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| | The Cambridge Companion:"Dante and the Lyric Past" |
 | | The "leader" (or "caposcuola") of the Sicilian School was Giacomo da Lentini, most likely the inventor of the sonnet (while the Provencal canso was the model for the Italian canzone, the sonnet is an Italian, and specifically Sicilian, contribution to the various European lyric "genres"). |
 | | Like Giacomo, the other Sicilian poets were in the main court functionaries: in the De vulgari eloquentia Guido delle Colonne is called "Judge of Messina," while Pier della Vigna, whom Dante places among the suicides in Hell, was Frederick's chancellor and private secretary. |
 | | Giacomo has perfectly fused form and content: the divisions inherent in the sonnet form express the divisions experienced by the poet-lover, who is himself "diviso" in the octave's last word. |
| dante.ilt.columbia.edu /books/cambr_com/cc2.html (4366 words) |
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