The origin and role of sospiro in the poetry of Guido Cavalcanti

This thesis focuses on the keyword sospiro (‘sigh’) in the poetry of Guido Cavalcanti. It reads this word in relation to the lyric poetry of Occitania and Italy, and medical literature related to lovesickness. It approaches Cavalcanti’s work in this way in order to avoid the distortion of a Dantean lens, as part of a trend since the anniverary of his death in 2000 towards considering Cavalcanti’s work on its own terms. Inspired by Raymond Williams’ Keywords, this thesis looks beyond the familiar presence of sospiro in lyric poetry, revealing a word acting as a locus of innovative expression. It finds that while the sigh is generally regarded as a literary commonplace, it can in fact tell us much about the society and culture in which it is used. Sospiro is then traced in medical literature, charting its evolution as a symptom of the disease of lovesickness. Against this backdrop, a reading of sospiro in Cavalcanti’s poetry is given which argues for the need to listen to both the lyric and medical contexts when interpreting the role of this word. As such, this thesis offers a consideration of these two contexts in parallel, through sospiro, for the first time

The origin and role of sospiro in the poetry of Guido Cavalcanti

This thesis focuses on the keyword sospiro (‘sigh’) in the poetry of Guido Cavalcanti. It reads this word in relation to the lyric poetry of Occitania and Italy, and medical literature related to lovesickness. It approaches Cavalcanti’s work in this way in order to avoid the distortion of a Dantean lens, as part of a trend since the anniverary of his death in 2000 towards considering Cavalcanti’s work on its own terms. Inspired by Raymond Williams’ Keywords, this thesis looks beyond the familiar presence of sospiro in lyric poetry, revealing a word acting as a locus of innovative expression. It finds that while the sigh is generally regarded as a literary commonplace, it can in fact tell us much about the society and culture in which it is used. Sospiro is then traced in medical literature, charting its evolution as a symptom of the disease of lovesickness. Against this backdrop, a reading of sospiro in Cavalcanti’s poetry is given which argues for the need to listen to both the lyric and medical contexts when interpreting the role of this word. As such, this thesis offers a consideration of these two contexts in parallel, through sospiro, for the first time

Second order quantum renormalisation group of XXZ chain with next nearest neighbour interactions

We have extended the application of quantum renormalisation group (QRG) to the anisotropic Heisenberg model with next-nearest neighbour (n-n-n) interaction. The second order correction has to be taken into account to get a self similar renormalized Hamiltonian in the presence of n-n-n-interaction. We have obtained the phase diagram of this model which consists of three different phases, i.e, spin-fluid, dimerised and Ne'el types which merge at the tri-critical point. The anisotropy of the n-n-n-term changes the phase diagram significantly. It has a dominant role in the Ne'el-dimer phase boundary. The staggered magnetisation as an order parameter defines the border between fluid-Ne'el and Ne'el-dimer phases. The improvement of the second order RG corrections on the ground state energy of the Heisenberg model is presented. Moreover, the application of second order QRG on the spin lattice model has been discussed generally. Our scheme shows that higher order corrections lead to an effective Hamiltonian with infinite range of interactions.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures and 1 tabl