Italian literature: Encyclopedia II - Italian literature - The Sicilian School

Italian literature - The Sicilian School

The year 1230 marks the beginning of the Sicilian School, and of a literature showing more uniform traits. Its importance lies more in the language (the creation of the first standard Italian) than its subject, a love-song partly modelled on the Provençal poetry imported to the south by the Normans and the Svevs under Frederick II. This poetry differs from the French equivalent in its treatment of the woman, certainly less erotic and more platonic, a vein which further developed by Dolce Stil Novo in later 13th century Bologna and Florence. The customary repertoire of chivalry terms is adapted to Italian phonotactics, creating new Italian vocabulary. The French suffixes -ière and -ce generated hundreds of new Italian words in -iera and -za eg. riv-iera, costan-za. These were adopted by Dante and his contemporaries, and handed on to future generations of Italian writers. To this 'school' belonged Enzo, king of Sardinia, Pier delle Vigne, Inghilfredi, Guido and Odo delle Colonne, Jacopo d'Aquino, Rugieri Pugliese, Giacomo da Lentini, Arrigo Testa and others. Most famous is No m'aggio posto in core by Giacomo da Lentini, the head of the movement, but there is also poetry written by Frederick himself. Giacomo da Lentini is also credited with inventing the sonnet, a form later perfected by Dante and more so by Petrarch. The censorship imposed by Frederick meant that no political matter could enter literary debate. In this respect, the poetry of the North, still divided into communes or city-states with relatively democratic government, could provide new ideas, and that is what the Sirventese genre, and later, Dante's Commedia, did: his lines are full of invectives against contemporary political leaders and even popes. Though a conventional love-song prevailed at Frederick's (and later Manfredi's) court, there is a specimen of a more spontaneous poetry in the Contrasto attributed to Cielo d'Alcamo. This contrasto (dispute) between two lovers in Sicilian dialect is not the most ancient or as the only southern poem of a popular kind. It belongs without doubt to the time of the emperor Frederick II (no later than 1250), and is important as proof that there existed a popular, independent of literary, poetry. Most critics now agree that the Contrasto of Cielo d'Alcamo is probably a scholarly re-elaboration of some lost popular rhyme and is the closest to a kind of poetry that perished or was smothered by the ancient Sicilian literature. Its distinguishing point was its possessing all the opposite qualities to the poetry of the rhymers of the "Sicilian School", though its style may betray a knowledge of Frederick's poetry, and there is probably a satiric intent in the mind of the anonymous poet. It is vigorous in the expression of feelings. The conceits, sometimes bold and very coarse, show that its subject-matter is popular. Everything about Cielo's Contrasto is original.

The poems of the Sicilian school were written in the first standard Italian we know of. This was elaborated by these poets under the direction of Frederick II and combines many traits typical of the Sicilian, and to a lesser, but not negligible extent, Apulian dialects and other southern dialect, with many words of Latin and French origin. Dante's styles illustre, cardinale, aulico, curiale were developed from his linguistic study of the Sicilian School, which had been re-founded by Guittone d'Arezzo in Tuscany. The standard changed slightly in Tuscany, because Tuscan scriveners perceived the five-vowel system used by southern Italian as a seven-vowel one. As a consequence, the texts that Italian students read in their anthology contain lines that do not rhyme with each other (sometimes Sic. -i > -e, -u > -o), and that may account for its lack of popularity with modern readers.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The Sicilian School", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki