__NOTOC__ Dante da Maiano was a late thirteenth-century poet who composed mainly

sonnet A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's invention, ...

s in

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

and

Occitan Occitan may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania territory in parts of France, Italy, Monaco and Spain. * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania administrative region of France. * Occitan language Occitan (; o ...

. He was an older contemporary of

Dante Alighieri Dante Alighieri (; – 14 September 1321), 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 (modern Italian: '' ...

and active in

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...

. He may have been a Provençal- or

Auvergnat or (endonym: ) is a northern dialect of Occitan spoken in central and southern France, in particular in the former administrative region of Auvergne. Currently, research shows that there is not really a true Auvergnat dialect but rather a vas ...

-speaker from

Maillane Maillane (; oc, Malhana) is a Communes of France, commune in the Bouches-du-Rhône Departments of France, department in southern France in the former Provinces of France, province of Provence. Geography Maillane is located north-west of Sain ...

(the birthplace of

Frédéric Mistral Joseph Étienne Frédéric Mistral (; oc, Josèp Estève Frederic Mistral, 8 September 1830 – 25 March 1914) was a French writer of Occitan literature and lexicographer of the Provençal form of the language. He received the 1904 Nobel P ...

), but more probably he was from the Tuscan village of

Maiano Maiano is small hilltop locality, now part of Fiesole, in Tuscany. The Chiesa di San Martino was founded there in the eleventh century and subsequently restored in the fifteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. A '' palagio'' existed at Ma ...

near

Fiesole Fiesole () is a town and ''comune'' of the Metropolitan City of Florence in the Italian region of Tuscany, on a scenic height above Florence, 5 km (3 miles) northeast of that city. It has structures dating to Etruscan and Roman times. Sin ...

. In 1882 Adolfo Borgognoni argued that he was an invention of

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...

philology Philology () is the study of language in oral and writing, written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defin ...

, 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.Michael Papio (2004), "Dante da Maiano", ''Medieval Italy: An Encyclopedia'', Christopher Kleinhenz and John W. Barker, edd. (London: Routledge), p. 290. He discovered two

sonnets ascribed to Dante da Maiano in a fifteenth-century Italian manuscript conserved in the Biblioteca Laurentiana, Florence. Almost all Dante's extant work is preserved in the '' Giuntina'' (or "Junte"), a Florentine

chansonnier A chansonnier ( ca, cançoner, oc, cançonièr, Galician and pt, cancioneiro, it, canzoniere or ''canzoniéro'', es, cancionero) is a manuscript or printed book which contains a collection of chansons, or polyphonic and monophonic settings o ...

compiled in 1527 under the title ''Sonetti e canzoni di diversi avtori toscani in dieci libri raccolte'' by Filippo Giunti. His total work is some forty-eight

s, five ''

ballate The ''ballata'' (plural: ''ballate'') is an Italian poetic and musical form in use from the late 13th to the 15th century. It has the musicapenim AbbaA, with the first and last stanzas having the same texts. It is thus most similar to the Fre ...

'', two '' canzoni'', and a series of '' tenzoni'' with Dante Alighieri. He was influenced by the

troubadours A troubadour (, ; oc, trobador ) was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages (1100–1350). Since the word ''troubadour'' is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a ''trobairi ...

(notably

Bernart de Ventadorn Bernart de Ventadorn (also Bernard de Ventadour or Bernat del Ventadorn; – ) was a French poet-composer troubadour of the classical age of troubadour poetry. Generally regarded as the most important troubadour in both poetry and music, his 1 ...

), the

Sicilian School 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 betwe ...

and in particular

Giacomo da Lentini 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. Gi ...

, the

Tuscan School Tuscan may refer to: Places * A person from, or something of, from, or related to Tuscany, a region of Italy * Tuscan Archipelago, islands off Tuscany, Italy. * Tuscan, South Australia was a railway siding and locality in the Murray Mallee regio ...

Guittone d'Arezzo Guittone d'Arezzo (Arezzo, 1235 – 1294) was a Tuscan poet and the founder of the Tuscan School. He was an acclaimed secular love poet before his conversion in the 1260s, when he became a religious poet joining the Order of the Blessed Virgi ...

, and the later ''

dolce stil novo ''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'' w ...

'', though he belongs to none of these. Rosanna Betarrini calls his work a "

pastiche A pastiche is a work of visual art, literature, theatre, music, or architecture that imitates the style or character of the work of one or more other artists. Unlike parody, pastiche pays homage to the work it imitates, rather than mocking it ...

" and Antonio Enzo Quaglio a ''silloge archeologica della produzione anteriore e contemporanea'' ("an archaeological collection of past and contemporary production"). 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 ''La Vita Nuova'' (; Italian for "The New Life") or ''Vita Nova'' (Latin title) is a text by Dante Alighieri published in 1294. It is an expression of the medieval genre of courtly love in a prosimetrum style, a combination of both prose and ve ...

''. 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. 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 The ''Divine Comedy'' ( it, Divina Commedia ) is an Italian narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun 1308 and completed in around 1321, shortly before the author's death. It is widely considered the pre-eminent work in Italian literature and ...

''.Stoppelli, 657. 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 Chiaro Davanzati (died 1304) was an Italian language, 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 lea ...

, 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. 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 Guido Cavalcanti (between 1250 and 1259 – August 1300) was an Italian poet. He was also a friend and intellectual influence on Dante Alighieri. Historical background Cavalcanti was born in Florence at a time when the comune was beginning its ...

. According to later stories now generally considered only legend, Dante also kept up a correspondence with Nina of Sicily, 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 Víctor is a Spanish masculine given name, equivalent to Victor in English and Vítor in Portuguese. Notable people with the given name include: *Víctor Cabrera (Argentine footballer) *Víctor Cabrera (Chilean footballer) * Víctor Hugo Cabrera, ...

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 Provence (, , , , ; oc, Provença or ''Prouvènço'' , ) is a geographical region and historical province of southeastern France, which extends from the left bank of the lower Rhône to the west to the Italian border to the east; it is bor ...

. 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. 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.Henry John Chaytor (1912)
''The Troubadours''
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 106.

Complete list of works

Notes

External links

Dante Gabriel Rossetti Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti (12 May 1828 – 9 April 1882), generally known as Dante Gabriel Rossetti (), was an English poet, illustrator, painter, translator and member of the Rossetti family. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhoo ...

, ed.
''Dante and His Circle: With the Italian Poets Preceding Him, (1100–1200–1300): A Collection of Lyrics''
(Roberts Brothers, 1887). ::Presents colourful English translations of Dante de Maiano's exchanges with Dante Alighieri (pp. 127–9). *

''Historia política y literaria de los trovadores''
(Impr. de Fortanet, 1879). ::Spanish commentary and text of ''Las! so qe m'es el cor plus fis e qars'' (pp. 117–8). *Dante da Maiano's correspondence with Dante Alighieri, with English translations:

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dante Da Maiano Italian poets French male poets Sonneteers Year of death unknown Year of birth unknown Italian male poets Male composers

Complete list of works

Notes

Further reading

External links