Page:The Harvard Classics Vol. 51; Lectures.djvu/84

 74 service had grown the drama. Symbolism, long familiar in the interpretation of ancient poetry and of holy writ, had made its way into creative art, and had produced the "Romance of the Rose," that wonder of the thirteenth century. Satire, which in this poem is combined with the allegorical theme of the quest of love, had found separate expression in the versified episodes called "fabliaux," and in the tales of Reynard the Fox. Much of this literature had been carried to Italy, as to other countries of Europe. No less renowned than the North French epic, and hardly less influential abroad, was the great school of amatory lyric poetry that had sprung up in southern France—a poetry of restricted scope but of exquisite artistry, which in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was sung and imitated at many an Italian court. Not until the time of Frederick II, however, do we find similar verse composed in an Italian tongue. About this great emperor clustered a band of clever, artificial love poets known as the Sicilian School. In Tuscany the vernacular was used for lyric purposes by a group of uninspired but ingenious rhymesters, for the most part close followers of Provençal models. At Bologna, too, the famous university town, the new art began to be cultivated in the middle of the thirteenth century. Here lived Guido Guinizelli, whom Dante calls his master, the first poet to formulate definitely that theory of love which was to govern the "sweet new style."

DANTE'S CONCEPTION OF LOVE According to this doctrine, love is an attribute of the "gentle" heart alone. There it slumbers until aroused to activity by a worthy object. The woman who awakens this "gentle" love must be a symbol of the angelic nature, or "heavenly intelligence"; and devotion to her is worship. In the generation after Guinizelli his teaching was extended by a circle of gifted writers, who introduced the poetic fashion into Florence, a busy commercial town, already perhaps the most prosperous of the bustling, ambitious, jealous, quarrelsome little commonwealths of Italy. Members of this literary company were Dante's "first friend," Guido Cavalcanti, and Dante himself. We find, to be sure, a less novel conception of love in some