Angelic woman in Eugenio Montale's poetry

Abstract

This article is going to present the display of “angelic woman” (donna angelo) motif in the works of Italian poet Eugenio Montale (1896-1981). It is a motif well-known from love poetry of “dolce stil novo”, which was Italian poetic school from the 13th century. The aim is to show the connection between old and modern literature and to advert to the considerable influence of the stilnovistic group, that seems to be present in Italian poetry even after many centuries. Even though Eugenio Montale has written poems about various women thorough his literary career, it is a woman called “Clizia” who is often considered his main muse and the main source of inspiration. Sometimes she is even compared to angelic women appearing in the old stilnovistic poetry. This article will try to describe certain attributes of this figure, that Montale depicts in his poems, which she seems to share with classic stilnovistic donna-angelo.