The work contributes to define the complex textual tradition of Sennuccio
del Bene's poems: we currently attribute to him 14 poems: 8 sonnets, 3
canzoni, 2 ballads and 1 laud.
The first chapter deals with Sennuccio's relations with intellectuals and
poets of his time: the friendly and poetical relations with Petrarca and
the probable contacts that he had with Dante and Boccaccio.
Sennuccio del Bene appears like a singular figure who shared Dante's political
passions, and also lived in Petrarca's age and helped the beginning of
Boccaccio's poetic vocation .
In the second chapter over 40 manuscripts of Sennuccio's poems have been
presented and described: nearly all of them are codices zibaldone
of the XIIIth and XIVth century Italian poetry.
Since this initial stage, the exterior and interior characters of the manuscripts,
their content and its order, all the explanations and attibutions, and
the writings in the margins of the pages have been analized.
This work made it possible to define the manuscripts relations and to link
the codices into groups.
This kind of manuscript classification has been made for the first time:
the previous edictions are not satisfying.
In the Szombathely, Cuomo and Silvestro works (M. Szombathely, Le rime
di Sennuccio del Bene, Bologna - Trieste 1925; A.M. Cuomo, Le rime
di Sennuccio del Bene, Salerno 1927; A.L. Silvestro, Sennuccio del
Bene, Catania 1931 ) the principles of the ediction are not specified.
In his ediction, Altamura ( A. Altamura, Il canzoniere di Sennuccio
del Bene, Napoli 1949 ) analizes just 36 manuscripts and the classification
of them is not based on textual proof: he seems to choose the variants
according to his opinions in poetry.
Corsi ( Rimatori del Trecento, a cura di G. Corsi, Torino 1969 )
analizes all the manuscripts known: he collates the ediction of Altamura
to the codices that he didn't use and, in this way, the text gets
a great readability. The ediction of Corsi is not a collected one, he published
only 11 poems.
The third chapter deals with a closer examination of poems, which corroborates
the previous codice classification.
The poems have been analized one by one, because of the difference of their
textual tradition : sonnets I, II and III are copied in only one manuscript,
and they have been printed according to this codice, amended from
the plain errors and from the northern Italian influence on the language.
The Lachmann method has been used for poems IV, V, VI, VII, IX, X and XI,
because it has been possible to restore reliable stemmata.
The VIIIth poem' s stemma has been partially recontructed and just
in the lower part: therefore it has been printed the text of the best group
of manuscripts.
Sonnet XIII is a reply to Petrarca' s Sì come il padre del folle
Fetonte, that has been used as indirect evidence. The restoration of
sonnet XIV is based on Petrarca' s autographs.
Canzone XII has two stages of composition: it hasn't been possible
to define them as author' s variants or interpolations, and both of them
have been printed.
The language adopted is from the manuscript Laurenziano XL 46, which was
probably written by a florentine copier in the XIVth century. The apparatus
criticus chosen is negative.
Stefania Di Nuzzo