The Diseiplina elericale came in through a French version of Petrus Alphonsus's Latin text.
Among the renderings from Latin figured the ,St oric de Troia c de Roma. made, seemingly, soon after 1250, the moral distichs of Cato, the Pala ',kilns de Amore, the Trattati morali of Al i ertano da Brescia (two Tuscan versions, 1268 find 1275), and the varions treatises attributed to the diligent translator Bono Giamboni. These all may belong to the time before 1300. The .Esopie fables were also soon translated and became very popular. Original works in prose began to ap pear later. All may belong to this time. Note worthy among them were the letters of Goittone d'Arezzo (12•0-94), which display an unmistak able attempt to create a sort of poetical prose in Italian; the didactic works of Guidon° da Bolo gna (before 1266), of Tommaso Gozzadini (sec ond half of the thirteenth century), of Ristoro d'A 'ZZO ( P.S2 , and especially the Introdu;ione ulla rirta of Bono Giamboni (second half of the thirteenth century) ; certain chronicles and his torical accounts: and, most interesting of all, certain collections of tales. Already in the thir teenth century professional tellers of tales ( faro norellatori) wandered about Northern and Central Italy relating stories derived from all possible sources. Written collections of their tales, or of similar ones, were the Conti di ant ichi enrallicri (second half of the thirteenth century), consisting at least in part of rather free versions of matter originally French and Latin, and the Norellino, worked over in many versions even be fore the end of the thirteenth century, and dis pla?ing no little skill in the art of story-telling, which Boccaccio was to develop to the fullest be fore another century had passed.
having considered Italian literature in its lisp ing, almost wholly imitative childhood, we now approach the period of letters. when the great Dante, Boccaccio, and Tetrarch, made their native dialect. the predominant one of the Peninsula. The earliest of the three. Dante, stood at the height of a poetic movement which he himself styled the dolce stil nuoro, and which developed the principles already enunciated and illustrated by Guido Cuinizelli and the Tuscan and Bolognese poets of the transition period. The idealizing of woman, brought about portly by the rise of the worship of the Virgin in the twelfth century and partly a natural conse quence of the development of a philosophy of love and its origin. formed the subject matter of the verse of the dole(' sal +loco poet:. Among these were Dante, his friend Guido Cavaleanti (e.1250 13001. Lapo Gianni (died after 122S). Dino Fres cobaldi (died 1313), nianni Alfani (still alive in 1310). Gino Sigisbuldi of Pistoia (died c.1337), and a number of younger men whose verse forms a link between the lyric methods of Dante and those of Petrarch. During the activity of Dante and thy' dolce stil nuo•o poets there were some poet: of a humorous and sarcastic turn of mind. like Ce(co Aneiolieri (still living in 1319) and Folgore di Can (flourished c.1315), and other: of didactic and allegorizing tendencies, like the unknown authors of the Fiore—an imi tation of the Roman do la Rose and possibly the work of Ser Dnrante (c.1360)—and of the !Orilla( nza (a work descriptive of Intelligence as a personification of universal knowledge.which was erroneously attributed to the Florentine chronicler Dino Compagni), and like Francesco da Barherino (1264-134S), who composed the Doettmcnti d'amore and a treatise on etiquette entitled Dc/ my/fin/unto dri rostumi di donna.
The allegorical methods of the Pion: and the /n(c//iycnzu, and of Francesco da Barberino's poems, are present likewise in the Dicina Com mtdia of Dante, who must brilliantly elaborates them.
Dante Alighieri (q.v.), who was born in 1265 and died in 1321. probably produced most of his work in the fourteenth century; the Ida :dune seems to belong to the thirteenth century. This latter is a poetical account of the rise and growth of his love for Beatrice, set in an explanatory framework of prose. His abiding fame and excellence must be based on his Dirina romniedia, a magnificent vision in which the poet pictures himself as guided first by his master Vergil through llell, the realm of the damned, and Purgatory. the mount of temporary suffering
sin is purged from the soul, and as led afterwards by his idealized love Beatrice through the spheres of Paradise, where dwell the eternally blessed. The Dirina Commedia is the most glorious production of the Middle Ages, of which it is the fullest artistic expression. The vision, a form often used before Dante's time, but with nothing like his skill ; the allegory, a vivid por trayal of hundreds of men and women. and an endeavor to epitomize all human knowledge as scholastic philosophy comprehended it; frequent lyric outbursts; and, most striking of all, an auto biography. everywhere present and always grand ly—these are the chief inner characteristics of the poem, which in its outer form displays an admirable metrical structure. depending prin cipally upon the use of the terra rim(' and the hendecasyllabie verse. Another work of Donte's in the vulgar speech, which he now for all time made the norm of Italian, and one espe cially interesting for his conception of philosophy, is the Conririo (or Concito), a fragment in which the prose commentary and the verse text are intended to present to men a feast of reason. Some more or less doubtful short poems in Ital ian and certain works in Latin constitute the rest of his literary endeavors. A rival of Dante, Francesco Stabili, known as Ceceo d'Ascoli ( 1257 1327 ), who was finally burned as a heretic, wrote the iccrba, a didactic poem in which he sought to sum up all matters of scientific interest, and to heap ridicule upon Dante's splendid creations of fancy. Still another noteworthy represen tative of the allegorical poetic movement, now declining, was Jacopo Alighieri (died probably during the plague of 134S), Dante's son, and the author of the Dottrinale. A number of political ballads. and of laudi that show a continued de velopment of the dramatic form, are to be counted as part of the verse output of the fourteenth cen tury. In so far as prose is concerned, transla tions from Latin and French still constituted the more important part of that produced during this first period of Tuscan supremacy, as it had done in the earlier periods of the literature. Bar tolomeo da Can Concordio (1262-1347) and Filip r10 Ceffi were prominent among the translators of 'Latin works. Many of the translations re main anonymous—as, for example, the various versions of the ..4•1:sopie fables. and of many leg nods of the saints, and the translation from the French known as the Libro di Fierarante. Di dactic compilations and treatises are frequent enough at this time, many of them being duo to Domenico Cavalca (c.1270-1342), author of the Specchio di croce and certain other treatises; to Giordano da Rivalto (c.1260-1311) ; and to Bartolomeo da San Concordio. This last named wrote first in Latin and then translated into Italian his Animaestramenti degli antichi. A common form of the didactic compilation was that intended for use as popular manuals, and known by the names of flori, fiorite, or tioretti. A favorite with the people of its own day, and till dear to the Dalian heart, is the anonymous collection of Franciscan legends which• with the title of Fio•ctti di San Francesco, appeared be tore 1350. This is one of the most beautiful examples of early Italian prose. But far more important than the greater part of the prose works thus far mentioned are the chronicles of the time. and especially those of the Florentines, Dino Compagni (c.1257-1324), in whose Cronica delle case occorenti ne' tempi •suoi (composed 1310-12) the struggles of the Bianchi and the of Guelphs and Ghibellines. are graphically narrated, and Giovanni Villani (c.1275-1348), who for the twelve books of his history of Flor ence, by degrees expanded into a universal his tory, gathered information from all sides. from ancient chronicles, from travelers, and even from official documents, and thus gave his book a vital and enduring interest. The labors of Dino Com pagni and Villani were continued by lesser writers.