This is one of DGR's many parodies—a genre he (like Swinburne) was particularly fond of, not least of all when the works were self-parodies. Here DGR is recalling the Italian sonnetti in risposta that were so much practiced in the Italian Renaissance, and that are in fact a featured form in his own 1861 collection of translations The Early Italian Poets (see for example the sonnet exchanges between Dante and Cino). As DGR remarked in his letter to Ford Madox Ford, which contains one of the two surviving manuscrip texts of the poem, it was written “in a cavilling spirit worthy of Italian correspondence”. His note to the other fair copy manuscript of the poem indicates more particularly that he wrote it “to Ford Madox Brown, in answer to a jocular Italian letter, in which he translated the name of ‘Dunn’ as ‘Fatto’.” Brown was making fun of DGR's studio assistant Henry Treffry Dunn.
The text of the poem published by WMR follows the letter manuscript text, not the other fair copy. WMR edited his copy text slightly.
Textual History: Composition
WMR dates the poem “not before [18]67” in a note to the Duke University manuscript. Later he dated it specifically 24 October 1867 in his 1906 Classified Lists, evidently after he had seen the text in DGR's letter of that date to Ford Madox Brown.
Printing History
First printed in 1903 in WMR's Rossetti Papers (page 273) and collected thereafter.
This collection contains 3 texts and images, including:
Duke Manuscript text
Scholarly Commentary
Introduction
This is one of DGR's many parodies—a genre he (like Swinburne) was particularly fond of, not least of all when the works were self-parodies. Here DGR is recalling the Italian sonnetti in risposta that were so much practiced in the Italian Renaissance, and that are in fact a featured form in his own 1861 collection of translations The Early Italian Poets (see for example the sonnet exchanges between Dante and Cino). As DGR remarked in his letter to Ford Madox Ford, which contains one of the two surviving manuscrip texts of the poem, it was written “in a cavilling spirit worthy of Italian correspondence”. His note to the other fair copy manuscript of the poem indicates more particularly that he wrote it “to Ford Madox Brown, in answer to a jocular Italian letter, in which he translated the name of ‘Dunn’ as ‘Fatto’.” Brown was making fun of DGR's studio assistant Henry Treffry Dunn.
The text of the poem published by WMR follows the letter manuscript text, not the other fair copy. WMR edited his copy text slightly.
Textual History: Composition
WMR dates the poem “not before [18]67” in a note to the Duke University manuscript. Later he dated it specifically 24 October 1867 in his 1906 Classified Lists, evidently after he had seen the text in DGR's letter of that date to Ford Madox Brown.
Printing History
First printed in 1903 in WMR's Rossetti Papers (page 273) and collected thereafter.