The circulation of AABBBA in the period 1100-1350, and the special case of the sonnet

[A broad outline of work, to be concretised at a later date.]

Ed Emery [SOAS]

0. 01 OUTLINE OF RESEARCH TOPIC

My research studies the circulations of the verse form with rhyme-endings AABBBA in early Europe and in the Arabo-Judaic lyric cultures of al-Andalus, 1100-1300, together with the musics which accompany those verse forms, insofar as they are retrievable for analysis. I seek to establish that there are cross-overs from Andalus into early Europe and commonalities between Andalusi and European AABBBA forms. I seek further to show that the Italian sonnet is a special case of AABBBA, and both in form and contents derives ultimately from those traditions.

To some extent the ground is well trodden - AABBBA has been studied in terms of the “zajalesque”, a definition which pre-judges a possible Arabic antecedent of the form which is a terrain of acrimonious debate and has yet to be proven. See the literature survey below. In my MMus study I set about identifying AABBBA exempla, and found them in a broad historical sweep reaching from Ibn Gabirol (11th century), through Arab and Sufi poets (Ibn Arabi, al-Shushtari), passing through the Italian ballata, the French carole, through English popular theatre (mystery plays; Beggar’s Opera etc), to poetic duelling in present-day Lebanon and the anthem of the United States of America.

In most other fields of human endeavour the cross-overs from Arabo-Judaic culture into early Europe are attested (science, astronomy, architecture, medicine, astrology, mathematics, falconry, horse-rearing, cuisine etc). It would be strange if the borders turned out to be impermeable to music - even more so, since Arabic instruments (or derivatives therefrom) are massively present in early Europe. My thesis aims to extend our understandings of the reasons for the spread of the AABBBA-type verses.

There is a prima facie case for suggesting that the poetic form of the sonnet derives from the strophic lyric forms of al-Andalus – specifically, from the zajal / muwashshah form. It has been suggested that the sonnet relates back to the epistolary verse-form of the tenzone; in its earliest forms the tenzone appears to emulate the zajal / muwashshah form.

Morphological similarities can be traced between the sonnet and the zajal / muwashshah at the level of line-end rhyme patterns, internal rhyming, verse structure, etc. There are also similarities at the level of performative context (competitive rhyming, agonistic bravura, peer dialogue, codes of deference etc).

The case for deriving the sonnet from Andalusi poem/song models would be strengthened if we could show musical transmissions from Andalus into early Europe.

As regards the musicological section of my research, my intention is not to seek to establish direct lines of transmission. Instead I shall look at selected musical forms in the medieval European tradition which have apparent similarities with Andalusi verse forms, and which have not been sufficiently problematised by researchers.

0.02 METHODOLOGY

At the present stage of my research [April 2012] there is little or no evidence to prove direct linkages between the AABBBA Arabic-Jewish traditions of muwashshah and zajal in Andalus and AABBBA traditions in early Europe. Indeed a recent doctoral study, albeit conducted without reference to Arab and Hebrew sources, concludes that a polygenesis of forms is more likely than a direct transmission from Andalus to early Europe.[1]

That notwithstanding, I continue my search in databases – poetic anthologies of the various national traditions – in order to identify the limits, boundaries (temporal and geographic), extensions and variations of AABBBA. This is an ongoing project, which will close at the time of finalisation of my thesis.

Where clusters of AABBBA practice are found to exist, the logic of their aggregation will be examined.

Various authors have pointed to the similarities between the zajal / muwashshah form and short-strophic forms such as ballata, virelai etc. I propose to take this a stage further, by undertaking a structural analysis of late-period muwashshahaat and the European canzoni, to elucidate their principles of internal fracturings, word-play techniques, metrics etc with a view to establishing whether we can argue for a common lyric language shared between Arabic, Hebrew and Romance verse forms.

Since all these verse forms are predicated on the existence of a musical substrate, I shall extend the analytic work that has already been initiated by others (Monroe, Wulstan etc), with a view to identifying the musical principles of the AABBBA form. Analysis will be conducted on extant medieval notations, and on current repertoires of North Africa that claim Andalusi antecedents. I shall begin this work with the BBBA section of the AABBBA form, since it is historically distinctive and presents performative curiosities.

Thus I shall be working in musical repertoires such as Carols, Cantigas, North African Andalusi repertoires, Arabic Sufi repertoires and Hebrew liturgical repertoires. This may involve fieldwork trips.

There will be a specific concern for dance forms, since AABBBA is dance-song format of circle dance plus lead-singer plus chorus-response. Various repertoires of circle dance, both historical and contemporary, will be examined, extending through to virelai and rondeau treatments in French music (Machaut et al).

Since Arab musical instruments are known to have spread out from Andalus into early Europe, I shall continue my work on diffusion of instruments, particularly in the “popular” spectrum of social music. Particular attention will be paid to the rebec (Arabic: rebab), and the pipe and tabor.

0. 03. GENERAL REVIEW OF LITERATURE RELATED TO THE HYPOTHESIS

The field of literature is enormous; the following account lights on some of the more significant contributions.

-- The Arabist position

Julián Ribera [1912], in a study of the zajal verses of the Cordoban poet Ibn Quzman noted the similarities between the zajal and certain Romance lyric forms, and theorised an initial phase, following the Arab/Berber conquest of Andalus, in which the Arabic lyric was influenced by the Romance, a process which was reversed in the 11th and 12th centuries. [2]

Ramón Menéndez Pidal [1938] first popularised the notion of “zajalesque” to signal an Arabic precedence in lyric forms, with the effect that the “Arabist” thesis tended to overshadow possible origins in Middle Latin religious lyrics.[3]

S.M. Stern [1959] argues for all the muwashshah poetry written in Spain, whether in Arabic or in Hebrew, to be studied as a whole, as a shared area of cultural production. A retro-relationship with pre-existent Romance lyric forms is necessarily implied in the Romance-language kharjas (outgoing verses) of these muwashshahaat, but no forward trajectories are proposed. His account has the additional merit of bringing the itinerant Andalusi polymath and poet Ibn Ezra into the research picture.[4]

One problem of the Arabist position is that only with difficulty can the thematic topoi of Arabo-Andalusi poetry be found in troubadour poetry. Abu Haidar [2001] deals comprehensively with this problem.[5]

The historical development of these debates is detailed in Otto Zwaartjes [2001].[1][6]

-- Possibility of musical-lyrical cross-overs

Peter Dronke [1968] gives a wide-ranging and humane reading of medieval lyrics in various “national” cultures of Europe. A prime function of the medieval lyric was to accompany dance (dance-songs), a popular and ineradicable practice, as evidenced in ecclesiastical condemnations. He argues for the ubiquity and longevity of the carol and the rondeau as dance-songs, characterised particularly by variant usages of refrain. Observing that the formal characteristics of triple segments followed by a vuelta (“turning line”) and refrain, he invokes parallel forms with the same characteristics (Italian secular ballatas, Italian religious laudes, French virelais, Spanish cantigas, the English carol, and the colloquial Arabic zajal. Regarding trajectoris of derivation, he opts (unreferenced) for a precedence of Romance forms later adopted as strophic verse into Arabic poetics.[7]

Musical cross-overs are addressed in Liu and Monroe [1989], where song texts from the Arabo-Andalusi tradition are examined in relation to extant melodies from North Africa. [8]

Regarding specific genres, although they are not our primary area of concern, it should be noted that Le Gentil [1954] explores the possibility of two “zajalesque” forms, the virelai and villancico, having Arabic origins. He reaches no firm conclusion. On the other hand the New Grove Dictionary entry on virelai suggests that “convincing studies suggest a line of descent from 11th-century Arabic song in north Africa and Spain” (p. 775, s.v. virelai).[9]

Further regarding specific genres, Wulstan on cantigas.

A protagonist of the Arabist position, Maria Rosa Menocal [1981], offers a useful survey of positions outlined in Roger Boase, The Origin and Meaning of Courtly Love, but offers little to further discussion of musical (rather than literary) crossovers.[10]

In a recent contribution to the debate, Miriam Capaldo’s 2010 doctoral thesis La strofe zagialesca nella lirica profana romanze delle Origini challenges the Arabic derivation of Romance lyric forms implied and pre-judged in the term “zajalesque”. Drawing on secondary studies and offering no primary Arabic or Hebrew material, she concludes that the evidence points to “a polygenesis of the Arabic and Romance strophic forms”, with no genetic links in either direction.[11]

-- The “Early Music” and “French Music” nexus

Christopher Page of Cambridge is an obvious port of call for understandings of medieval music and its practices. Not least because in some senses his work (with Gothic Voices) defines what is understood performatively as “medieval music” [Leech-Wilkinson].

In XXX he cites the fact of the Arab instrumentarium that was imported wholesale into early Europe. However, elsewhere he has been unwilling or unable to address the question of Arab influences on the musics of early Europe. For instance, in Page [1997] he writes a chapter on the tunings of the Arab-derived rebab without a single reference to the detailed work of al-Farabi on the same matter.[12] Page [2011] is notable for the fact that his chapter defining “The Geography of Medieval Music” explicitly excludes the Arab-ruled areas of Spain.[13]

The PhD of Ardis Butterfield [1987][14] was supervised by Christopher Page, and follows onto the terrain that he has opened [see Page [1989] ]. There is no denying her major contribution to the study of French song; however her important work on the enté refrain in French song is somewhat marred by the lack of cross-referencing to similar citational and refrain practices in the zajal / muwashshah repertory.[15] Similarly her close reading of the poetic competitions in the puy of Arras would be enriched by reference to other poetic duelling / corresponding traditions in early Europe, including those of Andalus.[16]

-- Musicality of AABBBA

The musicality of AABBBA lyric forms has been a source of puzzlement to commentators. As Marrocco [1956] observes, although the name canzone clearly implies a musicality, “…we do not possess a single secular composition, monophonic or polyphonic, written in Italy during the thirteenth century”. He concludes: “We are presented then with a most difficult choice” – either (a) the music of the canzone in Dante’s time was improvised, and no notation was felt to be needed; or (b) the canzone was no longer sung but recited to an improvised musical accompaniment” [p. 713] [17] This position was reinforced by Aurelio Roncaglia [1978], whose strong stand against musicality of early Italian lyric forms is iterated in M. Santagata [1979] “Che la poesia profana del Duecento sia, fin dalle origini siciliane, nuda di veste musicale mi sembra un dato da considerare […] ormai acquisito”. [18]

However a counter-position emerges from Elena Abramov-van Rijk, who has written on the subject of the sung rendering of poetry in Italy (“parlar cantando”), for instance citing a sonnet by Niccolo de' Rossi in which he lists singers of poetry.[19] A comparative reading of the zajal tradition in Lebanon and elsewhere suggests that cantillation may have been the form of delivery, but I am not aware of published work on this. [20]

-- Instrumentation

The circulation of Arab instruments (or derivations therefrom) in early Europe should provide a fruitful field of research for potential crossovers. Insofar as dance-song is a popular form, cheaper and simpler accompanying instruments may have been the instruments of choice. The rebec (Ar. rebab) is a case in point, and its history and development is documented in Mary Remnant [1989].[21]

The pipe and tabor are a known border-crossing combination for the accompaniment of dance, and are addressed in Humphries[1989]. [22]

-- Poetic duelling

Poetic duelling is one key to understanding the diffusion of AABBBA. The literature on poetic duelling is extensive. A key area of research is the Troubadour poetic competitions, and these are analysed in Harvey and Paterson [2010]. However this is a literary rather than a musical treatment.[23] In the case of the sonnet, Giunta [2002] explores its duelling aspect, again in literary terms, in relation to the tenso tradition.[24] For the musicality of poetic duelling, the present-day zajal cultures of Lebanon and Palestine recommend themselves for a comparative reading (televised poetic competitions, national art form, performances by poets at weddings). Nadia Yaqub [2007] offers a detailed account.[25]

-- Mathematics of poetry

There are reasons for believing that numerology plays a significant part in the verse structuring of medieval poetry. In the case of Dante’s Divina commedia and the originary Sicilian sonnets these are examined in Pötters [1998 and 2005]. [26]A similar approach could usefully be applied to the muwashshah poetry of the mathematician and astrologer Abraham Ibn Ezra, but I know of no work that treats of it. [27]

0. 04. EXPECTED CONTRIBUTION TO THE DISCIPLINE

The discipline (understood as medieval lyric, medieval song and medieval music) is characterised by exclusions, lack of linguistic and musical competences, willed shortsightedness and worse. In Menocal’s words [1981], “The dichotomy of scholarly endeavours has created a near vacuum in cultural interaction where once there were three cultures in intimate contact”. I expect to be able to create a more unitary conception of the fields of poetic, sung and musical practice as they operated in early Europe, and in relation to the Arab-Jewish cultures of al-Andalus. I also expect to effect a substantial expansion of the analytical terrain of the sonnet.

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5. THE SONNET AS A SPECIAL CASE OF AABBBA

5.0. Propaedeutica

5.0.1 Preface

5. 1. History, origins and problematics of the sonnet

5.1.1. The sonnet: at the origins of the Italian vernacular lyric

5.1.2. Structure of the sonnet

5.1.3. Origins of the sonnet

5.1.4. Structural aspects of Italian tenzone

5.1.5. Problematics of the sonnet

5.1.6. Considering the zajalesque

5.2. Social milieu of the sonnet

5.2.1. Social milieu of the sonnet: royalty

5.2.2. Social milieu of the sonnet: cross-class

5.2.3. Social milieu of the sonnet: the sonnet as peer deference

5.2.4. Social milieu of the sonnet: the sonnet as correspondence poetry – the Sicilians

5.2.5. Social milieu of the sonnet: sexuality of the sonnet

5.3. Fields of knowingness

5.3.1. The sonnet as part of a field of knowingness

5.3.2. The sonnet and science

5.3.2.1. Optics

5.3.2.2. Natural phenomena

5.3.3. Plato’s Phaedo

5. 4. Thematics and personifications of the sonnet

5. 4. 1. Thematics: The gaze on women

5. 4. 2. Thematics: The sonnet in relation to Arabic influences in Sicily

5. 4. 3. Thematics: The sonnet in relation to the cantigas de escarnho e mal dizer

5. 4. 4. Thematics: The performative “I” of the sonnet

5. 4. 5. Thematics: The sonnet in a context of proto-theatricality

5.5. Structural issues of the sonnet

5.5.1. Structural aspects: mathematics of the sonnet

5.5.2. Structural aspects: musicality of the sonnet

5.5.3. Structural aspects: terminology of the sonnet

5.5.4. Structural aspects: multiplicity of caesura

5.5.5. Structural aspects: the hendecasyllable

5.6. The sonnet in practice – two repertoires

5.6.0 Opening remarks pending future work

5.7. Provisional conclusions regarding the sonnet within the AABBBA tradition

5.7.1. Social context

5.7.2. Structural questions

5.7.3. Genre characteristics of the sonnet

5.7. 4. Circuits of knowingness

5.7. 5. Musicality

5.0.0. Propaideutica

Three of the greatest cosmologists of the Middle Ages provide accounts (philosophical novels) in which adepts engage in an ascent through the heavenly spheres in order to reach a higher level of consciousness (gnosis), which requires rationality to be enhanced by the additional stage of faith in order to reach the heights. Thus Dante Alighieri (the Divina Commedia), Ibn al-‘Arabi (The Alchemy of Happiness[28]), and Abraham Ibn Ezra (Hay ben mekits, being a Hebrew rendering of Avicenna’s Hayy Ibn Yaqzan[29]). All three writers, for a significant part of their poetic output, chose to use the AABBBA-type lyric formats which were associated with popular dance. Of this dance we know little, except that it had a widespread diffusion, and was a circle or chain dance, involving a lead singer and a chorus of dancers, possibly engaging in improvisational verses and shared choruses. At some level, without assuming necessary derivations, this argues for arenas of philosophical and lyric practice which, if not shared, are at least concordant. To my knowledge this general framing has not previously been addressed by science.

5.0.1 Preface

Verbal sparring, although a constant in widely diverse human societies, takes specific forms in early Europe, notably in the territories that we now know as Spain, Portugal, France and Italy. Necessarily strophic, since each versifying unit implies the presence of two or more interlocutors, the poems of agonistic poeteering tend to have a threefold form of header + developmental segment + refrain or iteration. In the form known as tenso the poem as a whole concludes with a double envoi which is the recourse to judgement, in which the countervailing debating positions are submitted to a judge or jury to decide who is the winner. Some of the poems in the tradition have a structuring binary-ternary principle (twoness+threeness), which can be observed in the genres of zajal, cantiga, ballata, laudes and sonetto. The terminology for the constituent parts of these verses (refrain, main body, burden etc) tends to be ill-defined and confused in each of the national repertoires, both in modern critical literature and in medieval writings on poetry. For the purpose of this MPhil Upgrade I have produced a chapter on the sonnet as a special case within the poetic duelling tradition characterised by AABBBA-type verse structures.

The Italian sonnet appears to be part of the AABBBA tradition – in its twoness and threeness, for instance, and in its existential proximity to the ballata form within the threefold nexus of sonetto/ballata/canzone which were the “formes fixes” of early Italian vernacular poetry. However, since it falls outside of the AABBBA form in sensu stricto, here it is treated as a subset – separate, distinct, but also inseparable.

Various attempts have been made to establish the derivation of the sonnet. Michele Amari relates it to the Sicilian strambotto.[30] Others relate it to the tenso of the Provençal troubadours. The critical literature will be reviewed briefly. However, when posed solely in terms of similarities of lyric structures, these attempts have difficulty in establishing probative connections in the series zajal > troubadours > tenso > sonnet.

This sparseness of evidence requires the researcher to expand the possible evidential base, in order to bring in other factors that range beyond the merely prosodic.

Adopting the notion of “thickness of description” [Geertz] to extend the field of analysis, I examine the sonnet in in respect of its behaviours (the social conventions of poeteering); its intellectual habitus (the intellectual and scientific ideas engaged in and engendered through sonneteering discourse); and the nature of its performative moment (in particular, the performative “I” of the poet-antagonist); this latter to be inflected, diachronically, by the particular economics of patronage pertaining at particular periods.

It is in the instance of behaviours (poetic duelling; correspondence poetry etc) that correlations may best be instanced in the series zajal > tenso > sonnet; consequently these are privileged in the account that follows, in which I address the socio-cultural phenonenology of the sonnet as a means of production of social capital. The system of peer exchange is examined briefly, and variously, in relation to sonnet, zajal / muwashshah and tenso.

5. 1. History, origins and problematics of the sonnet

5.1.1. The sonnet: at the origins of the Italian vernacular lyric

Mainstream Italian poesy at the time of the “Sicilian school” operated a threefold stable of poetic forms, the canzone, ballata and sonetto. The names of the first two clearly bear musical connotations; however in the course of the 13th century the musical aspect appears to become lost and they come to be literary forms. Nevertheless analysis has to be conducted with music in mind.

The archaeology of the vernacular lyric in Italy – the “poetry of the origins” (Contini)[31] – offers a number of principal repertoires (viz. the sonnet at the Sicilian court; the dialogic contrasto (e.g. “Rosa fresca aulentissima”); and the sonnet among Tuscan poets including Dante). They are distinguished by (a) the fact of an implicit two-way communication – as dialogue poetry, correspondence poetry and agonistic poeteering; (b) the structural presence of the AABBBA rhyme principle; and (c) the exhibition of poetry as a private/public performative act. These three separate features are foundational in the history of the Italian vernacular lyric.

Provençal literary models (cansos / canzoni) were adopted at the Sicilian court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II (1194-1250). The court notary Giacomo da Lentini (fl. c.1210-60) was a key poetic innovator (one of a group of court poets), and it is to him that the invention of the sonnet is traditionally attributed. The sonnet becomes, immediately at its inception, a vehicle for correspondence poetry and for poetic “duelling”, involving two, three, or even more participants (the practice known as tenzone, related to the Provençal tenso). Eighty years later the sonnet maintains its force as the favoured means of literary interchange between circle of young poets around Dante Alighieri, in registers that range from the high and spiritual to the low and earthy. Those poets then broke with the old traditions and stripped the sonnet of its formalistic excesses, so that it transits into a new condition, with the Dolce stil novo. Thereafter it develops into its canonical form with the sonnets of Petrarch, whereupon the writing of sonnets becomes a rite of passage for men (rarely women) of culture through the ages. The sonnet is a remarkable socio-literary product – a compact and intensely worked “package of thought in action”. In socio-poetic praxis it functions also as a means of production of social capital.

The sonnet occupies a pivotal position in the development of European poetic practice. A congelation of various pre-existing practices, it becomes a forme fixe with rules that have lasted to our present day (rules which, we find, are merely confirmed by any attempts at variation).[32]

5.1.2. Structure of the sonnet

The form of the sonnet is characteristically 14 hendecasyllable lines, with a rhyming structure ABAB ABAB CDE CDE or variants thereof. Unlike the Italian ballata, it lacks the “header” lines characteristic of zajalesque verse. It is not directly in line with AABBBA forms, but exhibits commonalities with them. Lines are generally divided by caesura; there is a “twoness+threeness”, and there may be a “turn of thought” in the transition from the ABAB to the CDE section.

A hundred years after its original emergence, there were many variant forms of the sonnet in existence. These are listed in the Summa of Antonio da Tempo.[33]

5.1.3. Origins of the sonnet

(a) Relation to the Provençal canso

Although direct lines of derivation have not yet been established in the critical literature, the presumed roots of sonnet practice are to be found in the verse-structures of coblas and the inter-poet exchanges known as tenso, pre-existing in Provençal troubadour poetry. In this interpretation the broken-out stanzas of canzoni (coblas sparsas) are given a distinctive Sicilian inflection in c.1230.[34]

In addressing originary derivations forms for the sonnet, a number of possibilities suggest themselves. They include the following:

(a) The Provençal tenso tradition is exemplified in four extant tenso / partimen poems involving the poet Gaucelm Faudit (c.1170 – c.1202) (see Appendix 1). Examination of the rhyme structure of the Gaucelm Faidit–En Rembaut hints at the kind of rhyming structures pertaining in sonnets using the scheme ABBA ABBA CDE CDE, albeit in permutation.

A specificity of the sonnet is the feature of a distinct threeness in the final 6 lines (for instance ABAB ABAB CDE CDE). This needs to be accounted for via a wider search among related forms, to establish the geographic and historical extensions of this “threeness” (for instance in German poetry it has a more or less clear terminus post quem).

(b) Walther von der Vogelweide

In regard of origins of the sonnet, and subject to further analysis, I propose adding a further ingredient, namely the “Palästinalied” of Walther von der Vogelweide [c.1170 – c.1230], which has a verse form as follows:

   1 Álrêrst lébe ich mir werde,
   sît mîn sündic ouge siht
   daz here lant und ouch die erde,
   der man sô vil êren giht.
      ez ist geschehen, des ich ie bat:
      ích bin komen an die stat,
      dâ got menischlîchen trat.[35]

This satisfies the condition of binary + tertiary which characterises the sonnet.

[Note: In terms of his proximity to the Scuola siciliana, Walter von der Vogelweide was a court poet to Federico II, and received a grant of land as a gift from the emperor.]

(c) Threads of continuity. For example Giacomo da Lentini’s wordplays

Contemporary with the Sicilian school was the flourishing poetic culture of the city of Arras in Northern France. As described by Ardis Butterfield, this was the largest centre of poetic production in Europe.[36] Its practitioners included all strata of society – kings and commoners, men and women alike. The earliest records date from the 1190s. Here the tradition was of poets meeting in sessions, where they would often recite in competition with each other, and after judgement by some appointed person, the winner would be declared “prince” of the gathering.

The competing poets of the Arras puy used complex internal divisions of the line in order to display bravura. Two sonnets by Giacomo da Lentini exhibit elaborately similarly worked internal rhymings. For instance the following verse (for the full text see Appendix 2 below):

[E]o viso – e non diviso – da lo viso,

e per aviso – credo ben visare;

però diviso – ‘viso’ – da lo ‘viso’,

c’altr’è lo viso – che lo divisare.

(d) French poetic tradition

Threads of continuity with the French poetic tradition are evident in lexical usages. Provençalisms are prominent in the poetry of the Sicilian School, and then passed on to Dante and his contemporaries

(e) Rhetorical figures in the Sicilian School

The division of the canzone (pace Dante) are fronte, sirma, which are divided by the diesis (and pedes and versus). Both the Italian sonnet and the canzone have marked internal break points (in the sonnet, between ottava and sestina). Santagatta, writing in 1979, wondered whether from this fact it might be argued that the sonnet was a broken-out stanza of a canzone (Santagatta 1979, p. 68).[37]

In the sonnets of Giacomo da Lentini there is a clearly-operating rhetorical figure, namely the repetition of lexical items (single words, or aggregates of etymologically related words, or entire phrases) from the ottava to the sestina (also terzine – confusion of terms). In the practice of carrying over lexical items from one verse segment to another we find an affinity with the Provençal practice of coblas capfinidas (a new verse begins with the last word of the preceding verse, generally taken as being a mnemonic aid among poets) [See Leandro Biadene, Morfologia del sonetto.] A parallel change is that between poetic units in which the sense ends at the end of the fronte (before the diesis) and those in which it carries over across the divide. Here again there is a marked development of practice between the originary Sicilian School and the poets around Dante Alighieri.

5.1.4. Structural aspects of the tenzone

In Italian literature, tenzone is co-terminous with the sonnet (which is the preferred vehicle of this form of discourse). However, since tenzone implies competition with one’s correspondent (agonistic poeteering), sonnets in the tenzone genre may have a heightened presence of certain features, compared with non-tenzone sonnets.

These are particularly apparent in the rhyme patterns, which are the pivotal point of the poetic challenge, since the correspondent should reply by matching rhyme patterns.

Thus we have rhyme techniques such as the following:

– difficult rhymes – such as orso, -agna, -oppa, -ampo

– rhyming by broken words, such as parla, par l’à, par là

– rhyming by truncated word endings, such as el, -on, -am, -ech, -ob

– and others;

The tenzone sonnet tends to be both virtuosic and formalistic, in the sense of having complex lexical and rhyming patterns. This is already evident from the earliest examplars, written at the Sicilian court c. 1230. However, at a certain point in the sonnet’s development (Dante… the “petroso” or “stony” style) poets turn against this formalism, which tends to operate at the expense of content and meaning. Hence the development of the Dolce stil novo” [“Sweet new style”]

Further technical variations of the sonnet include the use of words and phrases from other languages; the writing of poems in another language; the writing of poems in dialect forms.

5.1.5. Problematics of the sonnet

(a) The problem of the relation between text and music, and the shift from musical lyric form to written lyric form.

(b ) The problem of the immediate derivation: consolidation or innovation?

(c) Can we infer any relationship with the surrounding Arab and Jewish poetic culture of Sicily?

(d) Is there a relationship with mathematics in the structuring of the sonnet?

(e) The question of whether we can assume public performance for the sonnet and canzone – or are they purely literary?

(f) How do we solve the puzzle of the written-out form of the sonnet, in which the last line of each terzina is written out separately, with a follow-on indication from the previous lines?

5.1.6. Considering the zajalesque

The zajal and its cognate muwashshah is a strophic lyric form characteristic of Arabic and Hebrew poetry in al-Andalus. Its rhyme scheme, broadly defined, is AABBBA. Its principal exponent in Andalus was the poet Ibn Quzman whose poem No. 62 (Edition of García Gómez: Panegyric for Abu-l-Husain ‘Ali az-Zarhuni) we take as an exemplar:

0. Al-ganna, lau ‘u’tina-ha, hiy ar-rah

1. Wa-ishq al-milah

Nazalna li-l-muzahi wa li-l-hidlan

Tara ma’ nisa wa-tara ma’ subyan

Wa-darat ash-shuraiba, wa-kan ma kan.

Hallu-ni min an-nasiha, ya nussah!

Fasadi salah!

Similar verse forms are found in Romance lyrics, notably in the Italian ballata, where the threefold structure of incipit, developmental body and refrain can be observed. Thus the following, by Jacopone da Todi:

Que farai, fra' Iacovone?

Ôi venuto al paragone.

Fusti al Monte Pellestrina,

anno e mezzo en desciplina;

loco pigliasti malina

dónne ài mo la presone.

Probendato en cort'i Roma,

tale n'ho redutta soma;

onne fama se 'n ci afuma,

tal n'aio 'mmaledezzone. [etc]

Therefore the term zajalesque is sometimes used to denote this kind of verse. However the usage has been contested, since it implies a relationship of the zajal and (for instance) the ballata which is yet to be proven.

5.2. Social milieu of the sonnet

The process of exchanging poems within a court environment consolidates social relations and enhances the social standing of the poets concerned. Thus we can say that the sonnet functions as a “means of production of social capital”. The sonnet was (let's say from the 1230 to 1300) an extraordinary mechanism for peer communication between urban and imperial elites, with a currency that also extended rapidly into the lower social orders. In particular it fulfils that function through the medium of tenzone exchanges.

The sonneteering in the poetic circles associated with Dante Alighieri takes place between peer groups, of men of a similar age and outlook. In this they echo the earlier extant corpus of sonnets, the scuola siciliana, in which the participants were the court officials of the court of Federico II (and indeed also the emperor himself, if we are to believe the manuscript ascriptions).

In the field of agonistic poeteering it would be reasonable to speak of a “popolo della gara poetica”, spread across Europe and spread across classes. As stated above, it is, in a sense, democratic – also because it takes place in the vernacular.

5.2.1. Social milieu of the sonnet: royalty

More specifically, however, the nexus of agonistic poeteering, correspondence poetry and AABBBA is similarly inseparable from the life of the royal courts of Europe.

Crowned heads were poets; indeed, the iconography shows them as such; and where the iconography is absent, the kings and princes are portrayed as poets in the act of canzoniere compilation – collections of poems in which kingly poems (regardless of whether we believe the kingly ascriptions) are given pride of place. This royal nexus, loosely defined, evidences a distributed network of poeteering as a courtly procedure on a par with jousting, falconry, hunting, board games etc. The Hohenstaufens, self-evidently, were related, and thus kingly poetry becomes a kingly affair – although other crowned heads also engaged. Thus King Diniz of Portugal (grandson of Alfonso X) engages in poetic corrspondence in the genres of cantigas d’escarnho e mal dizer;[38] Kings also engaged with commoners.[39]

It would be reasonable to speak of this field of poetry as being a Hohenstaufen thing.

Thus the sonnet bears within it implicit political as well as poetical values. Furthermore, as poetry it is both urban and urbane – as opposed to courtly or pastoral, for instance. And in its commitment to science and knowingness [see below] it further bears testimony to the imaginative power of the Federican project.

5.2.2. Social milieu of the sonnet: cross-class

The cross-class environment. Walther von der Vogelweide is on first name terms with Federico. The kings and commoners of Butterfield’s Arras. The kings and commoners who are the sonneteers.

5.2.3. Social milieu of the sonnet: the sonnet as peer deference

The “correspondence” aspect of the sonnet in turn presupposes a circle of persons capable of that discernment. It suggests a closed circle of persons with shared cultural concerns. On occasion the circle may become additionally closed by the employment of codes and private languages (thus the trobar clus practices of the troubadours, brought into early Italian practices; tending to create a closed environment implying an exclusion of those who do not “know”).

Some poems speak of people who have “intendimento” (“understanding”). Others Others speak of people who have bad knowledge – who are “di sí folle sapere”.

In another exchange about love, Giacomo da Lentini says (in “Feruto sono isvariatamente”) “E chi lo mi volesse contastare” – “and whoever would wish to disagree with me about this”. The debating element is clear, and the attribution of “knowledge” to one’s interlocutor is a measure of peer deference and a mechanism for the production of social capital. However, note that even when peer deference appears to be implied between poets – as among the young poets of Dante’s circle – the invocations of wisdom in one’s interlocutor (apostrophisation as ‘saggio’ – “wise” – etc) may actually be ironic and mocking.

5.2.4. The sonnet as correspondence poetry – The Sicilians

Some of the earliest extant poems in the Italian vernacular are sonnets written by Giacomo da Lentini (fl. c.1210-60), notary at the court of Frederick II (1194-1250, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Sicily). They are influenced by pre-existing models from the Provençal poets. Notable in his output are correspondence poems in the macro-poetic structure known as tenzone – specifically, a five-poem exchange between himself and the the Abbot of Tivoli. And also a three-way tenzone between Giacomo da Lentini, Jacopo Mostacci and Pier della Vigna.

Crucially, in the course of the sonneteering correspondence process, the sonnet lays down the terms of its own definition and development. In other words, in the development of the ars poetica of the sonnet, the sonnet itself is used as the medium of polemic and critical readjustment;[40] it functions as a means of production of a poetics. There are many examples of poets using the sonnet-form in order to criticise the practices and philosophies of other poets Cavalcanti’s attack on Guittone; critical exchange with Orlandi. Cino da Pistoia.[41] It is in this context that the outer limits of the sonnet experience are defined.

5.2.5. Sexuality of the sonnet

The sonnet is equally at home in both the high and the low register. From the austerely spiritual to the earthily sexual.

Contrary to what one would assume from the extant manuscript tradition, the sexuality of the sonnet is not all heterosexual. There are the many homosexual sonnets of Michelangelo, as well as six attributed to Nicola Muscia da Siena (c. 1285).[42]

Furthermore the male gendering of the sonnet is somewhat nuanced. Yes, the sonnet / tenzone was generally men’s stuff (with the girls marginally in attendance), but there is a notable switch of focus in Dante’s later poems, where he makes women the addressees and interlocutors of his poems about love. [“Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore”; note a similar advocacy in the Convivio]

5.3. Fields of knowingness

5.3.1. The sonnet as part of a field of knowingness

The existential core of sonnet practice is a seeking after knowledge, a proposition and interrogation of scientific or quasi-scientific concepts (likewise of gnostic and religious concepts). As such, the sonnet represents a package of thought, and is to be viewed as a vector of scientific discourse, an airing and testing of scientific concepts [concepts which, customarily, turn out to be well-worn topoi]. Insofar as the sonnet can be appreciated as a tool, it is a tool for proposing, testing and debating ideas. It is a medium of intellectual discourse between persons of discernment. Later this aspect takes on a parodic slant.

The Italian sonnet partakes of the ethos of 13th-century scientism – the new knowledges, related to vision, optics, visual representation, magnetism, number, planet movements, astrology, Greek-derived philosophy etc.[43] These knowledges are intrinsically link to Arab and Jewish scientific traditions (partly in translation of the Greek tradition). Aristotle, al-Farabi etc. To this extent it is anti-papal. [Note also: Cavalcanti the atheist; Immanuello Romano the “bad Jew”.]

We can speak in terms of a “performance of knowledge”. In correspondence the poets would use formulae such as “I am writing to you in the hopes that your knowledge can enlighten the following question”. Thus “Solicitando un poco meo savere... a voi mando per determinare…” “Solicitando un poco meo savere / e con lui mi vogliendo diletare”. These epistolary formulae, commonly found at the start of sonnets, imply peer deference, and indeed should be examined in the light of medieval letter-writing conventions.

5.3.2. The sonnet and science

As regards the intellectual content of the Norman Sicilian court, the following abbreviated account is indicative:[44]

A translator called Eugenius, evidently a Greek, “was one of the most famous men in the [Norman] kingdom”. He had already translated most of Ptolemy’s Optics from Arabic into Latin. Another translator was Henry Aristippus, a Latin secular clerk who was to become archdeacon of Catania. He produced the first Latin translation of Plato’s Phaedo (1160) and translated the fourth book of Aristotle's Meteorologica, which analyses questions of the hot, the cold, the dry and the moist.[45]

Therefore in the last phase of Norman rule, the Norman court has at its disposal fundamental texts of ethics, natural science, theories of optics and vision etc. Thirty years later (1220-30) the first sonnets emerge from the corps of courtiers, notaries and bishops associated with the Hohenstaufen Sicilian court of Federico II. For example the tenzone exchange between the court notary Giacomo da Lentini and the Abbot of Tivoli – men we can assume to have the same social standing and intellectual interests as Henry Aristippus, Archdeacon of Catania.

As regards Arab-Jewish relations at the post-Norman (Hohenstaufen) Sicilian court of the emperor Federico II,[46] the verdict is unequivocal: there were continuous cultural contacts with Muslims and Jewish savants, involving translations of scientific and philosophical texts, the posing of scientific and intellectual questions, the transit of scholars from many countries, and a genuine lively interest in what the “East” had to offer.

However, at the level of poetic structures and literary thematic commonalities, there is precious little evidence of contact with Arab cultures. [In passing one should also note that among the extant Arabic poets of pre-Norman Sicily, there is not much evidence of muwashshah / zajal strophic verse.[47]]

From the extant texts it is clear that the early sonnets are involved with matters of human and natural science (including the science of love). We could perhaps push the argument further, to suggest that these intellectual concerns arise in concomitance with the Socratic dialogues that were translated at the Norman court – dialogues which enact a very particular method of seeking after and representing human knowledge.

This gives a slightly different shading to the observations by Zyg Baránski, that “the poets of the ‘Sicilian School’ had attempted to weave strands of philosophical matter into their love poetry” and “It is clear that serious efforts were being made in Italy to give at least a ‘scientific veneer’ to poetry”,[48] which do not seem to do full justice to the intense intellectual interest of the time. The scientific interest seems to run deeper than these remarks would suggest.

A correct appraisal of the cultural habitus of the sonnet needs to extend outwards into a “thick description” of the intellectual mileu in which it was created. Already I have referred to the scientific interests of Frederick II, as manifested in the Sicilian court. The reference can now be narrowed, for instance to the field of optics, conceived as including light, vision, anatomy of the eye and psychophysics.

5.3.2.1 Optics

The Islamic philosopher Ibn al-Haytham [c. 965-1040] [known as Al Hazen, unclear whether he was Arab or Iranian] is an obligatory point of reference in this regard. His ground-breaking Optics [Kitab al-Manazir], translated into Latin, is already cited in the work of Roger Bacon [c.1214–1294] and hence has a currency in European thought. We can take three quotations from the Optics, to see how they fit with the intellectual climate of the Federican court:[49]

On the phenomenon of perceived beauty Ibn al-Haytham says: “The sun, the moon, and the stars look beautiful without there being in them a cause on account of which they look beautiful and appealing other than their radiant light. Therefore, light by itself produces beauty.” [Optics II, 3, 202][50]

On the subject of artistic representation: “How can artists succeed in giving their work a similarity to nature that is, strictly speaking, impossible?” [Optics, III][51]

On the subject of human visual perception: People perceive the world as readers – taking the signs and transforming them into internal images that have no equivalent at all in the external world. [Optics][52]

From the literature it appears that these concerns were current at the court of Frederick II – with the novel addition that here they were combined also in a science of love. The “courtly love” discourses of the Provençal poetry come to be inflected further with an examination of the phenomenology and reasons of love.

The evidence from the Sicilian sonnets is clear. The poets debate how it is that the image of the beloved, travelling through the eyes, can come to excite feelings of love. For instance, Giacomo da Lentini: “Or come pote sì gran donna entrare / per gli ochi mei che sì piccioli sone?” [“Now, how can such a large lady enter through my eyes, which are so small? – XXII] and “e li occhi in prima genera[n] l’amore / e lo core li dà nutricamento” [“It is the eyes which in the first place generate love / and the heart then gives it nourishment” – XIX].[53]

Baránski notes that these scientific aspects are explored in Rossend Arques [2000] and Enrico Musacchio [2003].[54] Noting the need for further work, he adds: “In any case, it is clear that extensive further research needs to be undertaken on the philosophical character of Romance vernacular poetry.”

5.3.2.2. Natural phenomena

A similar interest emerges in other sonnets, for instance regarding the question of magnetism. Peter of Maricourt was the author of a famous letter, Epistola de Magnete, in which he described some of the earliest European experiments with magnetism. The work of Petrus Peregrinus [c.1269] explains the operations of magnetism and compasses, which were of immediate interest in a medical world concerned with shipping and trade. We find this interest in magnetism emerging in one of the extant sonnets.

Or the interest in meteorological phenomena, as in Lentini’s sonnet (see next section), which should be read in the light of Aristotle’s Meteorologica

5.3.3. Plato’s Phaedo

What is important is that these scientific interests are also manifestly represented in the intellectual concerns of the early Sicilian sonnets. For instance in the relentless iterated discourse about the relation between love and the faculty of vision, as in Giacomo da Lentini’s sonnet:

Ben è alcuna fiata om amatore

senza vedere so ’namoramento,

ma quell’amor che stringe con furore

da la vista de li occhi à nas[ci]mento.

More specifically, however, the translation by Henry Aristippus of Plato’s Phaedo (1160) is particularly interesting. If we set the Phaedo alongside the extant sonnets of Giacomo da Lentini, it is hard to avoid the sense that there are consonances. First, because the exuberance of natural science investigation in general (the power of magnetism; of the ability of sunlight to pass through glass, etc.). Then specific phenomena: (a) visibility and invisibility in the discussion of the soul ; the discussion of things being larger and smaller (“Or come pote sì gran donna entrare / per gli ochi mei che sì piccioli sone?”); (b) the tension between hot and cold [“Snow can never [...] admit the cold, and still be what it was” [Phaedo, p. 149] (“A l’aire claro ò vista ploggia dare, / ed a lo scuro rendere clarore; / e foco arzente ghiaccia diventare, / e freda neve rendere calore”); (c) gemmatology, as in “Diamante, né smiraldo, né zafino, / né vernul’altra gema prezïosa,” etc;

And, to extend a point in the light of what we have said about the structure of the sonnet, it is tempting to see some relation between the structure of the sonnet and the whole discussion on twoness and threeness in Plato.

5. 4. Thematics and personifications of the sonnet

5. 4. 1. Thematics: The gaze on women

Gaze is to be understood here both literally and figuratively.

The court of Federico II was concerned with gaze and the science of light and vision. In this, it drew on Arab cultural traditions. This was literally true in the case of the castles built by Federico – for instance the enigmatic Castel del Monte, which has a distinctince “see and warn” look-out point, copied from the Arab desert castles of the Umayyad period. It was also figuratively true, in the sense that the early Federican sonnets are built around the notion of “love enters through the eyes”, and therefore is an action mediated through light and vision (hence the puzzle of whether blind people can truly love). Thus the science of light, reaching the West from Arab theorists such as Hisham, as documented by Hans Belting.[55]

5. 4. 2. Thematics: The sonnet in relation to Arabic influences in Sicily

There is a subsidiary line of interest – whether the poetry of the “Sicilian” court of Frederick II could have been affected, inflected by the Arabic and Hebrew cultures existing in Sicily at the time. A difficult terrain of analysis.

Subject to the caution that “Arabic” may also mean “Berber”, there is substantial evidence that the Sicilian court of Frederick II exhibited cultural sympathies with, and cultural borrowings from, Arabic culture. I

Regarding this vexed and tendentious matter of Arabo-Norman relations, two separate realms of influnce have to be examined. On the one hand, Arabic cultural survivals from the pre-Norman period; on the other, ongoing Arabic cultural contacts during the Norman and Hohenstaufen periods.

Two substantial evidences of the multilingual capacities of the first Norman dynasty (King Roger II of Sicily, 1095-1154) have come down to us. The quadrilingual tombstone of the mother of the clerk Grisanthe (Latin, Greek, Arabic and Judeo-Arabic).[56] And the parchment mapping the land ownership scheme of Palermo prior to the building of the cathedral. Furthermore, the coronation cloak of the Holy Roman emperors, created by the state silk industry in Sicily (in the manner of Byzantium), carries around its hem a dedicatory text in Arabic, in Kufic script; and early coins of Federico II also bear Kufic script.

Negotiations over (expropriations of) land ownership would have involved court officials in direct contact with the Arab-speaking populations of the island, and we might reasonably assume a mutual comprehension of community manners and mores.

Notarial practices would also have been in play (for instance matters related to land ownership, marriage, inheritance etc), in relation both to the Arab community and the Jewish community of the island, and this would have brought the literate representatives of the various communities into relation with each other.[57]

5. 4. 3. Thematics: The sonnet in relation to the cantigas de escarnho e mal dizer

The generality of critical literature ascribes the origins of the sonnet to troubadour poetry and tenso, with no further specification.

There exists a strong body of tenso poetry in the Galician-Portugese tradition associated with the court of Alfonso X of Leon and Castile. In particular the poetry (sung and/or accompanied) of insult and mockery, the cantigas d'escarnho e de mal dizer.

The sonnet has the possibility of insulting exchanges – for instance the famous tenzone consisting of six mutually-insulting sonnets exchanged between Dante and Forese Donati. This needs accounting for.

5. 4. 4. Thematics: The performative “I” of the sonnet

In examining the performative “I” of the sonnet, I move from observations by Bakhtin (the hero of the novel) to identify the “I” of the sonnet, who will then be counterposed to the communitarian “we” of the other leg of the threefold sonnet-ballata-canzone nexus – the ballata and laude.

5. 4. 5. Thematics: The sonnet in a context of proto-theatricality

In addition the performative “I” in tenso and sonnet practice embodies a proto-theatricality.

Where there is language there is speech; implicit in speech is performance; performance implies audience. The sonnet is a speech-act implying a public. It is predicated on writing-for-distribution (correspondence poetry), writing-for-a-public and writing-for-archiving (the sonnets recorded and anthologised in collected mss.). As such, its performance implies a proto-theatricality.

There is arguably a human need for theatricality. However in mediaeval times, theatre as such was in its infancy (emerging slowly from the ecclesiastical “Quem quaeritis” tableaux and popular festive and carnival manifestations). The theatrical moment was provided by other and different means. For instance the Arabic maqamat (al-Harizi), the Hebrew machberot (al-Charizi), and their equivalent European forms (Boccaccio, Decameron etc), prosimetrum forms combining both prose and verse in a continuous narrative, which assume an assembly of cultured persons able to enjoy, appreciate and contribute to literary exchanges.

It could be argued that the peer-to-peer tenzone exchanges of court officials at the Sicilian court of Federico II embody similar principles of proto-theatricality, and that the sonnet is a (special-case) form of public theatricality. This would be particularly true if the exchanges were ever true to the tradition, and were conducted orally rather than in writing (although, as far as I know, we have no evidence for this).

5. 5. Structural issues of the sonnet

The concision of the sonnet ranks alongside the invention of the italic font (c. 1500) for enabling a more intense and compact reading experience.

Virtuosic performance in matters of poetic complexity (extravagant rhymes, internal rhyming etc) eventually come to obscure the content of the poem, and are abandoned (dolce stil novo). Formalistic performance versus meaning.

The sonnet is part of a threefold stable of formes fixes that indicate musicality (ballata, canzone, sonnet). Critics deny that it has musicality (other than its inbuilt textual musicality). However we note the practice of parlar cantando in the 13th-14th centuries. The sonnet could be located in the realm of the “half-sung” which is also the technique of zajal performance.

The sonnet is a semi-public vehicle for the proposition of a human question; at its midpoint it characteristically entails a change of thought; it is likely to have a gnomic ending, and in later sonnets this may be proverbial or citational.

5.5.1. Structural aspects: mathematics of the sonnet

Wilhem Pötters of the University of Wurzburg has made much of the co-presence of the figures 11 and 14 in the sonnet. His claim is that a relationship to Greek pi can be deduced from the figures (thus 22/7, giving 3.1428571…), and that therefore the sonnet contains an inbuilt structural reference to pi. There are reasons for treating the claim with caution. First, there are variant forms of the sonnet which depart from the 11/14 model – as described in the ars poetica of Antonio da Tempo. Second, even in the originary sonnets of Giacomo da Lentini, the hendecasyllable has a tendency to present as a dodecasyllable, which argues against a precise mathematical concern. However, that said, there is no doubt about the mathematical interests of the court of Frederick II (for instance, relations with the mathematician Fibonacci (1170-1250).

The canonical sonnet is based on a ratio of 11 to 14 (14 lines of hendecasyllables), which some have read as referring to the geometric relationship of Greek pi (measurement of the circumference of a circle, a problem that exercised medieval minds). 11 > 14 implies 22 > 7, and the division of 22 by 7 gives the medieval closest equivalent to pi.[58]

This is, in effect, an invitation to consider the whole question of numerology in medieval poetics. For instance, the great Jewish polymath Abraham Ibn Ezra, as well as being a prolific writer of muwashshahaat (of considerable prosodical complexity), was also an astrologer, astronomer and mathematician with a keen sense of numerial relationships. It would be surprising if this fact were not reflected in the structures of his poetry, although I have not studied the matter and know of no studies that have done so. [A study is currently being conducted in Paris.]

5.5.2. Structural aspects: musicality of the sonnet

If we are to posit musical continuities of any kind, we need to establish whether there is such a thing as a musicality of the canzone/ballata/sonnet nexus in Italy.

This possibility is specifically denied by some. Giacomo da Lentini, in Contini’s account, was the person who took the initiative “di trasferire temi e stilemi occitanici in un volgare d’Italia, sottoponendoli del resto a una fertile euristica […] Naturalmente il Notaio si riconnete a una fase poetica ormai del tutto litterario, svincolata dalla melodia”. [59]

Aurelio Roncaglia also took a strong stand against musicality. Iterated in M. Santagatta (1979) “Che la poesia profana del Duecento sia, fin dalle origini siciliane, nuda di veste musicale mi sembra un dato da considerare […] ormai acquisito”.

However a counter-position emerges from the work of Elena Abramov-van Rijk, who has written on the subject of the sung rendering of poetry in Italy (“parlar cantando”). For instance she cites a sonnet by Niccolo de' Rossi in which he lists singers of poetry:

Io vidi ombre e vivi al paragone

provarsi di cantar meglio e piu bello

ço fu Casella, el Guergo e Quintinello,

Mino, Lippo, Segna lor compagnone

el buon Scochetto … [etc]

There is a clear tradition in Italy of poetry being sung; what this says about the relation of verse to music is a separate matter – as also is the question of the nature of that singing (for instance the “sung” versus the “half-sung”).

Regarding the musicality of the canzone, W. Thomas Marocco [1956] offers the conundrum that, despite the fact that its name (and commentaries about it) indicate a musical treatment, musically notated versions of canzoni are not to be found in the Trecento. I suggest that this is, precisely, because the canzone was half-sung (“cantillated”), in the manner of duelling poets today in Lebanon. Then (as now) it would have been resistant to notation – indeed nobody would have thought of notating it, because it was not that kind of institution. As in the above-cited work, parlar cantando.

5.5.3. Structural aspects: terminology of the sonnet

The Dantean terminology of the sonnet strikingly resembles Arab terminology of the art of muwashshah and zajal (stanza-beyt, frons-matla’, caudatus etc). The similarities also apply in Spanish poetic terminology of the period.

5.5.4. Structural aspects: multiplicity of caesura

The early sonnets have a stylistic characteristic which involves internal fracturing of the line, with internal rhyming. Thus, in Giacomo da Lentini:

Angelica figura – e comprobata, / dobiata – di ricura – e di grandezze, [XXXVII]

and

[E]o viso – e non diviso – da lo viso, / e per aviso – credo ben visare; [XXIX]

The later muwashshah / zajal tradition (for example Abraham Ibn Ezra, Ibn al-‘Arabi) exhibits a similar internal fracturing of lines, with internal rhymings. Potentially this phenomenon could provide evidence of linkages of poetic repertoires. A comparative analysis of this phenomenon (including its implications for the musical accompaniment, and taking into account also troubadour poetry) will be undertaken at a later stage of this thesis.

5.5.5. Structural aspects: the hendecasyllable

Since classical times there has existed a well developed catalogue of terminologies of prosody, as applied to poetry, prose, drama and rhetoric. [synalefe, enjambement etc].

These are matters which shift and develop according to changes in fashion and the taste of the times. An instructive comparative study might by an analysis of the global spread of hip-hop rhythms, radiating out to the rest of the world from West Coast USA and finding themselves inflected locally by local traditions. However that would be beyond the remit of the present study.

Nevertheless, for the Italian “poetry of the origins” the nettle has to be grasped. There is, in italian prosody of the canzone and sonetto the hendecasyllable. Its developmental history and the history of its subdivisions (into sub-units of three, four, five and seven) needs to be accounted for. To that history a further ingredient needs to be added – the pauses, gaps and silences that are embodied within hendecasyllabic verse (caesura). The power of verse is dictated as much by its empty spaces as by its content.

On hendecasyllables in early Italian vernacular poetry: “[I] vari tipi di verso italiani (endecasillabo, ottonario ecc) risalgono, con la mediazione ora certa ora probabiledi precedenti adattamenti nelle letterature d’oil e d’oc, a misure praticate dalle poesia latina ritmica del Medioevo” (Menichetti, Metrica italiana, p. 40)

On caesura in early Italian vernacular poetry: “Non siamo in grado di precisare a parte da quale momento i poeti italiani abbiano preso coscienza della cesurabailità tendenziale dell’endecasillabo” (Menichetti, Metrica italiana, p. 473)

This invites a further investigation:

5.6. The sonnet in practice

5.6.0. Opening remarks pending future work

For the further development of this chapter, my intention is to select two small groups of sonnets in an originary period 1220-1320. [see Appendices 2 and 3] which form an operating whole, in the sense that they are a set of poetic correspondences (tenzoni) between groups of poets. The first group is from the “Sicilian” court of the emperor Federico II, and involves exchanges between leading clerics, court officials etc, among whom the perceived originator of the sonnet, Giacomo da Lentini [fl.c.1210-1260]. The second group involves the young Dante Alighieri [1265 –1321]and his friends, in and around Florence c.1300. These sonnets post-date by 30-50 years the “invention” of the sonnet (c. 1230), and pre-date the Petrarchan sonnet. Examination of this poetic milieu and its written output provides a good anchor point for developing a general analysis of the phenomenology of the sonnet and its location within the broader European poetic / lyric tradition. That analysis is not contained in this present document.

5.7. Provisional conclusions: the sonnet within the AABBBA tradition

5.7.1. Social context

The sonnet is committed to the vernacular. It has a democratic vocation. It is open to all. The fact of the inter-poet nature of its enactment also makes it quintessentially a public act (also a public statement), as is confirmed by the anthologisation of sonnets in the manuscript tradition.

A form of verse – AABBBA – which has a wide area of currency (Andalus, Provence, Italy, North Africa) in the period 1100-1300 is modified and then consecrated at the royal court of Sicily in the form of the sonnet, whose production thereafter becomes a rite of passage for men (rarely women) of power.

The sonnet is practised by royalty and court officials. It then extends to lower social orders. It exists as part of a network of court production involving various branches of the Hohenstaufen dynasty (Federico II, Alfonso X, Deniz I etc). The spread of AABBBA-type poetry can be said, in part, to be a Hohenstaufen thing.

Inherently democratic (in the vernacular; not requiring accompaniment by musicians; etc), it extends to lower social orders. It is available to everyone.

The social practices of the sonnet (correspondence poetry, poetic duelling; peer deference; praise and insult; etc) link it to poetic practices of the Iberian peninsula.

The sonnet is a locus of “praise”, but can also switch to the mode of “insult”. Laus and vituperation, in Latin rhetoric. A process similarly exemplified in the Portuguese-Galician cantigas de escarnho e mal dizer.

The sonnet is a means of production of social capital – peer deference; complimernts to fellow poets and social superiors; etc.

The economics of patronage change during the early life of the sonnet. Created first among the courtiers of a culturally committed king, later it becomes a means of expression of men driven into exile and unsupported. Its duelling enactment becomes no longer a court “performance”, but an enactment of homosical peer solidarity. Its economics of patronage are radically different from those of the zajals of Ibn Quzman, which are largely patron-driven.

The sonnet presents the poet as a very particular “I” – homosocial, urban, with a gaze on women which moves above the occasionally crude carnality of troubadour poetry and vests itself with a veneer of science and knowingness.

5.7.2. Structural questions

Structurally the sonnet has many features in common with the muwashshah and zajal of the Iberian peninsula. Rhyme patterns, internal rhyming, citational practices etc.

The sonnet becomes fixed into canonical form very early. As genre. It is a precisely-operating and intense package of meaning, implying dialectics (position and change of position; position and answer etc). Its compactness is akin to that of italic font.

The single sonnet exists as part of a meta-poem, of all other sonnets (from which it draws its fields of possibility), but also of other sonnets nested in the given poetical enactment (of tenzone – correspondence with fellow poets, whether named or otherwise).

The sonnet embodies the tradition of competitive poeteering by means of rhyme. It shares this with other poetic duelling cultures, but appears to have a direct and specific line of continuity to the Andalusi and Ibero-Lusitanian tradition.

5.7.3. Genre characteristics of the sonnet

The sonnet, as part of the canzone/ballata/sonnetto nexus, emerges as a genre, takes canonical form, and tends to exclude / crowd out other forms.

The sonnet bears a flavour, or “tinge”, which helps to explain its spread and consolidation as genre. For instance, it bears “imperial” connotations.

The creation of the sonnet signals a concern for “correct and suitable languages for poetry” (Dante, De vulgari eloquentia), a concern which it shares with other poetic milieux of the period (Moshe Ibn Ezra, Abraham Ibn Ezra, Al-Harizi, Alfonso X).

The sonnet is a publicly performative act; implicitly embodied in tenzone practice, each poem is part of a greater “meta-poem” of mutually referring and citational poems. It implies immediately webs and networks. It is also subject to the “act of diwan / canzoniere” – in other words, is written partly with a view to anthologisation.

The sonnet is quasi-theatre. It implies dialogue. It could be theatrical in a court setting.

The poetic duelling traditions include elements of parody, irony and self-irony, also found in the sonnet.

The sonnet has internal citational practices, and may embody proverbial phrases in its exit lines.

5.7. 4. Circuits of knowingness

The sonnet is integrated in circuits of knowingness, in the period 1100-1300. Thus, the great interest in natural phenomena matches the Federican project of inquiry into natural phenomena. It represents a lay expression of the new scientific questioning of nature. The lay person becomes science-literate.

Insofar as the sonnet is a medium for debate on matters of scientific knowingness, it establishes its own special niche within the sciences – in creating and debating a “science” of love. This particularly involves love’s mediation and theorisation by means of the science of optics – the science of light and vision – an area in which the principal texts are those arriving from Muslim scientists.

5.7. 5. Musicality

Criticism has indicated that the canzone has no tradition of musical annotation in the Trecento. Some authors argue that it was therefore devoid of musicality. I propose that it was rendered in “half-sung” fashion (parlar cantando) and would thus have been resistant to notation; and notation was not felt to be necessary. The same applies in modern traditions of poetic duelling.

For various reasons the sonnet loses the musicality that was implicitly its birthright as part of the canzone/ballata/sonetto nexus. Various explanations: the growth of a literate urban class; the decline of patronage; the impositions of migration and exile, in which musicians are not available to the poet; etc.

The sonnet is contiguous with the AABBBA ballata forms in the social milieu of the laudisti di Santa Maria (for instance in and around Bologna). There is a possible relationship with Spanish musical practice via the Dominicans, with their headquarters in that city.

Ends

Universitas adversitatis

Last updated: 31 December 2012

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APPENDICES

**Appendix 1: A tenzone of Gaucelm Faidit and Raimbaut**

1. Ara.m digatz, Gaucelm Faidit,

Cals val a bona domna mais,

Qan ha marit q'es pros e gais,

E vol de drut penre chauzit!

E dui cavalier pro e gen

An en lieis lor entendimen,

E l'us es enemics mortals

Del marit, l'autr' amics corals

Chascus fai per lei son poder --

Chauzetz qal deu miels retener.

2. En Raimbaut, d'aqest joc partit

Pren lo miels, e.l sordei vos lais

Q'eu dic per dreit, e non biais,

Qe.l pro enemic del marit

Deu la domna, s'a pretz valen,

Retener, e l'autre.ill defen --

Que dizetz q'es amics corals

Del marit, et eu dic qu'es fals

Vas si e vas leis, per q'aver

No.l deu la domna, ni voler.

[etc, continuing with the same structure]

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Appendix 2: FIVE SONNETS OF GIACOMO DA LENTINI

XIX a

Solicitando un poco meo savere

e con lui mi vogliendo diletare,

un dubio che mi misi ad avere,

a voi lo mando per determinare. 4

On’omo dice c’amor à potere

e li coraggi distringe ad amare,

ma eo no [li] lo voglio consentire,

però c’amore no parse ni pare. 8

Ben trova l’om una amorositate

la quale par che nasca di piacere,

e zo vol dire om che sia amore. 11

Eo no li saccio altra qualitate,

ma zo che è, da voi [lo] voglio audire:

però ven faccio sentenz[ï]atore. 14

XIX c

Amor è un[o] desio che ven da core

per abondanza di gran piacimento;

e li occhi in prima genera[n] l’amore

e lo core li dà nutricamento. 4

Ben è alcuna fiata om amatore

senza vedere so ’namoramento,

ma quell’amor che stringe con furore

da la vista de li occhi à nas[ci]mento. 8

Che li occhi rapresenta[n] a lo core

d’onni cosa che veden bono e rio,

com’è formata natural[e]mente; 11

e lo cor, che di zo è concepitore,

imagina, e piace quel desio:

e questo amore regna fra la gente. 14

XXII

Or come pote sì gran donna entrare

per gli ochi mei che sì piccioli sone?

e nel mio core come pote stare,

che ’nentr’esso la porto là onque i’ vone? 4

Lo loco là onde entra già non pare,

ond’io gran meraviglia me ne dòne;

ma voglio lei a lumera asomigliare,

e gli ochi mei al vetro ove si pone. 8

Lo foco inchiuso, poi passa difore

lo suo lostrore, sanza far rotura:

Così per gli ochi mi pass’a lo core, 11

no la persona, ma la sua figura.

Rinovellare mi voglio d’amore,

poi porto insegna di tal crïatura. 14

XXVIII

[L]o viso mi fa andare alegramente,

lo bello viso mi fa rinegare;

lo viso me conforta ispesament[e],

l’adorno viso che mi fa penare. 4

Lo chiaro viso de la più avenente,

l’adorno viso, riso me fa fare:

di quello viso parlane la gente,

che nullo viso [a viso] li pò stare. 8

Chi vide mai così begli ochi in viso,

né sì amorosi fare li sembianti,

né boca con cotanto dolce riso? 11

Quand’eo li parlo moroli davanti,

e paremi ch’i’ vada in paradiso,

e tegnomi sovrano d’ogn’amante. 14

XXIX

[E]o viso – e non diviso – da lo viso,

e per aviso – credo ben visare;

però diviso – ‘viso’ – da lo ‘viso’,

c’altr’è lo viso – che lo divisare. 4

E per aviso – viso – in tale viso

de l[o] qual me non posso divisare:

viso a vedere quell’è peraviso,

che no è altro se non Deo divisare. 8

’Ntra viso – e peraviso – no è diviso,

che non è altro che visare in viso:

però mi sforzo tuttora visare. 11

[E] credo per aviso – che da ‘viso’

giamai me’ non pos’essere diviso, 14

che l’uomo vi ’nde possa divisare.

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Appendix 3: SONNETS OF DANTE ALIGHIERI AND FRIENDS

1a. DANTE DA MAIANO TO VARIOUS POETS

Provedi, saggio, ad esta visione,

e per mercé ne trai vera sentenza.

Dico: una donna di bella fazone,

di cu’ el meo cor gradir molto s’agenza, 4

mi fé d’una ghirlanda donagione,

verde, fronzuta, con bella accoglienza:

appresso mi trovai per vestigione

camicia di suo dosso, a mia parvenza. 8

Allor di tanto, amico, mi francai,

che dolcemente presila abbracciare:

non si contese, ma ridea la bella. 11

Così, ridendo, molto la baciai:

del più non dico, che mi fé giurare.

E morta, ch’è mia madre, era con ella. 14

1b. REPLY BY DANTE ALIGHIERI

Savete giudicar vostra ragione,

o om che pregio di saver portate;

per che, vitando aver con voi quistione,

com so respondo a le parole ornate. 4

Disio verace, u’ rado fin si pone,

che mosse di valore o di bieltate,

imagina l’amica oppinione

significasse il don che pria narrate. 8

Lo vestimento, aggiate vera spene

che fia, da lei cui disiate, amore:

e ’n ciò provide vostro spirto bene; 11

dico, pensando l’ovra sua d’allore.

La figura che già morta sorvene

è la fermezza ch’averà nel core. 14

2A. DANTE DA MAIANO TO DANTE ALIGHIERI

Per pruova di saper com vale o quanto

lo mastro l’oro, adducelo a lo foco;

e, ciò faccendo, chiara e sa se poco,

amico, di pecunia vale o tanto. 4

Ed eo, per levar prova del meo canto,

l’adduco a voi, cui paragone voco

di ciascun c’have in canoscenza loco,

o che di pregio porti loda o vanto. 8

E chero a voi col meo canto più saggio

che mi deggiate il dol maggio d’Amore

qual’è, per vostra scienza, nominare: 11

e ciò non movo per quistioneggiare

(ché già inver voi so non avria valore),

ma per saver ciò ch’eo vaglio e varraggio. 14

[? attribution contested]

3a. DANTE ALIGHIERI TO VARIOUS POETS

A ciascun’alma presa e gentil core

Nel cui cospetto ven lo dir presente,

In ciò che mi rescrivan suo parvente,

Salute in lor segnor, cioè Amore. 4

Già eran quasi che atterzate l’ore

Del tempo che onne stella n’è lucente,

Quando m’apparve Amor subitamente,

Cui essenza membrar mi dà orrore. 8

Allegro mi sembrava Amor tenendo

Meo core in mano, e ne le braccia avea

Madonna involta in un drappo dormendo. 11

Poi la svegliava, e d’esto core ardendo

Lei paventosa umilmente pascea:

Appresso gir lo ne vedea piangendo. 14

3b. REPLY BY GUIDO CAVALCANTI

Vedeste, al mio parere, onne valore

e tutto gioco e quanto bene om sente,

se foste in prova del segnor valente

che segnoreggia il mondo de l’onore, 4

poi vive in parte dove noia more,

e tien ragion nel cassar de la mente;

sì va soave per sonno a la gente,

che ’l cor ne porta senza far dolore. 8

Di voi lo core ne portò, veggendo

che vostra donna alla morte cadea:

nodriala dello cor, di ciò temendo. 11

Quando v’apparve che se ’n gia dolendo,

fu ’l dolce sonno ch’allor si compiea,

ché ’l su’ contraro lo venìa vincendo. 14

3c. REPLY BY DANTE DA MAIANO

Di ciò che stato sei dimandatore,

guardando, ti rispondo brevemente,

amico meo di poco conoscente,

mostrandoti del ver lo suo sentore. 4

Al tuo mistier così son parlatore:

se san ti truovi e fermo de la mente,

che lavi la tua coglia largamente,

a ciò che stinga e passi lo vapore 8

lo qual ti fa favoleggiar loquendo;

e se gravato sei d’infertà rea,

sol c’hai farneticato, sappie, intendo. 11

Così riscritto el meo parer ti rendo;

né cangio mai d’esta sentenza mea,

fin che tua acqua al medico no stendo. 14

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