Senza Vestimenta reintegrates poetic and musical traditions in late medieval Italy through a fresh evaluation of more than fifty literary sources transmitting Trecento song texts. These manuscripts have been long noted by musicologists, but until now they have been used to bolster rather than to debunk the notion that so-called ''poesia per musica'' was relegated to the margins of poetic production. Jennings revises this view by exploring how scribes and readers interacted with song as a fundamentally interdisciplinary art form within a broad range of literary settings. Her study sheds light on the broader cultural world surrounding the reception of the Italian ars nova repertoire by uncovering new, diverse readers ranging from wealthy merchants to modest artisans
Revisiting the literary tradition of trecento song -- Song texts as poesia aulica -- Musical interlude : Francesco degli Organi and elite Florentine culture in Genoa, Biblioteca Universitaria, A.IX.28 -- Intersections between oral and written tradition in Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, magliabechiano VII 1078 -- Ovid's Heroides, Florentine volgarizamenti, and unnotated song in Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale II.II.61 and Magliabechiano VII 1040 -- Scribes, owners, and material contexts
