The Fiore and the Detto D'Amore
Subtitle: A Late 13Th-Century Italian Translation of the Roman De LA Rose (The William and Katherine Devers Series in Dante Studies, Vol 4)
Contributors: Dante Alighieri (Editor); Santa Casciani (Editor, Translator); Christopher Kleinhenz (Editor, Translator)
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
Published: November 2000
Language: eng; ita
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 558
ISBN-13: 9780268008932
Subjects: Poetry & poets: classical, early & medieval; Works by individual poets: classical, early & medieval; Italian Poetry; Poetry; Italian; Ancient, Classical & Medieval; Continental European
Description: "This is the first English translation of Il Fiore, the late-thirteenth-century narrative poem in 232 sonnets based on the Old French Roman de la Rose, and the Detto d'Amore, a free-wheeling version of many Ovidian precepts of love in 240 rhymed couplets. The elaborate allegory of the Fiore presents the complex workings of love, understood primarily as carnal passion, in the human psyche through the use of personifications of a wide array of characters who engage in various social (and bellic) interactions. There are personifications of social stereotypes and attitudes, mythological figures, abstract qualities, psychological and physical states, and personality traits."

"The Detto d'Amore includes features of the perennial controversy between proponents of the pleasures of erotic passion and those who counsel pursuit of the sublime joys found solely in the exercise of reason. The incomplete poem also contains a conventionalized - and idealized - description of the physical traits of the lady, as well as a portrait of the perfect courtly lover."--Jacket.