◦
“Introduction
to Part II” (in
The Early Italian Poets),
193-206
◦
Contini,
Poeti de Duecento,
II. 567
◦
Cassata,
Guido Cavalcanti.
Rime, 236-237
This collection contains 10 texts and images, including:
The Early Italian Poets text.
Scholarly Commentary
Introduction
DGR's sources badly misled him about the context of this sonnet, which is addressed to Cavalcanti's time-serving cousin Nerone, and not to Pope Boniface VIII. The sonnet is a melancholy invective written in late 1300 after the order of expulsion from Florence of the White and Black Guelph factions. Cavalcanti, a leader of the Whites, was exiled to Sarzana. The papal interdict against Florence came in June of the same year but it has no direct relevance to the subject of Cavalcanti's poem.
Except for a slight variation in the sestet, DGR's rhyme scheme is the same as Cavalcanti's. There are significant corruption in lines 4 and 8 of the source text, Cicciaporci's Rime di Guido Cavalcanti (Sonnet XVII, page 9).
Textual History: Composition
Probably an early translation, late 1840s.
Printing History
The translation was first published in 1861 in The Early Italian Poets; it was reprinted in 1874 in Dante and his Circle.