Fra Guittone d'Arezzo. “Sonnet. To the Blessed Virgin Mary.”

This sonnet is no longer included in the poetical corpus of Fra Guittone d'Arezzo (ca. 1230-1294), the poet born near Arezzo who was an important conduit for Provencal poetry in Italy. His influence on Tuscan poetry was considerable, although Dante disparages his work whenever he refers to it. Guittone's style is highly artificial and it's clear that DGR follows Dante's view of his work. Only this single sonnet is included in DGR's collection and it seems to have been chosen because DGR thought it represented his late religious work, written after he joined the Order of the Frati Gaudenti some time in the late 1260s.

DGR's source text is the Raccolta di rime antiche toscane (I. 111). The translation follows the rhyme scheme of the original exactly.

Uncertain—probably early, in the late 1840s.

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