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Equicola's Knowledge of Dante

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Camillo P. Merlino*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan

Extract

It is well known to students of the Italian Renaissance that the regained supremacy of the vernacular in the latter half of the fifteenth century, first in Tuscany and then in other parts of the peninsula, did much to stimulate the revival in the study of Dante. The haughty contempt, implicit or explicit, that many of the early humanists felt for the Divina Commedia then gave way to enthusiastic efforts at text interpretation and æsthetic appreciation on the part of poets, artists, and scholars. Nor was this renewed interest in Dante confined to Italy; indeed, the Divina Commedia was much studied even beyond the Alps, where it was edited and translated several times.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , September 1933 , pp. 642 - 647
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1933

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References

1 In the sixteenth century 177 editions of the Canzoniere and only 34 of the Divina Commedia were published in Italy.

2 Cf. my article, The French Studies of Mario Equicola, Univ. Calif. Publ. Mod. Philol., xiv (1929).

3 Cf. Michele Barbi, Della fortuna di Dante nel secolo xvi (Pisa: Nistri, 1890), p. 91.

4 Cf. Francesco Flamini, “Dante nel Cinquecento e nell'età della decadenza,” in Dante e l'Italia (Roma: Fondazione Marco Besso, 1921), p. 329.

5 First published in Venice in 1525.—The references in this study, however, are to the Venetian edition of 1554.

6 Composed in all probability not later than 1516, but not published until 1541 in Milan. A second and last edition appeared in Venice in 1551.—The references in this study are to the “editio princeps.”

7 Through the courtesy of the officials of the Biblioteca Comunale of Siena, I was allowed to examine at length a copy of this rare work, published sometime between 1495 and 1500. A rotograph copy of the Novo Cortegiano is now in the possession of Professor W. L. Bullock of the University of Chicago.

8 In the sixteenth century the Divina Commedia went through 34 editions, which number contrasts markedly with the three from 1596 to 1702.

9 Convivio, i, xii, 13.

10 Ibid., i, x, 14; i, xi, 14.

11 Ibid., iii.

12 Cf. R. Renier, “Per la composizione e la cronologia del Libro di Natura de Amore,” Giornale Storico d. lett. ital., xiv, (1899) p. 212 ff.

13 A third edition of the Convivio appeared in 1529, four years after Equicola's death.

14 De Vul. Eloq., xvi.

15 Cf. Il Cinquecento (Milano: Vallardi, 1900), p. 133. It will be remembered that Trissino's Italian version of the De Vulgati Eloquentia appeared in 1529, while Equicola's Natura de Amore was first published in 1525.

16 Cf. Barbi, op. cit., p. 95 f.

17 It will be remembered that Jacopo Corbinelli edited the first edition of the De Vulg. Eloq. in its original Latin form, Paris, 1577.

18 Cf. G. Zaccagnini, Le rime di Cino da Pistoja (Geneva: Biblioteca dell'Archivum Romanicum, 1925) passim.

19 For a table of this 1491 edition, cf. A. Cossio, The Canzoniere of Dante (New York: The Encyclopedia Press, 1918), p. 65. The other edition referred to is that which appeared in Venice in 1518, now rare: Canzoni d'amore e madrigali di Dante Alighieri, di M. Cino da Pistoia, di M. Girardo da Castelfiorentino, di M. Betrico da Reggio, di M. Ruccio Piacente da Siena. Of the ten poems given by Equicola, only five (i, ii, vi, vii, viii) are included in this collection. For the contents of this edition, cf. Barbi, Studi sul Canzoniere di Dante (Firenze: Sansoni, 1915), pp. 78–79.