Traversa_cpi_cb_PaulsonDD.qxd 11/4/2015 12:51 PM Page 1 242 Natalino Sapegno Any one wishing to investigate the literary development of the golden century of early Vincenzo Traversa, Italian literature, the Trecento, must read Natalino Sapegno’s extensive writings on the subject, in particular his Storia Letteraria del Trecento (A Literary History of the Fourteenth Century). The original Italian edition appeared in April 1963 as part of the vast collection, La Letteratura Italiana—Storia e Testi (Italian Literature—History A LITERARY and Texts), directed by Raffaele Mattioli, Pietro Pancrazi, and Alfredo Schiaffini for the Riccardo Ricciardi publishing house. Storia Letteraria del Trecento focuses equally on Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio while minor writers are introduced in TRANS HISTORY OF THE proportion to their importance and position in the cultural, historical, and social events of the time. FOURTEENTH CENTURY VINCENZO TRAVERSA, a United States citizen born and educated in Italy, has taught Italian language and literature at UCLA, Stanford University, and the University of Kansas. He holds A a doctorate in English language and literature from the LITERARY HISTORY OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio University of Naples and a Ph.D. in Romance languages and literatures from UCLA. Traversa is Professor Emeritus of Italian and Humanities at California State University, East Bay, where he served as A Study of Their Times and Works chairman of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures for thirteen years. His works include Parola e Pensiero; Idioma in Prospettiva; Frequency Dictionary of Italian Words (coauthor); Racconti di Alberto Moravia; Luigi Capuana: Critic and Novelist; The “Laude” in the Middle Ages (Peter Lang, 1994); Giovanni Boccaccio, Theseid of the Nuptials of Emilia (Teseida delle nozze di Emilia) (Peter (Storia Letteraria del Trecento) Lang, 2002); and Three Italian Epistolary Novels: Foscolo, De Meis, Piovene— Translations, Introductions, and Backgrounds (Peter Lang, 2005). He was awarded the title of Knight in the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic and was also honored in the 2000 edition of Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers. TRANSLATED WITH A FOREWORD BY Vincenzo Traversa Peter Lang Peter Currents in Comparative WWW.PETERLANG.COM Romance Languages and Literatures Traversa_cpi_cb_PaulsonDD.qxd 11/4/2015 12:51 PM Page 1 242 Natalino Sapegno Any one wishing to investigate the literary development of the golden century of early Vincenzo Traversa, Italian literature, the Trecento, must read Natalino Sapegno’s extensive writings on the subject, in particular his Storia Letteraria del Trecento (A Literary History of the Fourteenth Century). The original Italian edition appeared in April 1963 as part of the vast collection, La Letteratura Italiana—Storia e Testi (Italian Literature—History A LITERARY and Texts), directed by Raffaele Mattioli, Pietro Pancrazi, and Alfredo Schiaffini for the Riccardo Ricciardi publishing house. Storia Letteraria del Trecento focuses equally on Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio while minor writers are introduced in TRANS HISTORY OF THE proportion to their importance and position in the cultural, historical, and social events of the time. FOURTEENTH CENTURY VINCENZO TRAVERSA, a United States citizen born and educated in Italy, has taught Italian language and literature at UCLA, Stanford University, and the University of Kansas. He holds A a doctorate in English language and literature from the LITERARY HISTORY OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio University of Naples and a Ph.D. in Romance languages and literatures from UCLA. Traversa is Professor Emeritus of Italian and Humanities at California State University, East Bay, where he served as A Study of Their Times and Works chairman of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures for thirteen years. His works include Parola e Pensiero; Idioma in Prospettiva; Frequency Dictionary of Italian Words (coauthor); Racconti di Alberto Moravia; Luigi Capuana: Critic and Novelist; The “Laude” in the Middle Ages (Peter Lang, 1994); Giovanni Boccaccio, Theseid of the Nuptials of Emilia (Teseida delle nozze di Emilia) (Peter (Storia Letteraria del Trecento) Lang, 2002); and Three Italian Epistolary Novels: Foscolo, De Meis, Piovene— Translations, Introductions, and Backgrounds (Peter Lang, 2005). He was awarded the title of Knight in the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic and was also honored in the 2000 edition of Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers. TRANSLATED WITH A FOREWORD BY Vincenzo Traversa Peter Lang Peter Currents in Comparative WWW.PETERLANG.COM Romance Languages and Literatures A LITERARY HISTORY OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY Currents in Comparative Romance Languages and Literatures Tamara Alvarez-Detrell and Michael G. Paulson General Editors Vol. 242 This book is a volume in a Peter Lang monograph series. Every volume is peer reviewed and meets the highest quality standards for content and production. PETER LANG New York Bern Frankfurt Berlin Brussels Vienna Oxford Warsaw Natalino Sapegno A LITERARY HISTORY OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio A Study of Their Times and Works (Storia Letteraria del Trecento) TRANSLATED WITH A FOREWORD BY Vincenzo Traversa PETER LANG New York Bern Frankfurt Berlin Brussels Vienna Oxford Warsaw Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Sapegno, Natalino, 1901–1990, author. | Traversa, Vincenzo, translator. Title: A literary history of the fourteenth century: Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio: a study of their times and works / Natalino Sapegno; foreword and translation by Vincenzo Traversa. Other titles: Storia letteraria del Trecento. English Description: New York: Peter Lang, [2015] | Series: Currents in comparative Romance languages and literatures, ISSN 0893-5963; Vol. 242 | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2015010728 | ISBN 9781433131158 (hardcover: alk. paper) | ISBN 9781453916070 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Italian literature—To 1400—History and criticism. | Literature and society—Italy—History—To 1500. | Dante Alighieri, 1265–1321. | Petrarca, Francesco, 1304–1374. | Boccaccio, Giovanni, 1313–1375. | Italy—Civilization—1268–1559. Classification: LCC PQ4071 .S313 2015 | DDC 850.9/001—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015010728 Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de/. Natalino Sapegno, Storia Letteraria del Trecento—per gentile concessione dell’Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana Treccani, collana Riccardo Ricciardi Editore 1963 © 2016 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York 29 Broadway, 18th floor, New York, NY 10006 www.peterlang.com All rights reserved. Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm, xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited. To Professor Cesare Foligno, fervent Italian patriot, distinguished scholar, and educator. Acknowledgments Thanks are especially due to Ms. Ruthy Stephan of California State University, East Bay, for her technical suggestions, the kind staff of Peter Lang Publishing and of the Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana S.p.A. for their interest and assis- tance. But most of all I wish to thank my wife Gina for her valuable opinions and generosity. Table of Contents Foreword xi Introduction 1 Chapter One: The Literary Civilization of the Age of Dante 9 Chapter Two: Dante 17 Chapter Three: Between Dante and Petrarch 98 Chapter Four: Petrarch 113 Chapter Five: Boccaccio 156 Chapter Six: The Literature of the Minor Writers 194 Bibliography 229 Foreword Anyone wishing to investigate into the literary development of the golden century of early Italian literature, the Trecento, must read Natalino Sapegno’s extensive writ- ings on the subject and, among them in particular, his Storia letteraria del Trecento (Literary History of the Fourteenth Century), that appeared in April 1963 as part of the vast collection, La Letteratura Italiana—Storia e Testi (Italian Literature— History and Texts), directed by Raffaele Mattioli, Pietro Pancrazi and Alfredo Schiaffini for the Riccardo Ricciardi publishing house. At its introduction, this work was announced as un ‘opera diversissima, a most different work in the purpose that it pursued and, consequently, in the general plan that characterized it, as well as in its choice and distribution of the material. Furthermore, rather than an inde- pendent study, it was meant to become a part and a complement of a “system” so as to offer a panoramic synthesis and the essential characteristics of a very important moment in the development of the Italian and European culture. The volume that Sapegno wrote dedicates, in its original Italian version, about one third of its pages to Dante (excluding its bibliography), an almost equal num- ber of pages is dedicated to Petrarch and Boccaccio, while the minor writers are introduced more summarily, in proportion to their importance and position, in the cultural, historical and social events of the time. When Sapegno completed this study, he had already been conducting an active research and written numerous documents on the subject (as well as several XII | A LITERARY HISTORY OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY others on different authors and periods) for approximately three decades. The Storia in question, therefore, constituted the