The physiology of masculinity in Dante’s Florence1

Sara E. DÍAZ

The audience Dante first invokes in his Convivio is male. It is a broad class of men saddled with domestic and civic responsibilities,and defined in relation to their families, their cities, and their states2. More specifically, they are the city’s patriarchs, its merchants,its nobles – the lay but literate classes of means with little time for leisure, studies, or speculative thought3. And while Dante willeventually invite a mixed audience of men and women to partake in his feast of vernacular learning, the reader that emerges fromthese opening pages is emphatically masculine4. The convivial banquet of knowledge he prepares for his gendered audience is thereforeappropriately manly. The fourteen projected canzoni and their accompanying commentary draw their sustenance from the meatysubjects of amor and vertù, and are the products, the poet boasts, of his mature thought (Conv. 1.1.16):

«E se nella presente opera, la quale è Conv ivio nominata e vo’ che sia, più virilmente si trattasse che ne la Vita Nuova, non intendoperò a quella in parte alcuna derogare, ma maggiormente giovare per questa quella; veggendo sì come ragionevolemente quella fervidae passionata, questa temperata e virile esser conviene».

In contrast to the tempered and virile content of the Convivio stands the poetry of his youth – the fervid, passionate, in short,feminine poetry of his Vita Nuova. Filled with an active cast of female interlocutors and muliebrous spaces, the subtext of Dante’samorous autobiography ultimately hinges on his dialogic involvement with women. The dramatic turning-point in Dante’s poetictrajectory, particularly when plotted in relation to the Commedia, in fact rests on Dante’s exchanged with the feminine audience of«Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore». And while both the Convivio and the Vita Nuova manifestly deal with the topic of love, onlythe Convivio is said to treat the ponderous subject virilmente. As Dante himself is at pains to show, bodies, in this case literary bodies,can be compartmentalized, sorted, and understood in terms of gender differentiation.

The feminization and masculinization of Dante’s own works aptly illustrates the medieval tendency to see the world at large inbinary, gendered terms. As the emerging Romance vernaculars left the Latin neuter by the wayside, all of creation came to be parsedinto the two-gendered grammatical systems we know today. It seems almost natural, then, that Dante would characterize a work witha gendered masculine title such as the Convivio as virile. But as we can see in the above citation, Dante sexes his textual bodies

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based on what he perceives to be their intrinsic character, identifying qualities within them that neatly coincide with binary medievaltaxonomies. Thus his feminine libello is said to be passionate like a hot-headed woman, while his masculine treatise more closelyresembles the tempered judgment of the male intellect. This curious act of gendering, as we shall see, cogently speaks to thequalitative approach to sex difference which was pervasive in the theological, scientific and imaginative literature of the poet’s day.

The kind of gender constructs we find in the vernacular literature of Dante and his contemporaries, and particularly in the amorousverse of the stil novisti, has as much to do with the gendered language chosen to express their vernacular musings as it does with theprofessed object of their affections. As Teodolinda Barolini writes in her exemplary study of women in medieval Italian literature,the issue of gender is in fact «clearly posed by the texts themselves: [...] Because much of the early Italian tradition deals with desirethat is filtered through a cultural system we know as “courtly love”, in which the male lover aspires to the love of a lady worshipedas an ennobling ideal, attention to issues of gender seems a transparently useful critical move»5. Furthermore, she adds, «Courtliness,the set of values associated with what Dante and his peers call cortesia, is by definition a gendered issue, since its logic is constructedaround a male/female binary»6. But as Barolini’s body of research proves, efforts to recover female agency from predominantly male-authored texts raise a host of related considerations regarding male identity and subject ivity. Gender is, after all, constructed andrelational. As situational constructs, masculinity and femininity are socially produced categories shaped by the dynamic push andpull of human interaction. The stylized exchange between gendered voices in courtly verse thus presents only one of any number ofpossible constructions of gender in Trecento literature. It is therefore with an eye to what has been described as multiple masculinitiesthat we survey the physiology of male-ness in Dante’s Italy.

Recent scholarship has identified wide spectrum of masculine paradigms associated with the diverse institutions, hierarchies andsubcultures current in medieval societies7. From the ambitious merchant, to the celibate cleric, to the battle-tested knight, men competedand negotiated with each other for gendered self-hood. As studies on topics ranging from spiritual fatherhood to sumptuary legislationvariously reveal, «masculine identities were constructed, consciously and unconsciously, in oppositional terms»8. Given the impossibilityof painting a comprehensive or harmonious picture of normative masculinity, one might ask if the male body itself might not offer amore organic image of how masculinity was conceived of in the Middle Ages. According to Ruth Mazo Karras, «Masculinity doesnot refer to the male body, whose biological and anatomical features remain relatively constant among different men and over time,but rather to the meanings that society puts on a person with a male body, which change over time»9. A man’s biological sex was anythingbut socially constructed, to be sure, but his body nonetheless served as a locus for interpretation, debate, and reinvention. It was scrutinized

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and accounted for, and often valorized in medical literature in relation to its reproductive health. If one accepts that even a clinicalrepresentation of the male anatomy might bear the imprint of social gendering, then our search for the physiological male in Trecentoliterature should reveal something about how the masculine body was expected to perform in medieval society.

Any discussion of medieval gender constructs in the Latin West must acknowledge the Judeo-Christian etiology of sex difference.According to the Scriptural narrative, sexual differentiation could be traced definitively back to the creation of Adam and Eve inEden. Our first mother is said to have been made, like Adam, in the image of her Maker (Gen. 1:27). Man and woman were one, andwere equally embraced by the term homo in the Vulgate10. In the second, or co-call Yahwist account, Eve was Adam’s helper, andthen, as a consequence of the Fall, subordinated to her mate (Gen. 2-3). Labor too became gendered at this point, for it was only thenthat woman was condemned to suffer the hard pains of childbirth. It was a punishment which generations of misogynist writers wouldpoint to as proof of woman’s constitutional inferiority. But before gender became ranked and qualified – in those brief passages betweenthe Creation and the irreparable Fall - the relationship between the man and woman was simply governed by the generative mandateto «Be fruitful and multiply» (Gen. 1:28). Defined in terms of either prelapsarian complementarity or postlapsarian hierarchy, ourembodied-ness as male and female was from the onset yoked to our reproductive function by D ivine design.

In the thirteenth century, doctors, surgeons and natural philosophers reasoned along parallel lines. As Joan Cadden’s ambitiousstudy on the subject reveals, «[...] medicine and natural philosophy helped construct a set of notions which d ivided significant portionsof the world – from the behavior of animals to the operations of astrological signs – into “masculine” and “feminine”»11. Like allcreated beings, mankind was d ivided into two separate sexes which came together for one prescribed purpose. What today mightbe defined as masculine and feminine sexuality was accordingly studied, diagnosed and treated and with an eye towards successfulreproduction by the leading medical professionals of the day12. The stream of Aristotelian commentaries trickling down from theUniversities of Paris, Padua and Bologna in fact display the recurring tendency to at once insist on binary sexual categories, and atthe same time assume a male patient, namely the «universal male» patient, when discussing general precepts relating to physiology.The subject of sexual dimorphism, or physiological differences between the sexes, is broached in sections dealing with complexions,generation, frigidity and sterility – conditions and sexual disorders of pressing interest for physicians laboring to restore the body toreproductive health. Treatises on female health, on the other hand, are concerned almost exclusively with gynecology, embryology,and childbearing13. Medical attention to gender therefore seems to have been predicated by the same generative imperatives whichmedieval society imposed upon its men and women.

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The connection between medical culture and Dante Alighieri, and in particular the place allotted to the medical corpus with hisencyclopedic body of knowledge, is suggested by external and anecdotal evidence, as well as by explicit allusions within Dante’stexts. As any student armed with a critical edition of the Commedia can tell you, Dante was a card-carrying member of the guild ofMedici e Speziali (Ars medicorum et spetiarum). Listed in the records as a «poeta fiorentino», Dante’s professional involvementwith ranks of apothecaries was in all likelihood a convenient means for gaining entry into the world of Florentine politics14. Popularimages of Dante the doctor, clad in the red vestments traditionally reserved for physicians, can nonetheless be found in contemporaryfrescoes and are widely reproduced on the covers of modern editions of his works15. Boccaccio too had his hand in suggesting a linkbetween Dante and medicine. In his Trattatello in laude di Dante, Boccaccio paints a heroic picture of the poet’s mental powers byrecounting an incident at a Sienese apothecary shop where Dante, obl ivious to the loud fest ivities taking place just beyond the shopdoors, avidly read and digested what is assumed to have been a medical tome16. For Boccaccio, no area of inquiry was beyond Dante’sgrasp, and medicine was but one area of the poet’s expansive scholarly interests. Though these apocryphal details admittedly revealmore about popular representations of Dante than they do about Dante’s actual medical knowledge, the association between Danteand medicine, or between Dante and practicing medical professionals, cannot be entirely discounted.

Dante, after all, makes several explicit references to medical authorities in his own writings17. Avicenna, Averroes, Galen, andHippocrates all rub shoulders in Limbo, seemingly following the university medical curriculum to the letter (Inf. 4.142-144)18. Danteagain refers to Hippocrates and his Aphorisms in Paradiso 11, this time connecting him the wise spirits of the Heaven of the Sun(Par. 11.4-5)19. Additional passing references to Galen and Hippocrates in the Conv ivio and the Monarchia, as well as one, perhapseven two critical jabs directed at the leading physician of his own day, Taddeo Alderotti, lend credence to assumption that Dante hadat least some familiarity with the new Galenism coming out of the University of Bologna20. Alderotti alone wrote commentaries onthe Hippocratic Aphorisms, Galen’s Tegni (Ars medica) and De crisibus, for example, though Dante’s allusion to Alderotti in theConv ivio speaks more to the poet’s distaste for the doctor’s «filthy» volgarizzamento of Aristotle’s Ethics than about his access toAlderotti’s widely praised medical works21. Dante’s personal familiarity with other prominent doctors he may have crossed pathswith, Dino del Garbo and Pietro d’Abano, is a matter of sheer conjecture22.

A far stronger connection between Dante and scholastic medicine can be found in his expositions on embryology in the 25th cantoof the Purgatorio and in the 4th book of the Conv ivio23. Dante’s views on human generation and development have gatheredconsiderable critical interest over the years, beginning most notably with Bruno Nardi’s seminal work24. For the purposes of this

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discussion, I defer to the extant scholarly literature to settle difficult technical questions regarding coction, pangenesis, ensoulmentand the separate intellect, or whether Dante was following Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas or, for that matter, Taddeo Alderottiin his description of fetal development. Suffice it to say that Dante’s embryological disquisition is broadly Aristotelian, and drawseither from Aristotle’s De generatione animalium, or from any number of so-called ‘Aritotelizations’of Greco-Arabic medical texts25.Of more pressing interest here is what Statius’s purgatorial lesson on embryology tells us about the value which Dante assigns tomasculine agency in sexual reproduction.

Statius begins his lecture on human generation at the beginning - with the distinct contributions of each parent and a detailedoutline of their role in the material creation of the fetus: 26

«Sangue perfetto, che poi non si beveda l’assetate vene, e si rimanequasi alimento che di mensa leve,prende nel core a tutte membra umanevirtute informativa, come quelloch’a farsi quelle per le vene vane.Ancor digesto, scende ov’ è più bellotacer che dire; e quindi poscia gemesovr’ altrui sangue in natural vasello.ivi s’accoglie l’uno e l’altro insieme,L’un disposto a patire, e l’altro a fareper lo perfetto loco onde si preme»(Purg. 25.36-48).

As any reading of the passages reveals, Dante locates the seat of the «virtute informativa» which gives perfected blood its life-giving power in the father’s heart. His «sangue perfetto» acts upon the analogous, but separate «altrui sangue» of the mother. Onlythe father’s male body possesses the warmth necessary to cook up the rarefied stuff for human generation. The cold and moist femalecraves, but cannot create, such a refined product. Having received the informative virtue from the male parent, the spermatic blood

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is carried down to the male testicles, and then released into the mother’s vessel, or womb27. Unlike the Galenic dual-seed model,where the female body is said to supply its own semen and actively contribute to the formation of the embryo, Dante’s Aristotelianframework bars any possibility of female agency. The male acts on the female, actively informs and shapes her passive, raw materialinto an unfolding life awaiting its final d ivine infusion.

It is a widely known and lamentable fact that for Aristotle and his subsequent commentators, translators and imitators, a womanwas an imperfect male – a deficient, deformed even monstrous deviation from the masculine ideal28. It was a pervasive view whichsaw a qualitative difference between the genders, and read sexual differentiation in terms of lack rather than complementarity. AsJacquart and Thomasset observe, medical texts tended to present the determination of a child’s sex in terms of conflict. «Theproduction of a male fetus resembling the father», they explain, «requires “a total victory over the male seed over the female matter”»29.In both single and dual-seed theories, paternal sperm had to subdue the unruly contribution of the mother in order to successfullytransmit its superior male characteristics. It follows that a child’s resemblance to his or her mother was considered an aberration ofsorts, and implied a weakness on the part of the contributing male seed. The sex of the child itself signaled the triumph or failure ofthe father’s biological input, since male offspring more closely resembled their virile makers where it counted the most30. Admittedly,Dante’s explanation of fetal development differs from that of his medical counterparts by forgoing practical advice on how to generatemuch-desired male offspring31. But by insisting on primacy of male agency, much as a natural philosopher might have done, and bydrafting an analogy of creation which pr ivileges form over matter, Dante’s Aristotelian embryology participates in a hierarchicalview towards gender which assumes the innate superiority of the male over the female.

True to his era, Dante conceived of men as differing constitutionally and anatomically from their female mates. Sexed individualswere understood to possess recognizably different, albeit analogous internal and external reproductive organs32. In addition to thetell-tale physical markers, i.e. primary and secondary sexual characteristics, people were gendered from birth by their perceivedtemperaments, complexions and dispositions. Carol Everest points out that a medieval medical understanding of masculinity in factbegan in utero: «Formed on the right side of the womb with masculine sperm and plentiful heat, the male foetus enjoyed a longergestation period than his feminine counterpart, and he was born hotter, dryer, and more fully formed than the inferior female. Hismasculinity was evident in the external male genitalia, of which the female reproductive system was an underdeveloped replica»33.Though clearly not all men enjoyed the same degree of bodily heat, even the coldest man was said to be warmer than the warmestwoman. As a class, a woman’s cold and humid complexion was said to make her intemperate, inconstant, and, according to Albertus

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Magnus, desirous of more men even while engaged in the sexual act34. But variations in temperament could manifest in a wide arrayphysiognomic types, or combinations of masculine and feminine. Thus an active woman might be said to be masculine virago, whilea passive or nurturing man might be seen to possess feminine attributes35. With no descriptive language available to account for thegray areas between gendered constructs, medieval medicine stayed close to the male/female descriptive binary36.

Physiological complexion was therefore gendered and marked by inverse similarity. As a species, however, the humoral balanceof both sexes was believed to be equally subject to environmental factors, astral influence, and age, among other things. Change was,as always, a part of life. In the Convivio, for example, Dante explains that it is proper for one to be hot and humid in adolescence,hot and dry in youth, cold and dry in maturity, and cold and humid in old age37. The warmth and moisture commonly associated withmen in their bloom would eventually be consumed with the passing of years38. Even at the apex of one’s life, achieving a harmoniousbalance between bodily organs and their powers was no easy task. As the poet was forced to admit, the kind of equilibrium whichHippocrates or Galen envisioned as the standard of health was in fact a rarity – a physical improbability for mankind as a whole39.But setting aside general principles pertaining to both men and women, what, if anything, does Dante say that is specific to the physicallysexed male? Or rather, what does the medical language of complexions and humors tell us about how masculinity was constructedin the physiological system to which Dante clearly subscribed?

While both sexes underwent physiological change in time, the meanings ascribed to those changes were often gendered. A sonnetby Dante’s near contemporary Rustico Filippi (c. 1230-1285) puts into sharp relief the way in which a medical theories of bodilycomplexions, once assimilated by popular culture, could be used to signal virility40. Filippi’s Io fo ben boto a Dio, se Ghigo fosse,derides an obese and sexually impotent husband named Ghigo41:

«Io fo ben boto a Dio: se Ghigo fosse,ser Cerbiolin che ll’hai tanto lodato,per pilliccion di quella c’ha le fosse,non si riscalderia, tant’è gelato.Non vedi che di mezzo luglio tossee ‘l guarnel tien di sotto foderato?E dicemi che fuoco anche nol cosse;E’ par figliuol di Bonella impiombato:

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ché tutto il giorno sol seco si siede,onde ‘mbiecare ha’ffatte molte panche,se non ch’a manicare in casa riede.Maraviglia che no gli cascar l’anche!ché, se grande bisogno no richiede,da la sua casa non si partio anche».(Italics mine)

On the surface, Ghigo is a laughing stock because of what appears to be a gelid constitution. No furry pelt, no hot summer day,no fire, not even the corpulent flesh that covers his body can mitigate his innate coldness. Ghigo would not even be warmed up byhis woman’s pelliccion – a clear double entendre for a vagina – were he to use it. Instead, Ghigo is either too constitutionally coldto perform sexually, or denied access to such favors by his woman. His laughable frigidity is, of course, sexual as well as gendered.For as Verne Bullough points out, socially constructed maleness was «[...] somewhat fragile, and it was important for a man to keepdemonstrating his maleness by action and thought, especially by sexual action»42. Healthy, masculine men would have naturally warmcomplexions and were expected to sexually perform for their women. The melancholic Ghigo, Filippi seems to say, is either toofeeble or too foolish to come home for anything other than his meals, and is emasculated by his cold indifference to the opposite sex.His almost feminine coolness is therefore both a sign and a cause of his fragile masculinity.

Returning to science behind the gendered medieval body, the pathology of lovesickness is particularly illustrative. In Dante’sMiddle Ages, amorous desire was conceived of in strongly physical terms. There was, as of then, no distinction between what wetoday might call the psychology and the physiology of affections. Medieval physicians and natural philosophers applied the full measureof their scholastic learning to the diagnosis and treatment of erotic maladies. These psychosomatic disturbances of the soul werebelieved to be brought on by the sight of the beloved, and then aggravated by the incessant desire to think about them, to be conjoinedwith them, to possess and be possessed by them. Obsessional or heroic love could cause mood swings, sweating, fainting, anorexia,and at its very worst, plunge the afflicted lover into a melancholic stupor and destroy his or her cognitive faculties43. Evidence of thepassionate onslaught which Constantine the African famously identified as amor heroes can be found in the scientific literature ofthe universities, the conduct manuals of the courts, and in the stylized erotic poetry of the stilnovisti44. And while medical authoritiestended to write about and for male patients in their manuals, it was nevertheless understood to be a malady that afflicted both men

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and women. One need only think to the immured female readers addressed in the Proem of Boccaccio’s Decameron, shut tight intheir bedrooms with no outlet for their malinconia, to appreciate the fact that lovesickness did not discriminate based on gender45.

The casuistry behind erotic fascination has long been a popular subject for those interested in the relationship between scientificand imaginative literature, even for Dante’s immediate contemporaries. The physician Dino del Garbo, famed student of Taddeo Alderottiand commentator of the Hippocratic De natura fetus, wrote a gloss of Guido Cavalcanti’s Donna me prega which provides somemedical insights pertaining to sex and gender identity46. Del Garbo’s Latin commentary immediately begins by identifying the subjectof Cavalcanti’s canzone – the passion of love – as well as the object of this passion – a woman («mulier vel domina»)47. Del Garbois anxious to establish the heteronormat ivity of the poet’s desire from the start, noting that, «[...] la passione d’amore della quale siparla è per lo più rivolta verso la donna, sì che, anche se talvolta ha per oggetto l’uomo (ma è raro, essendo questo un amore bestialee contro natura), qui si assume esclusivamente in quanto appunto concepita per la donna»48. His comments are remarkable, in part,because they acknowledge the possibility of a same-sex desire, if only to reject it as contrary to nature. More to the point, del Garbo’sexplanatory notes reinforce the rigidly gendered literary constructs which are endemic to courtly verse. Cavalcanti’s rigorously scientificapproach to the accident known as love does set Donna me prega apart from the amorous platitudes of his peers, as del Garbo wellknows, but it is still built around a desiring male subject and a passive, desired female object. The physician’s ensuing explicationof the sort of erotic melancholy which could disrupt the physical and mental faculties of the too-ardent lover proceeds as most clinicaltexts did – with an implied universal male as the subject. But as the commentator of an erotic poem grounded in the male/femalebinary might tell you, the passion that afflicts the self-evidently male body reveals the marks of its gendered construction.

Earlier I noted that gender offers a particularly useful interpretive lens for studying the heteronormative language of courtly love.Since our interest here lies primarily in how masculine physiology could be said to have been gendered, I will conclude by focusing ona poetic exchange that registers, with brutally frank precision, the physical effects of Beatrice upon the poet’s sexed body. I begin byconceding that in Dante studies, queries relating to Dante’s medical knowledge commonly look to the opening scene of the Vita Nuova,where the Galenic doctrine of the spirits is used to articulate the sensations which overcame Dante’s tender young body when first hesaw Beatrice at the age of nine49. Though she appeared as the «gloriosa donna de la mia mente», it was the boy’s vital, animal and sensitivefaculties which were overrun as he succumbed to the tyranny of Amore. Dante’s masculine self-fashioning is thus from the onset tangiblyconstructed in relation to his love for Beatrice, as well as by his physiological reaction to the passions which she stirs.

Nine years later, the combined effect of the sight and sound of Beatrice’s sweet words rising to meet Dante’s ears almost inebriated

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the poet, awakening strange new thoughts, and bringing about a career-making phantasmagoric vision. Overcome by a sleep aftertheir momentous encounter, Dante dreamed of Amore personified, smiling, carrying Beatrice in his arms, and feeding her the poet’sburning heart. It was then, he tells us in the prose commentary, that he composed what would eventually become the first sonnet ofthe Vita Nuova - A ciascun alma presa e gentil core. Dante then circulated the sonnet among a select group of »famosi trovatori»,humbly asking them to comment, in verse, on his baffling experience. The responses, more than the Dantean sonnet itself, directlyspeak to the various ways in which masculinity was constructed in the Trecento lyric.

Dante’s initial request to the «fedeli d’Amore» elicited three surviving rejoinders from an established cadre of senior poets. Thesonnet attributed to Cino da Pistoia (or Terino da Castelfiorentino), Naturalmente chere ogne amadore, proposes as somewhatconventional reading of Dante’s bizarre dream. The surreal image of Beatrice consuming the poet’s flesh is said to represent the unionof their two hearts – the happy reciprocation of the male lover’s desire («insieme due coraggi comprendendo»). This cannibalisticvision, as the opening verse makes clear, can naturally be accounted for by the heteronormative dynamics of courtly love. The replysupplied by Guido Cavalcanti is also encouragingly positive. Dante should rejoice, assures his soon-to-be primo amico, for he hasbeen granted entrance into Love’s honorable court: «Vedeste, al mio parere, onne valore / e tutto gioco e quanto bene om sente, / sefoste in prova del segnor valente / che segnoreggia il mondo de l’onore, [...]».

Cavalcanti’s gloss picks up on the intellective, the noble, and the visionary aspects of Dante’s sonnet50. He grants his young protégéa happiness which he himself is denied in own fraught dealings with Amore/Morte. And most importantly, by comparing Dante’sexperience to his own, Cavalcanti embarks on a discursive relationship with the younger Alighieri. His response at once valorizesDante’s experience and authenticates the poetic identity Dante was just beginning to style for himself.

The answer provided by the last respondent to be considered, Dante da Maiano, strips the younger Dante’s verse of all of its visionarypretenses and attributes Alighieri’s erotic fantasy to nothing but his masculine physiology:

«Di ciò che stato sei dimandatore,guardando ti rispondo brevemente,amico meo di poco canoscente,mostrandoti del ver lo tuo sentore.Al tuo mistier così son parlatore:se san ti truovi e fermo de la mente,

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che lavi la tua coglia largamente,a ciò che stingua e passi lo vaporelo qual ti fa favoleggiar loquendo;e se gravato sei d’infertà rea,sol c’hai farneticato, sappie, intendo.Così riscritto el meo parer ti rendo;né cangio mai d’esta sentenza mea,fin che tua acqua al medico no stendo».

Da Maiano does not condescend to offer an interpretation of Dante’s spectacular dream – just a diagnosis. He holds Dante’s sexedbody up for mocking scrutiny, and impugns on his masculine self-fashioning by locating the source of his erotic fascination in eitherhis mind or genitals51. The miraculous vision which Cino and Guido read as an auspicious sign of his lady’s love is written off aseither an excess of vapors caused by, in one likely interpretation, nocturnal emissions, or a delirium («farneticato») generated by hisdiseased mind52. Assuming that an otherwise healthy Dante is suffering from the former condition, da Maiano unceremoniously suggeststhat he extinguish the noxious vapors by washing his testicles («lavi la tua coglia»). But if the poet’s «favoleggiar loquendo» insteadbetrays the feverish wanderings of an infirmed imagination, then Dante would be well advised to submit to a proper medicalexamination by a trained physician. Refusing to substantiate Dante’s courtly aspirations, da Maiano reduces Dante’s capacity toexperience love, or the vision of his beloved, into crudely mechanical physiological terms.

In the virile contest for social, artistic and physical dominance, a sharp wit could effectively strike at the core of a target’s fragilemasculinity. Da Maiano’s acerbic response reveals an irritation which, according to one gloss, indicates that «il favoleggiar dantestcoabbia violato qualche codice virile»53. His retaliatory address to an «amico meo di poco canoscente», a far cry the tone used in anearlier poetic exchange between the two, undermines Dante’s efforts to stand on par with the elder da Maiano54. But more to thepoint, da Maiano’s facetious response to what we must assume was Dante’s sincere request for feedback, approval and entrance intoa masculine community of peers exposes, albeit in a comic light, the close connection between biologically and socially constructedgender identity. A young Dante was attempting to build his artistic persona around his beloved, trying to mediate his engagementwith his esteemed interlocutors through a dialectic of Amore. Da Maiano’s answer instead rejects Dante’s amorous self-fashioning,leaving in its place the naked, exposed, and clearly sexed body of the young Dante Alighieri.

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NOTE

1 This article is the fruit of a paper delivered in 2011 for the conference Dante and Heterodoxy. The Temptation of Radical Thought in the 13th Centuryat New York University. I am grateful to Professor Maria Luisa Ardizzone for inviting me to take my research in a new direction.

2 «Di fuori dall’uomo possono essere similemente due cagioni intese, l’una delle quali è induttrice di necessitade, l’altra di pigrizia. La prima è la curafamiliare e c ivile, la quale convenevolemente a sé tiene de li uomini lo maggior numero, sì che in ozio di speculazione esser non possono. L’altra è lodifetto del luogo dove la persona è nata e nutrita, che tal ora sarà da ogni studio non solamente privato, ma da gente studiosa lontano. Le due di questecagioni, cioè la prima da la parte [di dentro e la prima da la parte] di fuori, non sono da vituperare, ma da escusare e di perdono degne; le due altre, avvegnache l’una più, sono degne di biasimo e d’abominazione». Convivio 1.1.4. (Italics mine). Opere minori 1/2, (a cura di) Domenico De ROBERTIS and CesareVASOLI, La letteratura italiana: Storiae testi 5, Milan, IT, Ricciardi, 1988.

3 For more on the original addresses of the Convivio, Cfr., Richard LANSING, Dante’s Intended Audience in the Convivio, “Dante Studies, with theAnnual Report of the Dante Society”, No.110, 1992, pp. 17-24.

4 Dante introduces the subject of female literacy several chapters later when justifying his decision to compose his work in the vernacular rather thanin Latin. Aiming to be of service to the broadest possible audience, Dante writes the Conv ivio in a language easily understood by «principi, baroni, cavalierie molt’altra nobile gente, non solamente maschi ma femmine». (Conv. 1.9.5) His inclusion of women among this noble class of vernacular readers speaksmore specifically to his hopes to disseminate his work than, as we shall see, the gendered character of the work itself. Alison CORNISH touches upon therelationship between Dante’s linguistic choices and his feminine audience in A Lady Asks: The Gender of Vulgarization in Late Medieval Italy, “PMLA”,No. 115 (2000), pp. 166-80.

5 Teodolinda BAROLINI, Notes toward a Gendered History of Italian Literature, with a Discussion of Dante’s Beatrix Loquax, in Dante and the Originisof Italian Literary Culture, New York, Fordham University Press, 2006, p. 360.

6 Ivi, p. 362.7 Useful introductions to the study of masculinities in the Middle Ages include ; ; ; and Jacqueline MURRAY, (a cura di), Conflicted Identities and Multiple

Masculinities: Men in the Medieval West, New York, NY, Garland, 1999. 8 Jacqueline MURRAY, Introduction. “Conflicted Identities”, op. cit., p. xi.9 Ruth Mazo KARRAS, From Boys to Men, op. cit., p. 3.10 «Et creavit Deus hominem ad imaginem suam ad imaginem Dei creavit illum masculum et feminam creavit eos». Howard BLOCH dedicates a chapter

to patristic anti-feminism and the two Creation stories in his Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love, Chicago, IL, Chicago UniversityPress, 1991, pp. 13-36.

11 Joan CADDEN, Preface, Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages. Medicine, Science, and Culture, Cambridge, UK, Cambridge UniversityPress, 1993.

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12 Mazo KARRAS and MURRAY offer a handy comparison of medieval concepts of sex difference against modern concepts of gender difference, andhighlight the medieval tendency to equate the «sexed» body with the «reproductive» body. Cfr., The Sexual Body, in A Cultural History of the HumanBody in the Medieval Age (500-1500), Oxford, UK, Berg Publishers, 2010.

13 For a related work on female medical practitioners and women’s health, Cfr., Monica GREEN, Women’s Medical Practice and Health Care in MedievalEurope, “Signs” N.14 (1989), pp. 434-473. Though somewhat beyond the scope of this study, Green has also edited and translated an invaluable criticaledition of The Trotula. A Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine, Philadelphia, PA, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001.

14 Cfr., Vivian NUTTON, Dante, Medicine and the Invisible Body, in Dante and the Human Body, John C. BARNES and Jennifer PETRI (a cura di), Dublin,Four Courts Press, 2007, pp. 46-7. Nutton’s article explores the implications of Dante’s membership in the large, heterogeneous guild of Medici e Speziali,which incorporated all kinds of non-medical professions including painters, paper suppliers, and even poets.

15 Among the most famous images of Dante are Giotto’s portrait from the Chapel in the Bargello, Andrea del Castagno’s fresco in the Uffizi, and Domenicodi Michelino’s fresco in the Duomo. In each image, Dante wears some variation of the red robe and hood commonly associated with the medical profession.For more on the subject, see Romano PASI’s Dante, i medici e la medicina, Ravenna, IT, Edizioni Essegi, 1996, p. 13.

16 «Ne’ suoi studi fu assiduissimo, quanto è quel tempo che ad essi si disponea, intanto che niuna novità che s’udisse da quegli il poteva rimuovere. E,secondo che alcuni degni di fede raccontano di questo darsi tutto a cosa che gli piacesse, egli, essendo una volta tra l’altre in Siena, e avvenutosi per accidentealla stazzone d’uno speziale, e qu ivi statogli recato uno libretto davanti promessogli, e tra’ valenti uomini molto famoso, né da lui stato giammai veduto,non avendo per avventura spazio di portarlo in altra parte, sopra la panca che davanti allo speziale era, si pose col petto, e, messosi il libretto davanti, quellocupidissimamente cominciò a vedere. E come che poco appresso in quella contrada stessa, e dinanzi da lui, per alcuna general festa de’ Sanesi, s’incominciasse da gentili giovani e facesse una grande armeggiata, e con quella grandissimi romori da’ circustanti (sì come in cotali casi con istrumenti variie con voci applaudenti suol farsi), e altre cose assai v’avvenissero da dover tirare altrui a vedersi, sì come balli di vaghe donne e giuochi molti di giovani;mai non fu alcuno che muovere quindi il vedesse, né alcuna volta levare gli occhi dal libro: anzi, postovisi quasi ad ora di nona, prima fu passato vespro,e tutto l’ebbe veduto e quasi sommariamente compreso, che egli da ciò si levasse; affermando poi ad alcuni, che il domandavano come s’era potuto teneredi riguardare a così bella festa come davanti a lui s’era fatta, sé niente averne sentito: per che alla prima maraviglia non indebitamente la seconda s’aggiunsea’ dimandanti». Giovanni BOCCACCIO, Trattatello in laude di Dante, XX, (a cura di) Pier Giorgio RICCI. Vol. 3, Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, Milan,IT, Mondadori, 1964-92.

17 For medical terminology in Dante’s works, Cfr., Patrizia BERTINI MALGARINI, Il linguaggio medico e anatomico nelle opera di Dante, “Studidanteschi”, N. 61, (1989), pp. 29-108. Several of the essays contained within Dante and the Human Body (op. cit.) explore different aspects Dante’s relationshipto the medical sciences. Included within the volume is Simon A. GILSON’s The Anatomy of Physiology of the Human Body in the Commedia, which isparticularly useful for a general understanding of Dante’s medical proficiency.

18 PASI notes that the series of authorities cited by Dante follow the sequence of texts studied and commented by students of medicine (aphorismosHippocratis, canonem Avicennae, artem medicinalem Galenii), p. 27.

19 Hippocrates also named in the Purgatorio (29. 137) in reference to St. Luke.

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20 Dante alludes to Galen in the Monarchia (1.13.6), and to both Galen and Hippocrates in the Conv ivio (1.8.5). As for Alderotti, Dante criticizes acertain «Taddeo» in his Paradiso for having used his learning for financial profit with little regard for true philosophical inquiry (Par. 12.82-5). The derisivereference to a Taddeo has not been pinned definitively on Taddeo Alderotti, and may instead refer to a Bolognese lawyer named Taddeo Pepoli. For Dante’sdisdain for Alderotti, Cfr. NUTTON, op. cit., pp. 49-50.

21 Taddeo ALDEROTTI (1223-1295) was famous in his day for glossing the Hippocratic and Galenic texts mentioned above, Johannitius’s Isagoge, andparts of Avicenna’s Canon, as well as for authoring his own works on practical medicine. He also penned the vernacular Della consevazione della salute,dedicated to Dante’s arch-rival Corso Donati. Dante takes his shot at the good doctor in his Conv ivio by criticizing Alderotti’s «laido» translation of Aristotle’sEthics (Conv. I.x.10). Alison CORNISH considers Alderotti’s reputed vernacular translation of the Etica Aristotilis translata in vulgari in her VernacularTranslation in Dante’s Italy: Illiterate Literature, Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press, 2011, pp. 131-2. Nancy SIRAISI’s Taddeo Alderotti and HisPupils, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1981, remains the most authoritative work on the medieval physician.

22 Dino del GARBO (1280-1327) was a student of Alderotti’s and a famed translator, writer and commentator in his own right. He is perhaps best rememberedby literary scholars for his commentary on Guido Cavalcanti’s «Donna me prega». Pietro d’Abano (c.1250-1316) taught medicine, natural philosophy andastrology in the universities of Paris and Padua, and authored the influential tome Conciliator Differentiarum, quœ inter Philosophos et Medicos Versantur.Pasi speculates that Dante may have been able to hear d’Abano’s lectures while in Padua sometime between 1304 and 1306, though offers little more thana coincidence of dates to support his hypothesis. PASI, op. cit., pp. 19-22. For more on Pietro d’Abano, Cfr., Bruno NARDI, Saggi di filosofia dantesca,P. MAZANTINI (a cura di), Florence, La Nuova Italia, 1967, pp. 40-62; or Nancy SIRAISI Medicine and the Italian Universities, 1250-1600, Toronto, PontificalInstitute of Mediaeval Studies, 1973, pp. 79-99.

23 Purg. 25.36-75, and Conv. 4.21.4-5.24 Bruno NARDI, L’origine dell’anima umana secondo Dante, in Studi sulla filosofia medievale (Rome: Storia e Letteratura, 1960) pp. 9-68. The bibliography

on the subject is extensive. Some of the most recent works include: Vittorio BARTOLI and Paola URENI, Controversie medico-biologiche in tema digenerazione umana nel XXV del Purgatorio, “Studi danteschi” No.78 (2003): 83-111; Jennifer FRASER, Dante/Fante: Embryology in Purgatory and Paradise,in Dante & the Unorthodox: The Aesthetics of Transgression, (a cura di) James MILLER, Waterloo, ON, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2005, pp. 290-309; Manuele GRAGNOLATI, From Plurality to (Near) Unicity of Forms: Embryology in Purgatorio 25, in Dante for the New Millennium, (a cura di) WayneH. STOREY and Teodolinda BAROLINI, New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2003, pp. 192-210; Joseph ZIEGLER, The Scientific Context of Dante’sEmbryology in Dante and the Human Body, ibidem, pp. 61-88.

25 It is a near-impossibility to pin-point any one source for the medical lore which was «part of a common intellectual patrimony that was diffused in awide range of medical textbooks and other writings that condensed their teachings». GILSON, Human Anatomy and Physiology in Dante, p. 17. GILSON

goes on to consider Dante’s access to Latin translations from the Arabic of the Galenic and Aristotelian medical corpus, 17-26.26 Compare with: «E però dico che quando l’umano seme cade nel suo recettaculo, cioè ne la matrice, esso porta seco la vertù de l’anima generativa e

la vertù del cielo e la vertù de li elementi legati, cioè la complessione; e matura e dispone la materia a la vertù formativa, la quale diede l’anima del generante;e la vertù formativa prepara li organi a la vertù celestiale, che produce de la potenza del seme l’anima in vita». (Conv. 4.21.4)

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27 I specify male testicles because according to some medieval authorities, both men and women were believed to have analogous reproductivestructures. The result was the identification of the female ovaries with the male testes, a belief in female sperm, and female nocturnal emissions. Joan CADDEN

discusses the tendency to see structural similarities in male and female anatomy throughout her Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages. DanielleJACQUART and Claude THOMASSET also touch upon the assumed inverse similarity between male and female reproductive organs, including male/femaletesticles, in their Sexuality and Medicine in the Middle Ages, trans. Matthew ADAMSON, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1985.

28 The bibliography on Aristotle’s enduring influence on misogynist literature, science, politics, etc...is far too voluminous to take up here. For a briefoverview of Aristotle’s antifeminist biology, Cfr. CADDEN, p. 24, and BLOCH, p. 71.

29 JACQUART and THOMASSET, 139.30 Other factors contributing to the gender of a child might include the sexual position assumed when the child was conceived, whether the father’s seed

falls on the right or left side of the womb, and the humoral constitution of the parents. 31 For medieval treatises, manuals, recipes, and other such advice on how to influence the sex of a child in utero, Cfr. CADDEN, 195-201.32 Cfr. ff. 26 above.33 Carol A. EVEREST, Sight and Sexual Performance in a Merchant’s Tale, in Masculinities in Chaucer, Approaches to Maleness in the Canterbury Tales

and Troilus and Criseyde, (a cura di) Peter G. BEIDLER, Cambridge, UK: D.S. Brewer: 1995, pp. 91-104.34 «Woman’s complexion is more humid than man’s. [The nature] of the humid receives an impression easily but retains it poorly. The humid is readily

mobile, and thus women are inconstant and always seeking something new. Hence when she is engaged in the act under one man, if it were possible, shewould like at the same time to be under another...In short, I should say, every woman is to be avoided as much as a poisonous snake and a horned devil».Albertus Magnus, Quaestiones de animalibus, bk. 15, q. 11, as cited by CADDEN, p. 185.

35 CADDEN, op. cit., pp. 169-227.36 Mazo KARRAS and MURRAY point out that gender slippage could easily be accounted for by «the individual variations of heat and cold, wetness and

dryness that characterized all people». Thus a sexually passive male was influence by, yet oddly disconnected from the natural inclinations of his sexedbody, and as a consequence gendered as a «feminine» man. The Sexual Body.

37 «Veramente questo arco non pur per mezzo si distingue da le scritture; ma, seguendo le quattro combinazioni de le contrarie qualitadi che sono ne lanostra composizione, a le quali pare essere appropriata, dico a ciascuna, una parte de la nostra etade, in quattro parti si divide, e chiamansi quattro etadi. Laprima è Adolescenza, che s’appropria al caldo e a l’umido; la seconda si è Gioventute, che s’appropria al caldo e al secco; la terza si è Senettute, che s’appropriaal freddo e al secco; la quarta si è Senio che s’appropria al freddo e a l’umido, secondo che nel quarto de la Metaura scrive Alberto». (Conv. 4.23.12-13).

38 «...e però che la nostra natura si studia di salire, e a lo scendere raffrena, però che lo caldo naturale è menomato, e puote poco, e l’umido è ingrossato(non però in quantitade, ma pur in qualitade, sì ch’è meno vaporabile e consumabile),...» (Conv. 4.24.5).

39 «Intra li effetti de la d ivina sapienza l’uomo è mirabilissimo, considerando come in una forma la d ivina virtute tre nature congiunse, e come sottilmentearmoniato conviene esser lo corpo suo [...] Per che, per la molta concordia che ‘n tra tanti organi conviene a bene rispondersi, pochi perfetti uomini in tantonumero sono». (Conv. 3.8.1-2).

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40 It is worth mentioning that Filippi’s follow-up sonnet, «Se tu sia lieto di madonna Tana», also pokes fun at its target’s virility by pointing to theoutward signs of his physical/sexual frigidity: («Ch’egli è più freddo che detto non aggio: / non vedi come ‘l naso il manofesta?»).

41 Dante appropriates Filippi’s derisive vocabulary in the first sonnet in his so-called Tenzone with Forese «Chi udisse tossir la malfatata». Here, Dantecharacterizes the wife of his antagonist as «infreddata» in an obvious bid to discredit Forese’s ability to sexually satisfy her. Cfr., I poeti giocosi del tempodi Dante, (a cura di) Mario MARTI, Milano, IT, Rizzoli, 1956, p. 50; Rimatori comico-realistici del Due e Trecento, (a cura di) Maurizio VITALE, Torino, IT,UTET, 1965, p. 147; Fabian ALFIE, Rustico’s Reputation: Ramifications for Dante’s Tenzone with Forese Donati, “Electronic Bulletin of the Dante Societyof America (EBDSA)”, No. 29, 2002, www.princeton.edu/~dante/ebdsa/index.html (linked under Minor Works, ultima visita: 11 Novembre 2012), as wellas his most recent Dante’s “Tenzone” with Forese Donati, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2011, pp. 28-9.

42 Vern L. BULLOUGH, On Being Male in the Middle Ages, in Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages, eds. Clare E. LEES, ThelmaFENSTER, and Jo Ann Mc NAMARA, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1994, p. 41.

43 For in depth studies of medieval medicine and lovesickness, see Massimo CIAVOLELLA, La malattia d’amore dall’anitchità al medioevo, Roma, IT,Bulzoni, 1976; and Mary Frances WACK, Lovesickness in the Middle Ages. The ‘Viaticum’ and its Commentaries, Philadelphia. PA. University ofPennsylvania Press, 1990.

44 Before passing away around 1099, Constantine translated at least twenty works into Latin from the Arabic, rendering previously undecipherable textssuch as the Hippocratic Aphorisms and Prognostica, Galen’s De spermate, De coitu, De genecia and the Pantegni comprehensible to Western readers. Hisanalyses of the physical malady brought on by excessive love, particularly in his Viaticum, had a lasting effect on Western medicine.

45 «Esse dentro a’ dilicati petti, temendo e vergognando, tengono l’amorose fiamme nascose, le quali quanto piú di forza abbian che le palesi coloro ilsanno che l’hanno provate: e oltre a ciò, ristrette da’ voleri, da’ piaceri, da’ comandamenti de’padri, delle madri, de’ fratelli e de’ mariti, il piú del temponel piccolo circuito delle loro camere racchiuse dimorano e quasi oziose sedendosi, volendo e non volendo in una medesima ora, seco rivolgendo diversipensieri, li quali non è possibile che sempre sieno allegri. E se per quegli alcuna malinconia, mossa da focoso disio, sopraviene nelle lor menti, in quelleconviene che con grave noia si dimori, se da nuovi ragionamenti non è rimossa: senza che elle sono molto men forti che gli uomini a sostenere; il che degliinnamorati uomini non avviene, sí come noi possiamo apertamente vedere. Essi, se alcuna malinconia o gravezza di pensieri gli affligge, hanno molti modida alleggiare o da passar quello, per ciò che a loro, volendo essi, non manca l’andare a torno, udire e veder molte cose, uccellare, cacciare, pescare, cavalcare,giucare o mercatare: de’ quali modi ciascuno ha forza di trarre, o in tutto o in parte, l’animo a sé e dal noioso pensiero rimuoverlo almeno per alcuno spaziodi tempo, appresso il quale, con un modo o con altro, o consolazion sopraviene o diventa la noia minore». Giovanni BOCCACCIO, Decameron, Proemio, (acura di) Vittore BRANCA, Milan, IT, Mondadori, 1976, pp. 10-12. BAROLINI comments on women’s lack of access to the kinds of salutary, gendered activities which men could enjoy in her study of Le parole son femmine e i fatti sono maschi: Toward a Sexual Poetics of the Decameron, in Dante and theOrigins of Italian Literary Culture, p. 282.

46 For more on Dino del Garbo and his contemporaries, see Nancy Siraisi’s Taddeo Alderotti and His Pupils.47 «Ista cantilena, que tractat de amoris passione, d ividitur in tres partes: [...]» Dino del Garbo, Commento, in La Canzone d’amore di Guido Cavalcanti

e i suoi antichi commenti, a.c.d. Enrico FENZI, Genova, IT, Melangolo, 1999, p. 86.

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48 «Causa quare istud attribuitur mulieri vel domine fuit duplex: una est quia huiusmodi passio, que est amor de quo loquitur, ut plurimum circa mulieremversatur; et licet aliquando erga masculum versetur (sed raro, cum sit talis amor bestialis et ideo preter naturam), ideo solum hic proponit circa mulierem»,ivi, p. 87.

49 «“In quello punto dico veracemente che lo spirito de la vita, lo quale dimora ne la secretissima camera de lo cuore, cominciò a tremare sì fortemente,che apparia ne li menimi polsi orribilmente; e tremando disse queste parole: “Ecce deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur michi”. In quello punto lospirito animale, lo quale dimora ne l’alta camera ne la quale tutti li spiriti sensit ivi portano le loro percezioni, si cominciò a maravigliare molto, e parlandospezialmente a li spiriti del viso, sì disse queste parole: “Apparuit iam beatitudo vestra”. In quello punto lo spirito naturale, lo quale dimora in quella parteove si ministra lo nutrimento nostro, cominciò a piangere, e piangendo disse queste parole: “Heu miser, quia frequenter impeditus ero deinceps!” D’allorainnanzi dico che Amore segnoreggiò la mia anima, la quale fu sì tosto a lui disponsata, e cominciò a prendere sopra me tanta sicurtade e tanta signoria perla vertù che li dava la mia imaginazione, che me convenia fare tutti li suoi piaceri compiutamente». Vita Nuova: Edizione Critica. (a cura di) Michele BARBI,Florence, IT, Bemporad, 1932. For more on the medical basis for Dante’s spiriti, see Massimo CIAVOLELLA’s La Fisiologia dell’amore nella Vita Nuova,in Proceedings of the Pacific Northwest Conference on Foreign Languages, Pullman, WA, 1966, pp. 177-180.

50 See commentary to A ciascun alma presa e genitl core in ‘Rime’ giovanili e della ‘Vita Nuova’, a.c.d Teodolinda BAROLINI, note di ManueleGRAGNOLATI, Milano, BUR Rizzoli, 2009, p. 83.

51 Verne BULLOUGH notes that in medieval medical literature, lovesickness was first regarded a disease of the mind, and then in the later middle agesas a the disease of the genitals. He adds, «The emphasis on intercourse as a cure would seem contrary to regarding lovesickness as an illness of the soul ormind, but obviously such an illness, and threat to masculinity, called for drastic action», On Being Male in the Middle Ages, pp. 38-9.

52 For a passing comment regarding da Maiano’s allusion to nocturnal emissions, see Fabian ALFIE, Comedy and Culture: Cecco Angiolieri’s Poetryand Late Medieval Society, Leeds, UK, Northern Universities Press, 2001, p. 157. Malgarini observes that the word «farneticare» has a precise technicalmeaning in medieval medicine and designated grave mental disturbances with physical manifestations. See her, Il linguaggio medico e anatomico nelleopera di Dante, p. 34 and 50.

53 BAROLINI and GRAGNOLATI, ‘Rime’ giovanili e della ‘Vita Nuova’, p. 84. 54 There was a time when the elder Dante welcomed the younger Alighieri’s opinions on the subject of love. Dante da Maiano invited commentary on

his own amorous vision, Provedi, saggio, ad esta visïone, prompting Dante to compose Savete giudicar vostra ragione in response. In it, Dante addressesda Maiano in flattering terms, praising his wisdom («o om che pregio di saver portate»), his well-formed phrases («parole ornate»), and his lady’s constancy(«la fermezza ch’averà nel core»). The poem clearly had its desired effect, since da Maiano wrote back asking Dante to continue their dialogue in Perpruova di saper com vale o quanto.

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