Dante da Maiano was a late thirteenth-century poet who composed mainly sonnets in Italian and Occitan. He was an older contemporary of Dante Alighieri and active in Florence.
He may have been a Provençal- or Auvergnat-speaker from Maillane (the birthplace of Frédéric Mistral), but more probably he was from the Tuscan village of Maiano near Fiesole. In 1882 Adolfo Borgognoni argued that he was an invention of Renaissance philology, but met with the opposition of F. Novati in 1883 and Giovanni Bertacchi in 1896. Bertacchi argued that Dante da Maiano was the same person as the Dante Magalante, son of ser Ugo da Maiano, who appears in a public record of 1301. At the time this Dante was living in the monastery of San Benedetto in Alpe and was requested in mundualdum by a relative of his, Lapa, widow of Vanni di Chello Davizzi, to be her tutor. That a Dante da Maiano existed during the lifetime of Dante Alighieri and that he was capable of "tutoring" was thus established, but the identification with the poet could not be made certain. Santorre Debenedetti finally disproved Borgognoni's thesis in 1907. [1] He discovered two Occitan sonnets ascribed to Dante da Maiano in a fifteenth-century Italian manuscript conserved in the Biblioteca Laurentiana, Florence. [2]
Almost all Dante's extant work is preserved in the Giuntina (or "Junte"), a Florentine chansonnier compiled in 1527 under the title Sonetti e canzoni di diversi avtori toscani in dieci libri raccolte by Filippo Giunti. [3] His total work is some forty-eight sonnets, five ballate , two canzoni , and a series of tenzoni with Dante Alighieri. [1] He was influenced by the troubadours (notably Bernart de Ventadorn), the Sicilian School and in particular Giacomo da Lentini, the Tuscan School of Guittone d'Arezzo, and the later dolce stil novo , though he belongs to none of these. Rosanna Betarrini calls his work a "pastiche" and Antonio Enzo Quaglio a silloge archeologica della produzione anteriore e contemporanea ("an archaeological collection of past and contemporary production"). [4]
Dante da Maiano wrote a sonnet in response to A ciascun' alma presa e gentil core, the first sonnet in Dante Alighieri's Vita nuova . [5] There was also a five-part exchange (probably preceding the Vita nuova) called the duol d'amore ("dolour of love"), in which Dante da Maiano wrote three pieces and Dante Alighieri responded to the first two. [6] In a final two-part communication, Dante Alighieri wrote Savere e cortesia, ingegno ed arte to Dante da Maiano's Amor mi fa sì fedelmente amare. In all their correspondence, the elder Dante assumes an air of superiority towards his up-and-coming interlocutor, the future author of the Divine Comedy . [7] Before Dante Alighieri's career had taken off, the elder Dante was for a time quite famous in Florence for his sonnet Provedi, saggio, ad esta visïone, in which he recounts a dream he had and asks his fellow citizens for an interpretation. Chiaro Davanzati, Guido Orlandi, Salvino Doni, Ricco da Varlungo, Cino da Pistoja and Dante Alighieri, in what was to be his earliest still-extant poem, all responded. [1] Dante da Maiano, along with Cino da Pistoja, also wrote a response to a sonnet (Guido, vorrei che tu e Lapo ed io) that Alighieri sent to his friend Guido Cavalcanti.
According to later stories now generally considered only legend, Dante also kept up a correspondence with Nina of Sicily, [8] the first Italian woman poet, and with whom he fell in love. Their relationship became well-known and she grew in fame because of his writings so she was called la Nina di Dante. She took up poetry, apparently, as a result of his influence.
Víctor Balaguer published the Occitan sonnet Las! so qe m'es el cor plus fis e qars in 1879, where he also hypothesised for Dante a birthplace in Provence. Despite these Occitan sonnets and Dante's more probable birthplace in Tuscany, Giulio Bertoni disqualified Dante from being an "Italian troubadour" in his 1915 study. [9] By one reckoning, Dante's Occitan sonnets are the earliest examples of what is undisputedly an Italian form, but the invention of which is usually assigned to Giacomo da Lentini. [10]
Dante Alighieri, probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante, was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher. His Divine Comedy, originally called Comedìa and later christened Divina by Giovanni Boccaccio, is widely considered one of the most important poems of the Middle Ages and the greatest literary work in the Italian language.
Dolce Stil Novo, Italian for "sweet new style," is the name given to a literary movement in 13th and 14th century Italy. Influenced by the Sicilian School and Tuscan poetry, its main theme is Divine Love. The name Dolce Stil Novo was used for the first time by Dante Alighieri in Purgatorio, the second canticle of the Divina Commedia. In the Divina Commedia Purgatory he meets Bonagiunta Orbicciani, a 13th-century Italian poet, who tells Dante that Dante himself, Guido Guinizelli, and Guido Cavalcanti had been able to create a new genre: a stil novo.
Guido Guinizelli was an esteemed Italian love poet and is considered the "father" of the Dolce Stil Novo. He was the first to write in this new style of poetry writing, and thus is held to be the ipso facto founder. He was born in, and later exiled from, Bologna, Italy. It is speculated that he died in Verona, Italy.
Guido Cavalcanti was an Italian poet. He was also a friend and intellectual influence on Dante Alighieri.
Italian literature is written in the Italian language, particularly within Italy. It may also refer to literature written by Italians or in other languages spoken in Italy, often languages that are closely related to modern Italian, including regional varieties and vernacular dialects. Italian literature begins in the 12th century, when in different regions of the peninsula the Italian vernacular started to be used in a literary manner. The Ritmo laurenziano is the first extant document of Italian literature.
The Sicilian School was a small community of Sicilian and mainland Italian poets gathered around Frederick II, most of them belonging to his imperial court. Headed by Giacomo da Lentini, they produced more than 300 poems of courtly love between 1230 and 1266, the experiment being continued after Frederick's death by his son, Manfred.
Italian poetry is a category of Italian literature. Italian poetry has its origins in the thirteenth century and has heavily influenced the poetic traditions of many European languages, including that of English.
Giacomo da Lentini, also known as Jacopo da Lentini or with the appellative Il Notaro, was an Italian poet of the 13th century. He was a senior poet of the Sicilian School and was a notary at the court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. Giacomo is credited with the invention of the sonnet. His poetry was originally written in literary Sicilian, though it only survives in Tuscan.
Vanna is a given name that first appeared in recorded European history circa 1294. The Italian medieval feminine name originated in Tuscany, and is particular to Florence, Italy.
Cunizza da Romano was an Italian noblewoman and a member of the da Romano dynasty, one of the most prominent families in northeastern Italy, Cunizza's marriages and liaisons, most notably with troubadour Sordello da Goito, are widely documented. Cunizza also appears as a character in a number of works of literature, such as Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy.
Terramagnino da Pisa was a Pisan author in Italian and Occitan of the second half of the 13th century. In Italian he wrote lyric poetry and in Occitan he penned the famous Doctrina de cort, basically a condensed form of the Razos de trobar of Raimon Vidal. Because his Doctrina is composed in verse, and conjecturing from his surviving Italian lyrics, he is sometimes classified as a troubadour, though none of his Occitan lyrics survive.
Paolo Lanfranchi da Pistoia was a noted Italian poet who wrote in both the Italian and Occitan languages. He is thus sometimes described as a troubadour. A native of Pistoia—he was a major cultural figure of the Duecento there—his sonnets have been praised for their originality.
(La) Nina Siciliana was the composer of one Italian sonnet, and a candidate to be the first Italian woman poet. She only came to light in 1780, along with 74 other poets, in the Étrennes du Parnasse. She is now considered legendary by most scholars.
Terino da Castelfiorentino was a Florentine poet from Castelfiorentino in the Valdelsa. The only biographical document concerning Terino was in the past dated to either 1268 or 1270, but a date of April 1281 has since been settled on. This notice was first publicised by Santorre Debenedetti. It shows that Terino was a cloth seller in Florence at the time. He is recorded as Terino f. Nevaldi di castè fiorentini. His father Nevaldo matriculated in the Arte della Seta in 1225. His son Truccio entered the Arte dei Giudici e Notaj in 1302. A document of 1 June 1362 refers to a Terio and a Giovanni of Castelfiorentino, probably younger sons of Terino.
Chiaro Davanzati was an Italian poet from Florence, one of the Siculo-Tuscan poets, who introduced the style of Sicilian School to the Tuscan School. He was one of the most prolific Italian authors before Dante: at least 122 sonnets and sixty-one canzoni by Chiaro are known, many of them in tenzone with other poets. Only Guittone d'Arezzo produced more lyrics in the thirteenth century.
Bonagiunta Orbicciani, also called Bonaggiunta and Urbicciani, was an Italian poet of the Tuscan School, which drew on the work of the Sicilian School. His main occupation was as a judge and notary. Fewer than forty of his poems survive.
Jacopo Alighieri was an Italian poet, the son of Dante Alighieri, whom he followed in his exile. Jacopo's most famous work is his sixty-chapter Dottrinale.
Gaia da Camino was an Italian noblewoman and poet hailing from Treviso, Italy. Her family was descended from the Lombards. She is mentioned briefly in Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy.
Luca Martini was an Italian engineer, academic, poet, and art patron known for commissioning projects from among other artists Pierino da Vinci and Giorgio Vasari.
Francesco di Neri di Ranuccio, known better as Francesco da Barberino (1264–1348), was a Tuscan notary, doctor of law and author.
