[38] The practical and realistic common sense of the Italians, rejecting chivalrous and ecclesiastical idealism as so much nonsense, is illustrated by the occasional poems of two Florentine painters—Giotto's Canzone on Poverty, and Orcagna's Sonnet on Love. Orcagna, in the latter, criticises the conventional blind and winged Cupid, and winds up with:
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L'amore è un trastullo: Non è composto di legno nè di osso; E a molte gente fa rompere il dosso. |
[39] See Carducci, op. cit. pp. 52-60, for early examples of Tuscanized Sicilian poems of the people.
[40] The Tuscanized Sicilian poems in Carducci's collection referred to above, are extracted from a Florentine MS. called Napolitana, and a Tenzone between man and woman (ib. p. 52), which has clearly undergone a like process, is called Ciciliana.
[41] See Francesco d'Ovidio, Sul Trattato De Vulgari Eloquentia. It is reprinted in his volume of Saggi Critici, Napoli, 1879. The subject is fully discussed from a point of view at variance with my text by Adolf Gaspary, Die Sicilianische Dichterschule, Berlin, 1878.
[42] Rime di Fra Guittone d'Arezzo, Firenze, Morandi, 1828, 2 vols.
[43] De Vulg. Eloq. ii. 6; ii. 1; i. 13, and Purg. xxvi. 124.
[44] His poems will be found in the collections above mentioned, [p. 26, note].
[45] Purg. xxvi.
[46] Purg. xxiv.