Dante Alighieri. “Sonnet (Dante to Forese). He taunts Forese by the nickname of Bicci.”

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

General Description

Date: 1861
Rhyme: abbaaccadefdef
Meter: iambic pentameter
Genre: sonnet

Bibliography

“Introduction to Part II” (in Early Italian Poets), 189-193

◦ Foster and Boyd, Dante's Lyric Poetry, I.152-155 (II. 242-253).

Scholarly Commentary

Textual History: Composition

Although DGR gave harsh treatment to this sonnet and the others in Dante's exchange with his brother-in-law Forese Donati, he probably enjoyed them more than his essay on the whole sequence indicates (see the editorial commentary here). Of the two sonnets DGR prints by Dante this one is the most vigorous, and indeed it makes a remarkable piece of vilification. The translation is free but faithful, like the other.

DGR's source text was either the text in Fraticelli's Opere minori di Dante Alighieri (I. 149-150) or Luigi Fiacchi's Scelta di Rime Antiche (pages 13-14).

Textual History: Revision

This may have been a later work of DGR's translation process—perhaps 1860 or 1861.

Printing History

The translation was first published in 1861 in The Early Italian Poets; it was reprinted unaltered in 1874 in Dante and his Circle.

Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Source File: 19d-1861.raw.xml