This sonnet sequence represents a stylistic line, inherited from the
provençal tradition, that stands quite opposed to what Dante and the poets of
the stil novist tradition were trying to do—including a poet like Cavalcanti. This line
is consciously engaged with worldly matters of every kind, as we see in this sequence and in Folgore's
Dittamondo
The conception and execution of the sequence is comic and consciously extravagant, though not really ironical. In this respect the sequence reflects “the blithe and lordly Fellowship” celebrated in the sequence.
DGR's source was
Poeti del Primo Secolo
Folgóre (i.e, bright, splendid) was the early fourteenth-century Guelf cavalier
Giacomo da San Gemignano, well known at the time. He died in 1332. For
further commentary see the editorial notes to the
Perhaps in the early 1850s. DGR refers to
Charles Cayley's Commedia
The translation was first published in 1861 in
The
Early Italian Poets
Dante
and his Circle
DGR's work that stands most closely related to these sonnets by Folgore is the sequence of poems that he wrote in 1849 when he visited Belgium and France with Holman Hunt. Those poems were much involved with the “blithe . . . Fellowship” of the PRB; and while the brotherhood's interests were dominated by religious issues, their approach was peculiarly materialistic (so to speak).
DGR's long prefatory note to this sonnet sequence identifies “the blithe and lordly
Fellowship” addressed by the sequence with the “brigata” mentioned in passing
(and scornfully) by Dante in
the Inferno
Early Italian Poets vol. 1Poeti de duecento