The Dolce Stil Novo (“sweet new style”) is the name generally given by scholars to a style of Italian love poetry prevalent in the last quarter of the 13th century. Lyric poetry in this style is characterized by a reverential attitude toward women, presented as angelic creatures who might lead their lovers to the love of God, and by a new poetic language, rhetorically direct but making use of difficult imagery drawn from a variety of learned traditions. It is unclear whether the stilnovisti (those who wrote in the Dolce Stil Novo) ever formed a “school” in any sense. The term is borrowed from DANTE, who, in the 24th canto of his Purgatorio depicts the earlier poet BONAGIUNTAORBICCIANI of Lucca praising Dante’s poem Donne, ch’avete intelletto d’amore (“Ladies, who have intelligence of love”). He recognizes Dante’s lyric style as having surpassed his own and that of the two earlier schools of Italian poetry—the Sicilian (founded by GIACOMO DA LENTINO) and the Tuscan (led by GUITTONE D’AREZZO, “the Notary”)—and calls it the “sweet new style.” Based on the similarity of theme and style, most scholars include a small number of mainly Florentine poets in the group, including Guido GUINIZELLI, Guido CAVALCANTI, LAPO GIANNI, Dino FRESCOBALDI, GIANNI ALFANI, CINO DA PISTOIA, and Dante himself. Others have suggested that Dante intended the term to apply only to himself. It was the earliest of these poets,Guinizelli, who is considered the father of the movement.His seminal CANZONE called Al cor gentil (The gentle heart) introduces many themes that became common in stilnovist lyrics. Guinizelli declares that an individual’s value lay not in birth or wealth but in character, the “gentle heart,” and that it was in the power of the Beloved Lady to activate the virtue inherent in the gentle heart of her lover. The woman, as embodiment of God’s beauty and truth, may lead her lover to divine love by refining his earthly desires and turning them toward heaven.
Cavalcanti saw Guinizelli as an inspiration for his own conscious rejection of the earlier Tuscan school, which Cavalcanti faulted for being rhetorically overwrought.He sought a less embellished style himself, but in his major canzone, Donna me prega (A lady asks me), he introduced difficult imagery taken from scholastic philosophy, physics, astronomy, and particularly psychology and medicine. He presents love as an overwhelmingly negative force because of the psychological suffering it causes, but, with Guinizelli, asserts that only the genuinely noble in heart are able to understand love or the true poetry of love. Although Dante borrowed a good deal from his friend Cavalcanti, especially in his earlier lyrics, he ultimately rejected the older poet’s focus on the negative psychological effects of love, and presented love as an overwhelmingly positive force. The turning point in his development is the lyric Donne, ch’avete intelletto d’amore, mentioned by Bonagiunta in the Purgatorio. That lyric, the first canzone in Dante’s VITA NUOVA, abandons the presentation of the lover himself and his anguish, and turns instead to a focus on the perfections of his lady, Beatrice, whom the angels desire to complete the perfection of heaven, and who ennobles her admirers and brings them to the love of God.
It may be that Dante refers only to his own achievement by his term “sweet new style.”But characteristics generally associated with the term—the elevation of the woman to angelic status and the refinement of the true lover who, unlike the ignoble masses, can comprehend the learned and exclusive imagery of love poetry—are evident in Guinizelli, Cavalcanti, and several of Dante’s other contemporaries. Though Dante ultimately moves beyond his peers, his early association with them in a stilnovist “school” makes historical sense.
Bibliography
■ Goldin, Frederick, trans. German and Italian Lyrics of the Middle Ages: An Anthology and a History. New York: Doubleday, 1973.
■ Jacoff, Rachel, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Dante. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
■ Shaw, James E. Guido Cavalcanti’s Theory of Love: The “Canzone d’Amore” and Other Related Problems. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1949.
■ Valency, Maurice. In Praise of Love. New York: MacMillan, 1958.