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Abstract: Divided Mediterranean, Divided World: The Influence of Arabic on Medieval Italian Poetry describes the significant role played by Arabic and Islamic poetry, legends, tales, and philosophy on major Italian poets in the Middle Ages in spite of the denial of some of the poets themselves of such an influence. Psychologists do not seem to pay much attention to the love-hate syndrome that affects sensitive souls in politically unstable states. Similarly, many literary critics continue to turn a blind eye to the influence of Arabic on Medieval Italian poetry. Historians also present history to us not only through documents they have read in archives, but they similarly express their own divergent personal opinions and interpretations of historical events.
Keywords: Mediterranean, medieval history, Arab influence, medieval Italian literature, Cavalcanti, Petrarch, Dante, Boccaccio
It is easy to be friendly to one's friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion.
-Mahatma Gandhi
In his book, Italy in the Age of Dante and Petrarch, John Lamer argues that
The majority of Italians who lived in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries never heard the word "Italy." It was a country in which only the literate lived. Consciousness of its meaning arose from three sources: the classics, xenophobia, and exile. The study of classical literature gave the idea of the old Roman province, praises of Italia from the Latin poets, and a belief that the peninsula formed a territory with natural boundaries . . . These learned insights could blend easily with hatred of non-Italians, of peoples whose language could not be understood and whose soldiers devastated native fields and towns in some of claim to lordship over them . . . It was from outside Italy that the word found the strongest response, among merchants and exiles . . . It was from the circle of Italians resident at Avignon that Petrarch drew his intense consciousness of Italy and hatred of foreigners. It was a land with no linguistic unity . . . Until Dante there was no common vernacular literary language (and even then no common language in prose but only in verse) . . . The truth is "Italy" was nothing more than a sentiment or ....