(ca. 1210–ca. 1290)
One of the members in the “Sicilian school” of Italian poetry, which followed the lead of GIACOMO DA LENTINO, Guido delle Collone was a judge located in Messina, where his name appears on some 15 legal decisions between 1243 and 1280. DANTE admired his CANZONI, but Guido is probably better known for his Latin prose Historia destructionis Troiae, which was popular throughout Europe and was translated into several languages. Not much is known about Guido’s life, other than his career as a jurist. It is unknown whether he had any connection with the important Roman family with the same surname. Only five of his canzoni are extant, and they display a debt to the Provençal TROUBADOURS as well as his fellow Sicilians, though his poetry is admired for displaying a more polished style than that of his Italian predecessors. At least that is Dante’s judgment as he alludes to two of these poems in his De VULGARI ELOQUENTIA. In one of his more striking canzoni, “Anchor che l’aigua per lo foco lassi,” Guido uses natural imagery to parallel experiences of love. In one passage, he uses the image of a magnet:
The magnet, so the learned say,
could not attract iron with such force,
if the air between them did not permit it.
. . .
Just so, my lady, Love understood
he could not
draw me to himself except through you.
(Goldin 1973, 253, ll. 53–61)
This application of scientific imagery to explain the nature of love is taken up later by the important Tuscan poet Guido GUINIZELLI. Guido completed his Historia destructionis Troiae (“History of the Destruction of Troy”) in 1287, apparently at the request of the bishop of Salerno.While Guido claimed that his text was a true historical account, based on eyewitness reports from a certain Dictys of Crete and Dares the Phrygian, it is in fact a Latin prose adaptation of the French verse ROMANCE by BENOÎT DE SAINTMAURE entitled the Roman de Troie (ca. 1160). Guido’s text did much to popularize the legend of Troy in medieval Europe. In its turn, it became the source for BOCCACCIO’s romance Il FILOSTRATO (1335–36) and, with Boccaccio, for CHAUCER’s TROILUS AND CRISEYDE (ca. 1385). It was included in the Recueil des Histoires de Troie by Raoul le Fèvre, a text translated into English in 1475 by William CAXTON, who printed it the following year, making it the first book printed in England.
Bibliography
■ Benson, C. David. The History of Troy in Middle English Literature: Guido delle Colonne’s Historia Destructionis Troiae in Medieval England. Woodbridge, U.K.: D. S. Brewer, 1980.
■ Goldin, Frederick, trans. German and Italian Lyrics of the Middle Ages: An Anthology and a History. New York: Doubleday, 1973.
■ Guido delle Collone. Historia Destructionis Troiae. Edited by Nathaniel Edward Griffin. Cambridge, Mass.:Mediaeval Academy of America, 1936.
■ ———. Historia Destructionis Troiae. Translated by Mary Elizabeth Meek. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1974.
■ Jensen, Frede, ed. and trans. The Poetry of the Sicilian School. New York: Garland, 1986.
Encyclopedia of medieval literature. 2013.