Catalano, Michele
"La venuta dei Normanni in Sicilia nella poesia e nella leggenda" by Michele Catalano is a historical-literary study written in the early 20th century. It explores how the Norman conquest of Sicily was remembered, shaped, and reimagined across medieval Latin poetry, later epics, chronicles, and popular legend, and how these narratives evolved into nationalist readings in modern times. The focus is on sources, motifs, and the tension between sober historiography and the allure of epic and folklore.The opening of the study sets the scene with the Arab-Norman wars and the Norman rise in Sicily, arguing that such exploits naturally fed poetry and legend despite later, cooler chronicling. It then examines 11th–12th century Latin writing: Guglielmo Appulo’s classicizing epic on Robert Guiscard and the siege of Palermo, and Malaterra’s partisan Historia Sicula—with inserted leonine verses, miracle-laden episodes (like St. George at Cerami), and probable apocrypha—while noting how Italian chronicles tended to filter out marvels. The next section argues for an embryonic Norman-Sicilian epic cycle, citing shared medieval motifs (the coffin stratagem, providential framing), the widely diffused treasure-statue tale attached to Guiscard, and echoes in French chansons and Arthurian lore localized in Sicily (Mongibello, Fata Morgana), with a cautious reading of Dante’s inclusion of Guiscard. Catalano concludes this medieval cycle remained thin and soon eclipsed, replaced in popular taste by…
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