Abstract/Summary

This thesis examines the Psalmody of David Maria Turoldo (1916-1992). Despite the great number of works edited by Turoldo, there are very few studies that analyse his salmodia and therefore the presence of Psalms in his vast poetic production. The aim of this thesis is to develop and apply an interdisciplinary approach and methodology to Turoldo’s poetry in order to highlight the peculiarities of this specific genre, the salmodia. The aim of this approach is to analyse Turoldo’s poetry, not only from a literary and philological perspective, but also taking into account other disciplines such as theology, liturgy, exegesis and history. Nevertheless, Turoldo’s biography is given as a key to the interpretation of his poetry. Among all Turoldo’s works, the study of his translations of Psalms, four editions between 1973 and 1987, has been fundamental for investigating the influence of liturgy in the poetic production of the author and to identify the complex intertextuality of his poetic Psalmody. With the support of the Genres of the Psalms Theory by Hermann Gunkel, my analysis has stressed the relevance of two main literary forms: the hymns and wisdom-historical Psalms. I have assessed that these two forms are the most recurrent in Turoldo’s usus scribendi and their study provides important information on Turoldo’s interpretation of Psalms. In order to apply and establish my interdisciplinary approach, I have created two Corpora. Corpus 1 contains all poems analysed in this thesis together with poems I refer to during the analysis. Analysed texts in Corpus I are representative exempla of the two above-mentioned literary forms and they are extrapolated from Corpus 2. Corpus 2 contains selected poems from the entire literary production of Turoldo and they exemplify the Psalmody genre of the author.