The new communication system of imperial power in Carolingian poetry

Carolingian forms of encomiastic poetry respond to a sort of environmental planning that is almost always independent of real commissions. This essay, which completely reworks an unavailable article in Italian, analyzes the function of poetry in the political propaganda of Carolingian kingdom and empire and the relationship between politics and poetry in the early Middle Ages. Paratextual dedications are examined as well as ceremonial poems (such as “Karolus Magnus et Leo papa”) and susceptacula regum (such as Paulinus of Aquileia’s songs) or biographical poems (such as "In honorem Hludowici imperatoris" or "Gesta Berengarii"). Around the time of Charlemagne there appeared a rupture and an innovation, hitherto unexplored, that do not seem to have been affected as much by models of literary encomiastic genres as by the restructuring of heterogeneous materials into new configurations conditioned by the social relationships of the intellectual class with the center of power. In the Carolingian age this relationship re-formed itself into a totally new system of communication, based on strong values such as the diffusion of culture and religion, considered interdependent phenomena but also as kinds of knowledge capable of enhancing the social role of authors and legitimizing their prestige.