Jousting with Verse: The Poetics of Friendship in Duecento Comuni

Abstract

Despite the divisive factionalism that riled Italian comuni in the late Duecento, the language of friendship dominated the vernacular poetry circulating in late medieval urban centers, particularly in tenzoni. In these disputatious exchange poems, vernacular authors frequently referred to one another as “amico,” no matter what relationship they may have had with their interlocutors. The usage of the language of “amicizia” in these exchanges defies conventional praises of friendship, which would conceive of friendship as an unambiguous moral good. Instead, the ambivalent language of friendship in tenzoni reflects both the anxiety of duplicitous speech that plagued urban life and a hope for the salvation of the comune from partisan conflict. These tenzoni collectively propose a model of friendly antagonism, which, in its engagement even across ideological lines, strives to convert dispute from violent partisanship into a competitive joust in the game of honor.

Keywords:

• medieval lyric
• tenzone
• correspondence
• networks
• friendship
• dispute

Notes on Contributor

Elizabeth Coggeshall is Assistant Professor of Italian at Florida State University. Her research interests include medieval literature and ethics, medievalism, and the transmedia reception of Dante’s Commedia in the twenty-first century. She is the co-editor (with Arielle Saiber, Bowdoin College) of the digital archive Dante Today: Citings and Sightings of Dante’s Works in Contemporary Culture. She is currently working on a book project that examines the ambivalence of the language of friendship across Dante’s oeuvre. Correspondence to Elizabeth Coggeshall. Email: [email protected]

Notes

A condensed version of this argument was presented at the 2019 meeting of the Modern Language Association. I am grateful to the participants in that discussion, as well as to two anonymous reviewers, whose comments and suggestions have helped to refine my view of conflict and friendship in Duecento communal culture.

1 Nathan 1909, 88.

2 For the sociopolitical makeup of the Duecento comuni, see, among others, Franceschi and Taddei 2012; Jones 1997; Milani 2005; Waley 1988.

3 On the social role of the tenzone in the late Duecento comuni, see Ahern 1990; Alfie 2011; Barolini 2013; Giunta 2002a, 2002b; Steinberg 2007.

4 On the history and definition of the genre, see especially Giunta 2002a and 2002b, expanding on the early work of Santangelo 1928.

5 For discussion of the impact of conflictual communal politics on rhetorical conventions in the late medieval period, see especially Milner 2011.

6 On the role of the tenzone as a social tool to negotiate one’s literary standing, see Ahern 1990; Steinberg 2007; Barolini 2013.

7 All citations of Giacomo da Lentini's poetry are from Lansing 2018.

8 On the exchange, specifically the abbot’s tactful rebuke, see Kleinhenz 1986, 64-68.

9 On the conceptual divisions of the sonnet see Kleinhenz 1986, 58-59.

10 See the definition of the tenzone given by Veronese poet Gidino da Sommacampagna in his vulgarization of Antonio da Tempo’s Summa artis rithmici vulgaris dictaminis (cited in Giunta 2002a, 11): “quando l’omo receve alguno soneto lo quale gli fia mandado da alguno suo amico, l’omo dée respondere alo dicto soneto” (my emphasis). Gidino expands on da Tempo’s generic aliquis in his definition, suggesting a gradual systemization of expectations for the relationship of obligation between the interlocutors in these exchanges.

11 One immediately thinks, for example, of the much-commented exchange between the young Dante Alighieri and his contemporary, Dante da Maiano, where Alighieri repeatedly employs the epithet “amico” as a distancing mechanism between himself and his competitor in the exchange, insisting, as he does, that he does not know this amico’s name. Barolini 2013 reads the Dante-Dante da Maiano exchange in light of what she calls “the true matter of this tenzone, which is not the stated question (what is the greatest suffering in love), but the much more compelling social question of proving one’s worth as a man and as a poet, of testing oneself in the poetic agora” (53).

12 The political and strategic uses of the language of amicitia in the ars dictaminis and in letter collections have been explored in the work of historians of medieval friendship such as Haseldine (1994; 2006; 2011; 2013); Hartmann (2012; 2014); McGuire (2010); and McLoughlin (1990), among others.

13 Citations from Guittone d'Arezzo follow Egidi 1940.

14 On the tradition of female invidia from Ovid and Andreas Capellanus to Italian Renaissance humanists and poets, see Feng 2015.

15 For Guittone’s theory of envy, see the corresponding sonnet in the cycle of the vices, Invidia, tu nemica a catun see.

16 Margueron 1959, 415, suggests that Guittone saw no inherent philosophical conflict between the Aristotelian model, which originates between individuals, and the Christian model of a universal brotherhood.

17 On the civic benefits of literary friendship, see Margueron 1959, 422.

18 The treatise is frequently cited in critical discussions of vernacular correspondence poems, which it treats as performing the same function as oratorical disputation (“tencione o tacita o espressa,” Rettorica 76.16). See, for example, Ahern 1992, 2-3; Giunta 2002b, 176-181; Milner 2005, 172; Steinberg 2007, 71.

19 See also Cox 1999; Milner 2005 and 2011; Steinberg 2007, 70-73.

20 Citations from Brunetto’s Rettorica follow the edition by Maggini 1915.

21 On the exclusionary nature of the cultivation of these bonds, see Milner 2005.

22 Cox (1999; 2011) and Milner (2005; 2011) have emphasized the “adversarial nature of Ciceronian rhetorical instruction… and its moral ambivalence relative to prevailing Christian speech ethics, attributes which perfectly suited the conflictual arena on communal politics in this period” (Milner 2011, 369).

23 Steinberg 2007, 70-73.

24 On the role of vituperation and insult within tenzoni see Alfie 2011.

25 For examples of such a reading see Barolini 2013 and 2015; Kumar 2018.

26 On the exchange, see Barolini 2013, who reads the exchange as polluting the practice of authentic amicizia between poets with rivalry.

27 De amicitia 24: “nam et monendi amici saepe sunt et obiurgandi, et haec accipienda amice, cum benevole fiunt… Molesta veritas, siquidem ex ea nascitur odium, quod est venenum amicitiae, sed obsequium multo molestius, quod peccatis indulgens praecipitem amicum ferri sinit” [“for friends frequently must be not only advised, but also rebuked, and both advice and rebuke should be kindly received when given in a spirit of goodwill… A troublesome thing is truth, if it is indeed the source of hate, which poisons friendship; but much more troublesome is complaisance, which, by showing indulgence to the sins of a friend, allows him to be carried headlong away”]. See Cicero 1923. Emphasis added.

28 On friendship across Guittone’s works, primarily in the letters, see Margueron 1959.

29 On the coherence of group identity among Guittonian poets, see Hainsworth 2007.

30 On the formal elements of the exchange, see the discussion in Hainsworth 2007, 161-162. All citations from Monte Andrea’s poetry follow Minetti 1979.

31 For the scant biographical information on Schiatta di Albizzo Pallavillani, see the entry “Schiatta Pallavillani” in Asor Rosa 1991, 1607.

32 In their political exchange, a sonetto raddoppiato written “a quattro mani,” which begins Non isperate, ghibellin’, socorso, it is Schiatta who uses the epithet for Monte (3, 20). Monte does not replicate, identifying Schiatta instead by political affiliation, “ghibellin’” (1, 25).

33 For a subtle reading of the politics that inform their exchanges (in particular Cavalcanti’s Una figura della donna mia and Orlandi’s response S’avessi detto, amico, di Maria), see Alfie 2016. On the ideological differences evidenced in the same exchange, see Martinez 2003.

34 The word only appears once in Cavalcanti’s corpus, addressed to Bernardo da Bologna, whom he calls “Bernardo amico mio.”

35 Steinberg discusses the “specter of insincerity” that troubles the culture of the tenzone, which emphasizes the ritual elements of exchange over the moral power of the message (2007, 79).

36 The precise date of the sonnet exchange is impossible to determine. Of Giannini, the only surviving record of his activities in Pisa is dated to 1283. Because Si. Gui. cannot be identified with certainty, scholars cannot be certain of the dates of the exchange, but it would almost certainly be placed in the second half of the thirteenth century, probably in the last two decades.

37 Contini, following Zambrini, identifies the poet as Siribuono iudice, whose name was corrupted in the manuscript and so appears Si. Gui. instead of Si. Giu.; Zaccagnini, by contrast, claims that Si. Gui. should be identified either as “Similiante quondam Guidi” or a “Signorante di Giunta di porta Guidi,” which identification Contini refutes (Contini 1960, 331).

38 In addition to his reply to Giannini only one sonnet remains (like his reply to Giannini, this sonnet also appears only in the Laurentian manuscript Redi 9 and is also part of a tenzone).

39 But cf. Giunta 2002b, 167-169.

40 On the variety of meanings of the verb “pugnare” across Dante’s corpus, see Bufano 1970 and Kleinhenz 1982, 76-77.

41 See also Barolini 2013, 40 and 56.

42 On tenzone-participation as a mirror of “deliberative democracy” in the communal setting, see also Steinberg 2007, 71.