(La) Nina Siciliana was the composer of one

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 ...

sonnet, and a candidate to be the first Italian woman

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems ( oral or wri ...

. She only came to light in 1780, along with 74 other poets, in the ''Étrennes du Parnasse'' (or ''Choix de Poësies''). She is now considered

legend A legend is a genre of folklore that consists of a narrative featuring human actions, believed or perceived, both by teller and listeners, to have taken place in human history. Narratives in this genre may demonstrate human values, and possess ...

ary by most scholars. Adolfo Borgognoni first proposed that Nina was a fictional construct of male poets in 1891 and was soon followed by Giulio Bertoni. Specifically Borgognoni thought she was invented by the successors of printer Filippo Giunti: ''essa'' ina''nacque in Firenze, nella officina degli Eredi di Filippo Giunti, l'anno del Signore 1527'' ("this one inawas born in Florence, in the office of the heirs of Filippo Giunti, the year of the Lord 1527").Paolo Malpezzi Price
"Uncovering Women's Writings: Two Early Italian Women Poets"
, ''Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association'', 9 (1988), 3. The historicity of Nina—and tangentially the sex of the author of the poem traditionally assigned to her—has been debated ever since. Liborio Azzolina tried to resuscitate her and also Compiuta Donzella, whom Borgognoni, with less supporters, also ascribed to later male poets' imaginations. More recently the Italian scholar Lino Pertile has called her ''fantomatica'' (phantomlike) and Paolo Cherchi dismissed her as "mythical", to be followed by

Anne Klinck Anne Lingard Klinck (née Anne Lingard Hibbert) is a Canadian academic and writer. The focus of her work is on the classics and she is an authority on the female voice in lyric poetry. Early life She was born to British-Canadian father Sydney H ...

. Francesco Trucchi was the first to assign a poem to Nina: the sonnet ''Tapina in me, c'amava uno sparvero'' ("Alas for me, I loved a sparrowhawk"), probably composed in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century. Nina was apparently inspired to write by the poems

Dante da Maiano __NOTOC__ Dante da Maiano was a late thirteenth-century poet who composed mainly sonnets in Italian and Occitan. He was an older contemporary of Dante Alighieri and active in Florence. He may have been a Provençal- or Auvergnat-speaker from Mai ...

addressed "To his Lady Nina, of Sicily". Francesco de Sanctis, the foremost Italian literary critic of his day, praised ''la perfetta semplicità'' of Nina and Compiuta. One recent scholar who accepts Nina's existence and derides doubters has noted similarities between Nina and

Alamanda de Castelnau Alamanda was a trobairitz whose only surviving work is a ''tenso'' with Giraut de Bornelh called '.Alamanda de Castelnau (1160–1223) ''S'ie us qier conseill, bella amia Alamanda'' Classical music online. In the past she was usually considered fic ...

.Price, 6. Nina's poem is presented with English translation on page 5.

Notes

External links

Nina Di Dante/siciliana (1290 - )
by María José Prieto Manfredi. Her poem in its original language, with brief commentary in Spanish. {{authority control Italian women poets 13th-century Italian poets 13th-century Italian women