The Detto d’Amore

This is a short, unfinished allegorical poem, of 480 seven-syllable lines arranged in rhyming couplets. The title was first assigned by Salomone Morpurgo, who discovered it in the codex Laurentian Ashburnham 1234 in 1888. It consists of four parchment folios written in the same hand as the Fiore and was originally part of Med. H 438 held at the Montpellier Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire, the only available manuscript of the Fiore. The two works have clearly discernible formal and thematic similarities, leading scholars to consider them as works by the same author. Loosely based on the more conventional section of the Roman de la Rose, the part by Guillame de Lorris, the Detto is in two parts. In the first, poetic practice is related to the law of the God of Love and the psychological aspects of erotic passion are examined, with particular importance given to the role of Reason, who encourages the Lover to detach himself from the rule of Love. Following this, the beauties of the beloved are listed. The second part deals with the social aspects of Love, with a lengthy speech by Wealth and a review of Love’s commandments. The attribution of the Detto to Dante, vigorously argued especially by Contini, is based indirectly on identifying its author with that of the Fiore, and on a number of formal similarities between the poem and works known to have been written by Dante. The clear debt to Brunetto Latini (in the choice of seven-syllable rhyming lines) and Guittone d’Arezzo (for the technical artifice of the rhyming couplets) indicate that the poem must be ascribed to Dante’s early output. Nonetheless, alongside the more conventional courtly topoi, are other themes, albeit in embryonic form, such as a Guinizzelli-like insistence on praise and the comparisons made between the woman and nature’s enchanting sights, thus heralding the new stilnovo poetics.