sacred and the erotic in their verse. In so doing, this article reveals how these early modern female poets deployed the sensual strategically in their verse to elevate the erotic and how they raised the Italian religious lyric to new literary heights by spiritualizing the dominant poetic idiom.
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Il presente contributo si propone di far luce sul modo in cui Michelangelo, nell’età della riforma religiosa, dialogò con le Sacre Scritture mediante un’analisi dei versi spirituali, degli schizzi verbali e visivi e delle relative opere... more
Il presente contributo si propone di far luce sul modo in cui Michelangelo, nell’età della riforma religiosa, dialogò con le Sacre Scritture mediante un’analisi dei versi spirituali, degli schizzi verbali e visivi e delle relative opere scultoree che realizzò nei primi decenni del Cinquecento. Innanzitutto, si prendono in considerazione i primi fogli autografi di Michelangelo, esaminando le modalità in cui scritti e immagini formano giustapposizioni enigmatiche. Sono fogli che testimoniano dei primi tentativi poetici dell’autore e dell’importanza che questi attribuiva alla Bibbia e alla preghiera. Attraverso un’analisi dei sonetti “S’un casto amor, s’una pietà superna” e “Vorrei voler, Signor, quel ch’io non voglio,” si esamina in seguito come Michelangelo utilizzò la Bibbia, rispettivamente, come fonte letteraria e come strumento di devozione. Rilevando come il poeta, in questi sonetti, tras- ponga in poesia riprese lessicali provenienti dal Nuovo Testamento, si può anche dimostrare come fosse un attento lettore della Bibbia di Brucioli.
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This chapter examines Vittoria Colonna's biblically inspired verse and the pious traditions to which they point, suggesting that for her, a devout writer, the Bible was not just a text to be read, interpreted, written about and shared,... more
This chapter examines Vittoria Colonna's biblically inspired verse and the pious traditions to which they point, suggesting that for her, a devout writer, the Bible was not just a text to be read, interpreted, written about and shared, but also prayed and ruminated upon. Through a close reading of selected verses in which the poet inserts scriptural transpositions into poetic constructs highlighting the lyric persona's unrealized spiritual desires, this chapter explores the writer's practice and seeming promotion of the lectio divina and the lectio spiritualis, that is, of her use of the Bible not as a pious source of inspiration, but as an instrument of personal devotion by which she might be brought to direct, personally transformative engagement with the divine.
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Roberta Morosini, Dante, il Profeta e il Libro: La leggenda del toro dalla “Commedia” a Filippino Lippi, tra sussurri di colomba ed echi di Bisanzio. (Circolarità mediterranee 1.) Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2018. Pp. 376; color plates and black-and-white figures. €85. ISBN: 978-8-8913-1205-1more
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Research Interests: Art and The Renaissance
The commencement address I gave on 12 June 2022 for the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages at Stanford University.
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Michelangelo's original verse, albeit a subject that in Italian studies has always benefitted from peripheral attention, can be regarded as an invaluable document in understanding the personality, spirituality and unique artistic language... more
Michelangelo's original verse, albeit a subject that in Italian studies has always benefitted from peripheral attention, can be regarded as an invaluable document in understanding the personality, spirituality and unique artistic language of one of the geniuses of the Italian Renaissance and at the crossroads between the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation. This panel seeks to investigate the latest scholarship in Michelangelo's poetry in order to reassess the exegesis of his verse and discuss new readings of selected poems.