Guido Guinizzelli

ENGLISH: The paper examines Dante’s canzone “Amor che nella mente mi ragiona”: a) within the corpus of Dante’s work; b) in the light of Cino da Pistoia’s canzone written for Dante as consolation for the death of Beatrice; c) in comparison with the poetry and poetics of Guido Cavalcanti; d) in relation to the poetical experience of Guido Guinizelli. Compared to those literary precedents, including ‘Vita nova’, “Amor che nella mente” shows Dante’s definitive separation from the traditional phenomenology of love in favour of a new conception founded on the primacy of the intellect and the will. Therefore: a) the allegorical interpretation of the canzone later provided by Dante in the third book of ‘Convivio’ is not to be considered a strained reading; b) the mention of “Amor che nella mente” at the beginning of ‘Purgatorio’ (II 112-114) has probably an emblematic function, rather than a palinodic one.

ITALIAN: Il contributo analizza la canzone di Dante “Amor che nella mente mi ragiona”: a) all’interno del corpus dell’opera dantesca; b) alla luce della consolatoria di Cino da Pistoia per la morte di Beatrice; c) a confronto con la poesia e la poetica di Guido Cavalcanti; d) in relazione all’esperienza poetica di Guido Guinizelli. Rispetto ai precedenti, inclusa la ‘Vita nova’, in “Amor che nella mente” lo scarto più rilevante è riconoscibile nel definitivo distacco dalla tradizionale fenomenologia amorosa in favore di una nuova concezione dell’amore fondata sul primato dell’intelletto e della volontà. Ne consegue che: a) l’interpretazione allegorica della canzone fornita da Dante nel trattato terzo del ‘Convivio’ non può essere considerata una pesante forzatura del testo originale; b) la citazione di “Amor che nella mente” al principio del ‘Purgatorio’ (II 112-114) è interpretabile in funzione emblematica, più che palinodica.

The paper’s argument is based on an analysis of the formal features and possible intertextual connections of the two ballads attributed to ser Pace notaro by ms. Banco Rari 217 (P110 and P111). Its aim is to locate the texts and the poet within the prestilnovist milieu and, more generally, in the history of the development of the ballad’s form for which the ninth fascicule of the Banco Rari is a fundamental step. In the first part of the paper some data are shown that allow to speculate on the possible proximity between Cavalcanti, ser Pace and the circle of poets (preserved in the same manuscript) whose leader can be identified in Pace. In the second part, some considerations are formulated regarding the ballads’ section of the Banco Rari as a model for Cavalcanti since his own ballad Fresca rosa novella. By highlighting the web of intertextual links uncovered in the texts of the ninth fascicule, we can point out the role of poets like Saladino and Pace – following the Bonagiunta-Guinizzelli line – in the history of the ballad in its precavalcantian phase. The conclusion outlines a profile of ser Pace as a collateral poet of Stilnovo. At the end of the essay the two ballads are published with an ample commentary.

L’intervento parte dall’analisi del ruolo svolto dal personaggio di Guinizzelli
nel XXVI canto del Purgatorio, e prova a illustrare l’importanza di questo
confronto (Dante-Guinizzelli) sia dal punto di vista strettamente narrativo-strutturale (quali siano i significati simbolici e allegorici riposti nella cornice dei lussioriosi e nell’incontro-dialogo con Guinizzelli alla luce dell’intero viaggio purgatoriale) sia dal punto di vista poetico-letterario. In particolare, in riferimento a questo secondo aspetto, l’incontro purgatoriale con Guido viene letto come momento di autodichiarazione poetica, uno di quei luoghi dell’opera dantesca in cui Dante definisce la propria poetica attraverso l’agone più o meno dichiarato con altri poeti, in questo caso attraverso una precisa strutturazione simbolica della cornice e attraverso una drammatizzazione narrativa che sono entrambe (lo scenario allegorico e il dialogo tra i due) oggetto puntuale di analisi.
The article starts from the analysis of the role played by the character of
Guinizzelli in Purgatory, canto XXVI, and tries to clarify the importance of
this comparison (Dante-Guinizzelli) from both a strictly narrative-structural
point of view (the symbolic and allegorical meanings of the terrace of the
lustful and the significance of the encounter-dialogue with Guinizzelli in the light of the entire journey across Purgatory) and from the poetic-literary viewpoint. In particular, with reference to this second aspect, the encounter with Guido can be read as a moment of poetic self-statement, one of those places in Dante’s work in which Dante defines his own poetics through the more or less critical comparison with other poets. In this case he achieves his aim by building a precise symbolic framework and a dramatic narrative structure which are both (the allegorical setting and the dialogue between the two) precise objects of the following analysis.

“La nuova poesia di Guido Guinizelli” (‘The new poetry of Guido Guinizelli’) is a critical reconsideration of the figure and poetry of Guido Guinizelli, the 13th-century Bolognese poet that Dante calls his ‘father’ (“il padre mio”: Purgatorio 26., l. 97). The book is divided into 4 chapters, a Conclusion, and an Appendix. In Chapter 1. (‘The tenzone with Guittone d’Arezzo’) it is shown that Guinizelli’s sonnet “[O] caro padre meo” is an ambiguous text: it can be read as a praise of Guittone, according to the traditional interpretation of the poem, but also – and mostly – as a mocking censure on Guittone and his religious order (the so called ‘frati gaudenti’). In Chapter 2. it is argued that Guittone’s sonnet “S’eo tale fosse ch’io potesse stare” was written against Guinizelli’s poetics: Guido was the only Italian poet of the Origins who had praised his woman (in the sonnets “Io vogl’ del ver la mia donna laudare” and “Vedut’ho la lucente stella diana”) by equalizing her to natural forms, instead of declaring her superior to them. Chapter 3. analyzes Guinizelli’s tenzone with Bonagiunta da Lucca: Guinizelli replied to Bonagiunta’s charge of excessive subtility with a polisemic sonnet (“Omo ch’è saggio non corre leggero”), which exploits analogy to produce a hierarchy of meanings. In Chapter 4. the great canzone “Al cor gentil” is examined in the light of the troubadour tradition and the political debate on nobility which developed in Bologna in the 13th century; it is suggested that “Al cor gentil” was the canzone Guinizelli addressed to Guittone d’Arezzo with the sonnet “[O] caro padre meo”. In the Conclusion, Guinizelli’s presence in the “Memoriali bolognesi” and in cantos 24. and 26. of “Purgatorio” is analyzed: it is argued that Dante too interpreted Guinizelli’s “[O] caro padre meo” as a censure on Guittone d’Arezzo. The Appendix is dedicated to Guinizelli’s sonnet “Chi vedesse a Lucia un var capuzzo” and its peculiar development of the literary theme of the rape.

La prima nota riguarda le forme presumibilmente emiliane nella canzone "Madonna, il fino amore ch'io vi porto"; nella seconda nota si riesanima il testo del sonetto "Gentil Donzella, di pregio nomata" mettendo in dubbio la tradizionale attribuzione a maestro Rinuccino; la terza nota è dedicata a una nuova lettura del v. 6 del sonetto "chi vedesse a Lucia un var capuzzo"; la quarta e ultima nota segnala la presenza di Guido Guinizzelli e Guittone d'Arezzo come "saggi" citati nel trattato "Ragione nova d'amore".

Saggio di DANILO CARUSO / Palermo, novembre 2021

Indice
1. SUL BIBLICO “CANTICO DEI CANTICI” E SU GN 1,1 pag. 1
2. UN INQUIETANTE BRANO NEOTESTAMENTARIO: EVANGELISMO ARMATO E AMBIGUO NUDISMO pag. 7
3. GUIDO GUINIZELLI E LA NASCITA DELLA SISTEMATICA CACCIA ALLE STREGHE pag. 9
4. LA GENESI DELL’UMANESIMO ITALIANO pag. 14
5. GUERRA BIOLOGICA SINOFOBICA IN JACK LONDON E PANDEMIA SPAGNOLA NEL CORSO DELLA GRANDE GUERRA pag. 20

Although in the last few decades scholars have dedicated much attention to the juridical world and the academic environment of Bologna and its flourishing university in the second half of the 13th century, totally uncharted territory are the connections between Guido Guinizzelli di Magnano (1230s – 1276), judge, prosecutor, and one of the main literary references of the upcoming Dolce Stilnovo, with the professional activity of Taddeo Alderotti (1206/1215 – 1295), the catalyst of the new scientific trends of the Bolognese medical school.
Guido Guinizzelli’s canzone “Al cor gentil” offers a groundbreaking theory of nobility that philosophically conflates love with nobility. In my chapter, I argue that the philosophical progress of the canzone presents an understanding of medical and scientific terminology that must be put in contact with Taddeo and his interest in Avicenna’s medical philosophy. Guinizzelli’s correspondence between love and nobility is nurtured by Avicenna’s increasingly popular doctrine of forma specifica, which structures the reasoning and the examples of the vernacular poem. Guinizzelli therefore frames the idea of nobility in the heart of the lover as the forma specifica of the noble man, and conceives the lady as the divine intelligence that reduces to act his potentiality.

As Robert Hollander has suggested, the question of Augustine’s presence in Dante’s Commedia continues to be one of its “most tantalazing aspects”. This is largely because, as regards Augustine, modern Dante scholarship is still dependent on the philological and historicist research undertaken at the end of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th centuries (e.g. Moore, Busnelli, etc.). One can also notice that, concerning political-theological matters, modern Dante scholarship has been deeply influenced by some aprioristic and anachronistic thesis on Dante’s “anti-Augustinianism”, which has prevented from developing further analysis. As a result, important borrowings from Augustine’s works, particularly from the City of God, remain unnoticed even in cantos of the Commedia that have been extensively studied.
This article focuses on the ending of Guido Guinizzelli’s speech in Purgatory 26, probably one of the most studied canto of the poem, and suggests that it contains a clear, though hitherto unrecognized, quotation from the last chapter of Augustine’s City of God. After establishing medieval reception of this passage and discussing Dante’s knowledge of it (direct or indirect), attention is paid to the ways in which Dante employed this Augustinian quotation in order to redefine his idea of love poetry and his own role in Italian vernacular poetry. By this way, the article discusses the usual reception of this "canto" as an "anfizionia di rimatori" .

The article is an analysis of the vocabulary and stylistic elements of the poetic work of the XII century trouvère Gace Brulé. This involved a meticulous and comparative study of medieval French lyric poets as Blondel de Nesle and Guillaume le Vinier, and also Italian poets as Dante and Guido Guinizzelli.

ABSTRACT
Of Poets and Physicians:
Medical and Scientific Thought from the Sicilian School to Dante, 1230-1300
Matteo Pace

In my dissertation, I argue that the medical milieu of the 13th century contributed to shape vernacular secular culture. I demonstrate how the historical and scientific contexts of the Italian peninsula, from the Sicilian school of Frederick II and Manfred to the communal realities of Bologna and Florence, testify to the active reception of the works of Aristotle, Galen, and their Arabic and Western commentators in poetic circles. I show how the Italian 13th century was informed by a high degree of intellectual and scientific knowledge, and how the far-reaching penetration of medical sources connects an emerging vernacular culture to the intricacy of urban networks.
Of Poets and Physicians addresses the following questions: what is the contribution of medical literature to Italian poetry of the 13th century? How can the reception of Aristotelian and Galenic physiological theories help us illuminate the way Medieval literature produced its tropes? Why should we consider these cultural and intellectual environments as productive frames of thought for poetical writings? My dissertation addresses these questions in three macro-chapters.
In the first chapter, On Fluid Memory, I argue that under the patronage and influence of Frederick II and Manfred, the reception of Aristotle’s physiology of the soul informed the tropes of the memory image of the lady engraved into the heart, used by Giacomo da Lentini and the other vernacular poets at court.
In the second chapter, Minding the Brain, I study the influence of Galen and Arabic Galenism on the intellectual circles of the second half of the 13th century. I argue that the influence of the Bolognese Galenism of Taddeo Alderotti informed a great part of Guinizzelli’s poetry, not only with respect to the phenomenology of love, but also in his views on nobility and natural determinism.
In the third chapter, All Things Natural, I combine the Aristotelian discourse on ethics and the Galenic question of temperamental determinism. I analyze how the scientific background on the relationship between bodily balance and the functions of the soul is discussed in Taddeo Alderotti’s translation of an epitome of Aristotelian ethics, and how these debates are reframed in the poetry of Guido Cavalcanti, Dante Alighieri, and Cino da Pistoia, by virtue of the relationship between love and reason.
While contextualizing the uses of medical thought in the poetical production of philosophical and poetic authors, I demonstrate how the active reception of scientific theories testifies to the high degree and pervasiveness of medical education in the intellectual circles of the 13th century.

The years of King Enzo’s imprisonment in Bologna (1249 – 1272) witnessed an incredible cultural network among different professional spheres that remains still largely unexplored. Although in the last decade scholars have dedicated much attention to the juridical world and the academic environment of the city’s flourishing university (Armando Antonelli, Luciano Rossi, Giorgio Inglese), more attention needs to be devoted to the contribution of the physicians to the emerging cultural milieu in the vernacular (Nancy Siraisi, Sonia Gentili).
Totally uncharted territory are the connections between Guido Guinizzelli di Magnano (1230s – 1276), judge and prosecutor of the city of Bologna, and one of the main literary references of the upcoming Dolce Stilnovo, with the professional activity of Taddeo Alderotti (1206/1215 – 1295), the “dux medicorum” of the 13th century. These connections might well have been catalyzed by the presence of Frederick II’s natural son in Bologna. In my paper, I argue that the medical curriculum of Taddeo Alderotti has to be put into communication with Guido Guinizzelli’s professional biography in order to shed light on the cultural trends of the third quarter of the 13th century in Bologna. The parallel analysis of Guinizzelli’s poetry with Alderotti’s scientific works will show how medicine was a fundamental cornerstone in the emerging vernacular culture, and will illuminate some obscure passages in Guinizzelli’s lyrics through a scientific lens.
Around King Enzo’s palace, Taddeo and Guinizzelli had a chance to network: Guido Guinizzelli’s legal advice was sought in some penal charges that involved other inmates of the prison, while Taddeo Alderotti was one of King Enzo’s personal physicians. These three figures were all deeply invested in the relationship between science and vernacular tradition: King Enzo as the son of the father of the first great poetical school in Italian (the Sicilian school), and a poet himself; Guinizzelli as the initiator of a scientific trend in lyric poetry that will characterize the following decades; Alderotti as an important contributor for the shaping of philosophical prose through his writings and translations.
My paper will show how the connections between Guinizzelli and Alderotti testify to the early interest in medical ideas in the Italian poetical tradition, and how pervasive the importance of Alderotti’s activity was in the cultural webs of the Commune of Bologna.

ENGLISH: The essay examines the origin and evolution of the motif of the image of the beloved in the lover’s heart or mind in 13th-century Italian lyric poetry, from the Sicilian poets to Dante’s ‘Vita nuova’. The analysis of the most significant poems of several authors (Giacomo da Lentini, Guittone d'Arezzo, Guido Guinizelli, Guido Cavalcanti, Dante Alighieri) is preceded by a preamble on the 'post-courtly' environment that drove those poets to reconsider the ‘quaestio amoris’ on a speculative level. In Giacomo da Lentini’s poems the lover is portrayed as a painter almost idolatrous of the image of the beloved, and in a sonnet by Guittone d'Arezzo the motif of the lover, who keeps the beloved’s image within himself, is accompanied by the other motif of the sacred nature of the beloved’s figure. As for the ‘deux Guidi’, in the poetry of Guinizelli the lady is frequently represented as a bright, unbearable epiphany; this representation renews, in an original way, the topos of the dart of love that penetrates the lover’s heart through the eyes. Cavalcanti, on the other hand, questions the capacity both of the mind to receive and keep the phantasmatic image of the beloved and of the intellect to extract any kind of knowledge from it. The essay ends with an analysis of the original reworking of this material carried out by Dante in the ‘Vita nuova’.

ITALIANO: Il saggio esamina la genesi e l'evoluzione del motivo dell'immagine dell'amata nel cuore e nella mente dell'amante nella lirica italiana delle Origini, dai poeti siciliani alla 'Vita nuova' di Dante. L'analisi puntuale dei componimenti poetici più significativi di vari autori (Giacomo da Lentini, Guittone d'Arezzo, Guido Guinizelli, Guido Cavalcanti, Dante Alighieri) è preceduta da un preambolo utile a inquadrare il contesto "post-cortese" che porta tali poeti a riesaminare sul piano speculativo la 'quaestio amoris'. Sono presi inconsiderazione in primo luogo Giacomo da Lentini, nella cui produzione l'amante è raffigurato come pittore quasi idolatra dell'immagine dell'amata, e poi Guittone d'Arezzo, in cui il motivo dell'amante che conserva al proprio interno tale l'immagine si accompagna a quello della sacralizzazione della figura dell'amata. Quanto ai 'due Guidi', di Guinizelli è messa in rilievo la frequente rappresentazione della donna come insostenibile epifania luminosa, per mezzo della quale si rinnova il topos del dardo d'amore che, attraverso gli occhi, penetra nel cuore dell'amante. In Cavalcanti, invece, a essere messi in discussione sono tanto la stessa capacità della mente di accogliere l'immagine fantasmatica di madonna quanto quella dell'intelletto di estrarre da essa una qualche forma di conoscenza. Il percorso si conclude con l'originale rielaborazione di tutto questo materiale condotta da Dante nella 'Vita nuova'.

FRANCAIS: Cet article examine la genèse et l’évolution du motif de l’image dans le cœur et dans la 'mente' de l’amant dans la poésie lyrique italienne dite "des origines", depuis les Siciliens jusqu’à la 'Vita nuova' de Dante. Les analyses ponctuelles des poèmes les plus significatifs des différents auteurs (Giacomo da Lentini, Guittone d'Arezzo, Guido Guinizelli, Guido Cavalcanti, Dante Alighieri) sont précédées d’un préambule visant à définir le cadre “post-courtois” qui amène ces poètes à réexaminer sur le plan spéculatif la 'quæstio amoris'. Giacomo da Lentini, d’abord, chez qui l’amant est représenté comme le peintre quasi-idolâtre de l’image de l’aimée, puis Guittone d’Arezzo, chez qui ce motif de l’amant gardant à l’intérieur de lui pareille image s’accompagne de la sacralisation de la figure de l’aimée. Pour ce qui ensuite est des 'deux Guidi', est mise en relief chez Guinizelli la représentation de la femme comme épiphanie lumineuse insoutenable, par quoi se renouvelle le topos du dard amoureux transperçant le cœur de l’amant. Chez Cavalcanti, c’est la capacité même de la 'mente' de recevoir l’image phantasmatique de 'madonna', comme celle de l’intellect d’accéder à une quelconque forme de connaissance qui sont remises en cause. Enfin, c’est la réélaboration complètement originale par Dante de tout ce matériau dans la 'Vita nuova' qui conclut le parcours.

Paper given in the panel: "Dante’s Intellectual Formation", organizer and Chair: Zygmunt G. Barański, University of Notre Dame and University of Cambridge.
2015 Medieval Academy of America annual Meeting - University of Notre Dame

ABSTRACT
As Robert Hollander has suggested, the question of Augustine’s presence in Dante’s "Commedia" continues to be one of its “most tantalazing aspects”. This is largely because, as regards Augustine, modern Dante scholarship is still dependent on the philological and historicist research undertaken at the end of the nineteenth and at the beginning of the twentieth centuries (e.g. Moore, Busnelli, etc.). One can also notice that, concerning theological and political matters, modern Dante scholarship has been deeply influenced by some aprioristic and anachronistic thesis on Dante’s “anti-Augustinism”, which has prevented from developing further analysis.
As a result, important borrowings from Augustine’s works, particularly from the City of God, remain unnoticed even in cantos of the Commedia that have been extensively studied.
The presentation focuses on the ending of Guido Guinizzelli’s speech in Purgatory 26, which contains a clear, though hitherto unrecognized quotation from the last chapter of Augustine’s "City of God". After establishing medieval reception of this passage and Dante’s knowledge of it (direct or indirect), attention is paid to the ways in which Dante employed the Augustinian quotation in order to redefine his idea of love poetry and his own role in Italian vernacular poetry. The presentation closes by reconsidering Freccero’s well-known notion of Dante’s “Poetics of Conversion”.

ENGLISH - The contribution studies the motif of "cheeky praise" in Guittone d'Arezzo's poetry - and in Dante’s 'Convivio' as well - and its relations with the rhetoric, encyclopaedic, Aristotelian tradition and the so-called “podestà literature”. A cohesive group of poems by Guittone, all contained in the Laurenziano MS, is analysed: the canzone 'O messer Petro da Massa legato' (L 18; n* XLII ed. Egidi) and sonnets 'De pruzor parte' (L 291; n° 216), 'Finfo amico' (L 292; n° 217), 'Picciul e vile' (L 300; n° 226), 'Vogl’ e ragion' (L 303; n° 229), and 'Figlo mio dilettozo' (L 279; n° 205), written in reply to Guido Guinizelli’s ambiguous sonnet 'O caro padre meo' (L 278).
ITALIANO - Il contributo studia il motivo della "lode sfacciata" nella poesia di Guittone d'Arezzo - e poi anche nel 'Convivio' di Dante - e le sue relazioni con la trattazione del medesimo tema quale si ritrova nella letteratura aristotelica, retorica e podestarile e nelle enciclopedie moralistiche. Nel corpus guittoniano il motivo è presente in un gruppo coeso di testi, tutti tràditi dal codice Laurenziano: la canzone 'O messer Petro da Massa legato' (L 18; n* XLII ed. Egidi) e i sonetti 'De pruzor parte' (L 291; n* 216), 'Finfo amico' (L 292; n* 217), 'Picciul e vile' (L 300; n* 226), 'Vogl’ e ragion' (L 303; n* 229) e 'Figlo mio dilettozo' (L 279; n* 205), scritto in risposta all'ambiguo sonetto di Guinizelli 'O caro padre meo' (L 278).

Nell’opera di Giovanni Pascoli il recupero di temi, personaggi e testi medioevali si inquadra nel più generale recupero dell’ “antico” come categoria estetica che fa corrispondere la poesia e la poiesis – intesa come capacità stessa di espressione poetica – con il tempo storico ed individuale delle origini, la “fanciullezza”. Il Medioevo si presenta dunque come determinazione storica di questa condizione di pienezza e di senso che si è perduta. Nello stesso tempo, il Medioevo si offre come deposito di materiali residuali da esplorare per ricreare, con il minimo grado di approssimazione possibile, la parola delle origini e la condizione che essa traduce.
Per attuare questo progetto, Pascoli si avvale primariamente della filologia, vero amore della parola antica, studiata, riesumata dal passato nel suo massimo grado di alterità specifica. Egli traduce, dai Canti popolari bretoni, La schiera di Artù e Breus ricreando in italiano temi e ritmi dell’epos bretone alla scopo duplice di “vivificare” la lingua poetica novecentesca alla sorgente della parola originaria – quanto meno dei suoi resti sparsi nella letteratura universale – e di rivelare i legami dell’epica medioevale con l’epica omerica, entrambe espressioni storicamente determinato della fanciullezza universale. 
Accanto alle “traduzioni e riduzioni” di testi antichi, si colloca il progetto della raccolta delle Canzoni del Re Enzio, incentrate sul Medioevo italiano. Pubblicate negli anni 1908-1909, sono incentrate sulla figura di Enzio, figlio naturale di Federico II di Svevia e poeta della scuola siciliana, detto “il falconetto”. Vinto dai Bolognesi a Fossalta, restò prigioniero nel Palazzo del Podestà fino alla sua morte, avvenuta nel 1272. Le prime tre canzoni (La canzone del Carroccio, La canzone del Paradiso, La canzone dell’Olifante) sono dedicate rispettivamente a Milano, alla Libertà e a Bologna; ad esse dovevano seguire altre tre canzoni dedicate al periodo della prigionia a Bologna. Impreziosita da una patina linguistica duecentesca che non è mai solo pura decorazione e da un immaginario allegorico-simbolico cui l’ambientazione medievale conferisce tutte le sue ragioni storiche, questa raccolta, poco studiata per la sua impervia difficoltà, offre un accesso privilegiato al codice poetico pascoliano nel suo insieme: dalle riscritture del Medioevo si risale alla parola del fanciullino novecentesco quasi per “diritta via”.

ITALIANO: Il saggio mostra come l’esperienza poetica di Guido Guinizelli si riverberi nell’opera di Dante anche all’altezza della stagione delle rime petrose. In particolare la canzone 'Amor, tu vedi ben che questa donna' - la cosiddetta "sestina doppia" - contiene diversi rimandi alle rime del poeta bolognese.
ENGLISH: The essay shows how Guido Guinizelli's poetic experience is reflected in Dante's work even at the time of the "rime petrose" ("stone rhymes"). In particular, the canzone 'Amor, tu vedi ben che questa donna' - the so-called "sestina doppia" ("double sestina") - includes several references to Guinizelli's poems.

The first part of this work focuses on the relations between Guido Guinizzelli and Guittone d'Arezzo, Italian poets lived in the XIII century. The aim is to display that Guittone's sonnet 'S'eo tale fosse' is a clear criticism of Guinizzelli, guilty of comparing his lady to natural forms instead of declaring her superior to them, as the lyrical tradition had estabilished, and that Guido's sonnet 'Omo ch'è saggio' contains a polemical allusion to the 'frati gaudenti', the religious order - composed exclusively by noblemen - which Guittone had entered as a married friar. Moving from this consideration, the second part of the work shows that the topic of nobility, discussed by Guinizzelli in his canzone 'Al cor gentil', can not be considered as a mere commonplace, but must be related to a political and social debate that was fervent at those times (especially in the city of Bologna, where the 'gaudenti' had born) and involved the 'gaudenti' too. The analysis of this theme in connection with the two poets is preceded by a close examination and a deep study on the concept of nobility - from the classics to the troubadours, from the court of Frederic II to the medieval law tradition - and concluded by a chapter focused on the development of the debate in Bologna (civic and guild statutes, a new study on birth, ideology, growth and on the function of the order of 'frati gaudenti'). An appendix is dedicated to Guinizzelli's sonnet 'Chi vedesse a Lucia un var capuzzo', which portrays the poet dreaming about a rape (but suddenly repenting); a comparison with a sentence written by Guido just on a case of rape (as it is known, Guinizzelli was a judge) allows to infer an influence of law language and mentality on the sonnet's style.

""The volume includes four essays that are waiting to be published in peer-reviewed journals: 1) "Pace, giustizia e bene comune. La poesia politica in età comunale"; 2) "La noblesse de Guinizelli. Héritage troubadour et actualité politique dans la chanson 'Al cor gentil'"; 3) "Il sonetto di Cino da Pistoia 'Avegna che crudel lancia ’ntraversi' e il topos del 'morir ridendo'"; 4) "Appunti per l’edizione delle 'Epoche della lingua italiana' di Ugo Foscolo".

Nelle more della pubblicazione su rivista, il volume raccoglie quattro saggi letterari e filologici di varia natura, proposti in un ordine che segue la progressione cronologica della materia trattata e presentati nel sostanziale rispetto delle norme redazionali delle sedi editoriali alle quali sono stati destinati: 1) "Pace, giustizia e bene comune. La poesia politica in età comunale"; 2) "La noblesse de Guinizelli. Héritage troubadour et actualité politique dans la chanson 'Al cor gentil'"; 3) "Il sonetto di Cino da Pistoia 'Avegna che crudel lancia ’ntraversi' e il topos del 'morir ridendo'"; 4) "Appunti per l’edizione delle 'Epoche della lingua italiana' di Ugo Foscolo"."""

The essay shows that in his sonnet "[O] caro padre meo, de vostra laude" Guido Guinizelli does not praise frate Guittone d'Arezzo, as it had always been thought, but he harshly criticizes him, addressing him an ambiguous text which is subject to a double interpretation. Guinizelli's attack to Guittone precedes Dante and Cavalcanti's criticism and accounts for Guinizelli's words in canto 26. of Dante's "Purgatorio".