Mazzeo di Ricco da Messina. “Canzone. After six years' Service he renounces his Lady.”

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

General Description

Date: 1849?; 1861
Rhyme: abbacdeedccfgfhffh
Meter: iambic trimeter and pentameter
Genre: canzone

Bibliography

“Table of Poets” in Early Italian Poets, xxvi.

◦ Panvini, Le rime della scuola siciliana, I. 210-211.

◦ Contini Poeti de duecento, I. 149-152; II. 815

Scholarly Commentary

Introduction

DGR's source text is Poeti del primo secolo (I. 329-331). DGR has only a brief note on Mazzeo that gives an approximate date of 1250 for his works. He was born around 1235.

DGR alters Mazzeo's complex rhyme scheme but substitutes one of equal and similar complexity. The English trimeters and iambics correspond, as usual with DGR's translations, to the original setenarii and hendecasyllables.

Textual History: Composition

Late 1840s, most probably.

Printing History

The translation was first published in 1861 in The Early Italian Poets; it was reprinted in 1874 in Dante and his Circle.

Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Source File: 202d-1861.raw.xml