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Dante and His Circle
As a young poet, Dante Alighieri was at the center of a new attitude sweeping through Italy and southern France. Poets and artists were awakening from a thousand-year yoke we now call the Middle Ages. Giotto showed the way in art by painting real people in his allegorical scenes; Dante used vernacular or street language to write down his actual feelings. And a new subject drove these and other passionate artists: Love. Who were the poets of Dante's circle? This edition of Dante and His Circle is based upon an imaginative recreation of a cultural and intellectual ferment at the birth of a national literature. Dante Gabriel Rossetti brought together poetry of the friends and antagonists of Dante-in particular the poems of the flamboyant Guido Cavalcanti, the staid Cino da Pistoia, and the outrageous Cecco Angiolieri, with many others-and including the curious work of the youthful Dante called the Vita Nuova (The New Life, or My Young Life; available separately), which itself is the subject of comments by Dante's poetic friends. Dante's putative subject is Beatrice/Love-but the Vita Nuova is really an exercise in poetry: Dante sets the emotional scene for a poem, then he writes the poem, then he explains the poem's structure, part by part. Dante himself later became uncomfortable with this work of youth, but he did not disown it. This selected edition of Dante and His Circle concentrates on the eternal theme of Love, leaving aside poems relating to the wars and politics of the time. Love as a subject of serious public discussion signaled the emerging Renaissance, not just a rediscovery of the glories of ancient Greece and Rome, but a new sensibility finding-no-building a platform for personal expression and interchange. Besides the Vita Nuova, Rossetti arranged some poetic exchanges between Dante and Guido Cavalcanti. The Vita Nuova is also available as a stand-alone volume (www.createspace.com/3683218). The woman's perspective on love may have best been told by Sappho (www.createspace.com/4185675), who invented lyric poetry - and what we now know as the guitar pick!
"1100081431"
Dante and His Circle
As a young poet, Dante Alighieri was at the center of a new attitude sweeping through Italy and southern France. Poets and artists were awakening from a thousand-year yoke we now call the Middle Ages. Giotto showed the way in art by painting real people in his allegorical scenes; Dante used vernacular or street language to write down his actual feelings. And a new subject drove these and other passionate artists: Love. Who were the poets of Dante's circle? This edition of Dante and His Circle is based upon an imaginative recreation of a cultural and intellectual ferment at the birth of a national literature. Dante Gabriel Rossetti brought together poetry of the friends and antagonists of Dante-in particular the poems of the flamboyant Guido Cavalcanti, the staid Cino da Pistoia, and the outrageous Cecco Angiolieri, with many others-and including the curious work of the youthful Dante called the Vita Nuova (The New Life, or My Young Life; available separately), which itself is the subject of comments by Dante's poetic friends. Dante's putative subject is Beatrice/Love-but the Vita Nuova is really an exercise in poetry: Dante sets the emotional scene for a poem, then he writes the poem, then he explains the poem's structure, part by part. Dante himself later became uncomfortable with this work of youth, but he did not disown it. This selected edition of Dante and His Circle concentrates on the eternal theme of Love, leaving aside poems relating to the wars and politics of the time. Love as a subject of serious public discussion signaled the emerging Renaissance, not just a rediscovery of the glories of ancient Greece and Rome, but a new sensibility finding-no-building a platform for personal expression and interchange. Besides the Vita Nuova, Rossetti arranged some poetic exchanges between Dante and Guido Cavalcanti. The Vita Nuova is also available as a stand-alone volume (www.createspace.com/3683218). The woman's perspective on love may have best been told by Sappho (www.createspace.com/4185675), who invented lyric poetry - and what we now know as the guitar pick!
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Dante and His Circle

Dante and His Circle

Overview

As a young poet, Dante Alighieri was at the center of a new attitude sweeping through Italy and southern France. Poets and artists were awakening from a thousand-year yoke we now call the Middle Ages. Giotto showed the way in art by painting real people in his allegorical scenes; Dante used vernacular or street language to write down his actual feelings. And a new subject drove these and other passionate artists: Love. Who were the poets of Dante's circle? This edition of Dante and His Circle is based upon an imaginative recreation of a cultural and intellectual ferment at the birth of a national literature. Dante Gabriel Rossetti brought together poetry of the friends and antagonists of Dante-in particular the poems of the flamboyant Guido Cavalcanti, the staid Cino da Pistoia, and the outrageous Cecco Angiolieri, with many others-and including the curious work of the youthful Dante called the Vita Nuova (The New Life, or My Young Life; available separately), which itself is the subject of comments by Dante's poetic friends. Dante's putative subject is Beatrice/Love-but the Vita Nuova is really an exercise in poetry: Dante sets the emotional scene for a poem, then he writes the poem, then he explains the poem's structure, part by part. Dante himself later became uncomfortable with this work of youth, but he did not disown it. This selected edition of Dante and His Circle concentrates on the eternal theme of Love, leaving aside poems relating to the wars and politics of the time. Love as a subject of serious public discussion signaled the emerging Renaissance, not just a rediscovery of the glories of ancient Greece and Rome, but a new sensibility finding-no-building a platform for personal expression and interchange. Besides the Vita Nuova, Rossetti arranged some poetic exchanges between Dante and Guido Cavalcanti. The Vita Nuova is also available as a stand-alone volume (www.createspace.com/3683218). The woman's perspective on love may have best been told by Sappho (www.createspace.com/4185675), who invented lyric poetry - and what we now know as the guitar pick!

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780942208092
Publisher: Bandanna Books
Publication date: 02/26/2013
Series: Humanist Classics Series
Edition description: REVISED
Pages: 180
Product dimensions: 5.51(w) x 8.52(h) x 0.35(d)
Age Range: 16 Years

About the Author

Dante, or Dante Alighieri, before he wrote the Divine Comedy, was an ambitious poet among others who were adventuring into the first "vulgar language" literature in Europe, abandoning Latin for the street language that people actually spoke. The twenty poets in this work were sharing in this break with the past, concentrating on the theme of Love in the late 1200s in Florence, Italy.

Read an Excerpt


GUIDO CAVALCANTI. TO DANTE ALIGHIERI. C/ Sonnet. He interprets Dante's Dream, related in the first Sonnet of the Vita Nuova. UNTO my thinking, them beheld'st all worth, All joy, as much of good as man may know, If thou wert in his power who here below Is honour's righteous lord throughout this earth. Where evil dies, even there he has his birth, Whose justice out of pity's self doth grow. Softly to sleeping persons he will go, And, 'with no pain to them, their hearts draw forth. Thy heart he took, as knowing well, alas ! That Death hadclaimedthy lady fora grfiy: Injearwhereof, he fed her with thy heart. But when he seemed in sorrow to depart, Sweet was thy dream; for by that sign, I say, Surely the opposite shall come to pass.t See the Vita Nuova, at page 33. t This may refer to the belief that, towards morning, dreamt go by contraries. Sonnet. To his Lady Joan, of Florence. FLOWERS hast thou in thyself, and foliage, And what is good, and what is glad to see; The sun is not so bright as thy visage ; All is stark naught when one hath looked on thee; There is not such a beautiful personage Anywhere on the green earth verily; If one fear love, thy bearing sweet and sage Comforteth him, and no more fear hath he. Thy lady friends and maidens ministering Are all, for love of thee, much to my taste : And much I pray them that in everything They honour thee even as thou meritest, And-have thee in their gentle harbouring : Because among them all thou art the best. He compares all Things with his Lady, and finds them wanting. BEAUTY in woman ; the high will's decree ; Fair knighthood armed for manly exercise ; The pleasant song of birds ; love's soft replies ; The strength ofrapid ships upon the sea ; The serene air when light begins to ...

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Related Subjects

Poetry
European Poetry
Italian Poetry
Poetry
European Poetry
Italian Poetry

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