THE SICILIAN POETIC SCHOOL
Major cultural centre during the first half of the XIII century, the court of Emperor Frederick II of Swabia (1194-1250) represented the real place where men and cultures, East and West, languages and literary traditions met and exchanged. The Poetic School was born within Frederick's court, that is, that poetic movement which marked the beginning of lyric poetry in Italian. Among the men close to the Emperor who were the authors, together with Frederick himself, of the first love poem in Vulgar, the following stand out: Giacomo da Lentini, Pier delle Vigne, Giacomino Pugliese, Rinaldo d'Aquino, Guido delle Colonne, Mazzeo di Ricco.
In this area of the Italian section we intend to announce, following the site's general directives, ongoing research and to supply reviews and abstracts of works believed to be particularly significant. The information of a philological nature will include that relative to the metrical, linguistic and rhetoric of the origins of lyric poetry as well as to the editions and interpretations of the texts. I would like to begin from the one on which I worked on myself, that is, the study of an ancient fragment that I discovered a few years ago in a manuscript of Zurich's Zentralbibliothek in Switzerland, which now enables to look at the Poetic School from a different point of view. The research has been collected in a book which is about to be published under the title: [R]esplendiente stella de albur di Giacomino Pugliese e la poesia italiana delle origini, Rome, Bagatto Libri.
Therefore, this site aims at providing a meeting point for scholars of the origins of Italian lyric poetry and, by contributing to encourage the circulation of information and contributions, hopes to be a place for scientific and methodological discussion.
Giuseppina Brunetti