Refracting the Canon: Pre-Petrarchan Vernacular Authors in Fifteenth-Century Italy

Abstract

Our current conception of the history of the early Italian lyric tradition is heavily informed by Dante's works, and in particular his De vulgari eloquentia. 1 It has not always been the case. Before the rediscovery of this text in the early sixteenth century, other works were far more influential in presenting authors who made up Italian vernacular literature and offering judgments on them.Among these writings, a prominent position must be accorded to Petrarch's works, above all the list of vernacular love poets found in Triumphus Cupidinis (IV 28-42), alongside the mention of five of these in the sonnet on death of one of them, Sennuccio del Bene (Rerum vulgarium fragmenta 287).Such passages continue to be relevant well into the sixteenth century, and they also play a key role in Poliziano's introductory Epistola to the Raccolta Aragonese. 2 That Epistolaas is well knownrepresents one of the most important late Quattrocento contributions to the historical assessment of the earlier vernacular poetic tradition, and it continued to be influential well into the sixteenth century. 3 This essay is concerned with texts that precede Poliziano's Epistola and that have not been closely examined for the information and judgments they provide on the earlier This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 840772.