The Rime: manuscript and editorial history

The lack of a precise arrangement, casual dissemination, and Dante’s fame all contributed to a proliferation of Rime manuscripts (more than 500 codices have been catalogued). This, together with the fortuitous circulation of individual poems led to the need to evaluate the constellation of document sources text by text. The oldest manuscript relating to Dante’s lyrical poems was found among notarial documents in Bologna, with the so-called sonnet on the Garisenda appearing in 1287. There are, however, several particularly significant stages in the complex history of the Rime. One area where his poems circulated early on was the Veneto region, as attested by the Barb. Lat. 3953 and the so-called Codex Escurialensis of the early fourteenth century. In addition to this is the later Tuscan tradition, with the Chig. L VII 305, the work of a copyist involved also in the tradition of the Commedia, and the Martelli 12, also containing the Vita Nuova. Often replicated in later codices is the collection in the Toledano 104 6 and Chig. L V 176, in Boccaccio's hand, comprising the Trattatello in laude di Dante, the Vita Nuova, the Commedia and 15 “canzoni distese”. Belonging to the same branch is the lost Aragon Collection commissioned in 1476 by Lorenzo de’ Medici as a gift for Frederick of Aragon, part of which is Dantean section of the so-called “Giuntina di rime antiche” printed in Florence in 1527.

In 1921 Barbi produced the first modern edition of Dante’s lyrical poems. Although without critical foundation, it effectively became the twentieth century standard edition of Dante’s Rime, adhered to by Contini in his own 1939 edition with commentary. In 2002, for the “Edizione Nazionale delle Opere di Dante”, De Robertis produced an impressive new edition of the Rime, with innovations particularly as regards arrangement and content of the corpus (including the dubious poems now elevated to authentic status).