Sicilian School

In a literary context, the term Sicilian School identifies a small community of Sicilian, and to a lesser extent, mainland Italian poets gathered around Frederick II, most of them belonging to his court, the Magna Curia. Headed by Giacomo da Lentini, they produced more than three-hundred poems of courtly love between 1230 and 1266, the experiment being continued after Frederick's death by his son, Manfredi. This school included Enzo, king of Sardinia, Pier delle Vigne, Inghilfredi, Guido and Odo delle Colonne, Jacopo d'Aquino, Giacomino Pugliese, Giacomo da Lentini, Arrigo Testa and Frederick II himself.

The downside of Sicilian poetry

The less remarkable feature of the Sicilian poetry was probably the political censure imposed by Frederick: literary debate was confined to courtly love. In this respect, the poetry of the north, though stuck to the langue d'oïl, provided fresher blood in the field of satire. The north was fragmented into communes or little city-states which had a relatively democratic self-government, and that is precisely why the sirventese genre, and later, Dante's Divina Commedia bloomed and prospered. A sirventese is, in effect, eminently political: it usually refers to battles and military or social enemies, the author often being the soldier or the knight involved in the strife. Though he lived later, and wrote in Italian, Dante belonged to this environment: his Commedia will be full of invectives against contemporary leaders, princes and popes as Boniface VIII, largely responsible for his exile from Florence and the feuds that tore it apart.

Related Topics:
Langue d'oïl - Satire - Sirventese - Genre - Divina Commedia - Florence

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