Guido Cavalcanti


Cavalcanti, Guido

 

Born 1255 or 1259 in Florence; died there in 1300. Italian poet.

After G. Guinizelli, Cavalcanti became the major poet of the dolce stil nuovo. His canzones and sonnets celebrated sublime love for an idealized woman and attempted to reveal the philosophical meaning of this love. He also composed verses on earthly love, characterized by freshness and spontaneity (for example, his ballad “I Met a Shepherdess in the Woods”).

WORKS

Le rime … edite e inedite. Florence, 1813.
In Russian translation:
“Sonety.” In Khrestomatiia po zarubezhnoi literature: Literatura sred-nikh vekov. Compiled by B. I. Purishev and R. O. Shor. Moscow, 1953.

REFERENCES

De Sanctis, F. Istoriia itaVianskoi literatury, vol. 1. Moscow, 1963. Storia della letteratura italiana, vol. 1. Milan, 1965.