Il Fiore

This work is extant only in the anonymous, untitled manuscript Med. H 438 held at the Montpellier Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire, its current title assigned when it was first published, by Ferdinand Castets. It consists of a sequence of 232 sonnets, probably dating from between 1286 and 1287, which paraphrase and substantially abridge the twenty thousand lines and more of the Roman de la Rose. The story told in the Fiore reiterates the Roman’s basic narrative structures, deploying the same allegorical personifications: Lover, wounded by the arrows of Love, although discouraged by Reason, tries to pluck Fair Welcome’s Flower. In this quest obstacles are set by Resistence, Chastity, Jealousy, Bad Mouth, and so on, but he finds valuable help in the courtly virtues, in Fair Appearance, a personification of hypocrisy, and in the sound advice of Friend, parallel to which are the crafty moves that the Old Women suggests to Fair Welcome. Thanks to the help received, the castle where Fair Welcome is imprisoned is conquered, and Lover can thus take possession of the Flower and, beyond the allegory, satisfy his sexual desire. Guillaume de Lorris’s analytical descriptions in the source text are considerably reduced, as are Jean de Meung’s lengthy doctrinal digressions, whereas the comic touches and anticlerical polemics are maintained and developed. The Fiore has a markedly colloquial and lowly vocabulary, and uses numerous Gallicisms for caricature; it also repeatedly uses the discursive processes found in comic-realist literature. Its attribution to Dante, suggested by the fact that at two points the author refers to himself as Durante (of which the name Dante is an abbreviation), was authoritatively put forward by Contini in 1965, on the basis of strong stylistic, lexical and even phonic-rhythmic similarities between the Fiore and both the Rime and the Commedia, a feature of deep memory, acting beyond the level of consciousness.