Folgore da San Geminiano. “Twelve Sonnets. Of the Months. Addressed to a Fellowship of Sienese Nobles.” [poem group]

This sonnet sequence represents a stylistic line, inherited from the provençal tradition, that stands quite opposed to what Dante and the poets of the stil novist tradition were trying to do—including a poet like Cavalcanti. This line is consciously engaged with worldly matters of every kind, as we see in this sequence and in Folgore's related sequence on the seven days of the week. The style is dominantly paratactic and open, soliciting the widest kind of concrete details. Probably the greatest work in this tradition, highly praised by DGR, is Fazio degli Uberti's Dittamondo, excerpts from which DGR translated and included in his collection (excerpts from Book IV chapter 23 and Book IV chapter 25).

The conception and execution of the sequence is comic and consciously extravagant, though not really ironical. In this respect the sequence reflects “the blithe and lordly Fellowship” celebrated in the sequence.

DGR's source was Poeti del Primo Secolo (II. 171-184). The translations are generally quite free, although DGR—characteristically—follows the rhyme and metrics of the originals very closely, and often exactly (making his usual substitution of iambic pentameter for the Italian hendecasyllables). DGR's freedom is partly licensed by the original texts he was working from, whose corruptions he complains of in his long note to the sequence. Having set down as his primary rule of translation “that a good poem shall not be turned into a bad one”, DGR's translations of the sonnets for January, April, and August are particularly notable; and the translation of Folgore's sonnet for June is perhaps superior to the original.

Folgóre (i.e, bright, splendid) was the early fourteenth-century Guelf cavalier Giacomo da San Gemignano, well known at the time. He died in 1332. For further commentary see the editorial notes to the original sequence as well as the commentaries on specific sonnets.

Perhaps in the early 1850s. DGR refers to Charles Cayley's translation of of the Commedia in his prose note to the sequence. The translation was published in four volumes between 1851-55.

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

DGR's work that stands most closely related to these sonnets by Folgore is the sequence of poems that he wrote in 1849 when he visited Belgium and France with Holman Hunt. Those poems were much involved with the “blithe . . . Fellowship” of the PRB; and while the brotherhood's interests were dominated by religious issues, their approach was peculiarly materialistic (so to speak).

DGR's long prefatory note to this sonnet sequence identifies “the blithe and lordly Fellowship” addressed by the sequence with the “brigata” mentioned in passing (and scornfully) by Dante in the Inferno (Canto XXIX.130). This identification has been a matter of scholarly controversy and is in fact no longer accepted.

“Dedication”: The sequence is announced with a facetious comparison of the fellowship to the Round Table of Camelot. Niccolò (line 7) is Niccolò di Nigi, the fellowship's central figure and a member of the famous Sienese family of Tolomei. DGR's “King Ban” (line 11) is Priam in the original sonnet.