The tenzone with Forese Donati

Dating probably from between 1293 and 1296, this tenzone or poetic exchange consists of three pairs of sonnets exchanged between Dante and his friend Forese Donati, the brother of Piccarda (placed by Dante in Par., III) and Corso (future leader of the Black Guelfs). The two friends hurl fierce accusations and bitter abuse at each other, as in the conventions of the Mediolatin burlesque genre of the vituperatio iocosa. Forese is accused of not satisfying his wife sexually, of poverty, gluttony, theft and of belonging to a morally base family, while Dante is accused of being the son of a usurer, of being so poverty-stricken that he risks ending up at the Pinti Hospice, founded by the Donati family, and of being too cowardly to take revenge for an insult to his father. These sonnets are interesting for their use of highly realistic discursive processes and linguistic strategies, resembling the burlesque poetry of Rustico Filippi and Cecco Angiolieri: one more stage, therefore, in Dante’s unceasing experimentation, and preparation for the more “comedy” oriented moments of the Commedia. Dante also recalls this episode of verbal jibes, albeit indirectly, pointing out that he has moved beyond such modes, when he meets Forese Donati in purgatory’s terrace of the gluttonous, where Forese’s wife is remembered with affection, and clearly with the aim of reparation.

Like the Fiore, the tenzone’s authenticity has also been challenged, for some considered it unworthy of a poet such as Dante: in addition to the doubts expressed by Domenico Guerri and Antonio Lanza, there has been a recent proposal to consider it a forgery from the late fourteenth century by Stefano Finiguerri, known as Za. Nonetheless, the precise references to places and people of Dante’s time, as noted by Michele Barbi, and especially the existence of four of these sonnets in the Codex Chig. L VIII 305, certainly dating to the first half of the fourteenth century, suggest that such doubts are unfounded.