Rustico Di Filippo and the Florentine Lyric Tradition

Book excerpt: Rustico di Filippo, a Florentine poet of the generation before Dante, is known by and large as a poet of the jocose, or humorous, tradition. We tend not to know that Rustico was a major exponent of traditional love poetry. Unlike traditional literary history, this study relates Rustico to his contemporaries: Guittone d'Arezzo, Chiaro Davanzati, Monte Andrea and others. It also examines his influence on poets of the next generation: Dante Alighieri, Guido Cavalcanti and Cecco Angiolieri. By reading Rustico within the mainstream of the Italian lyric tradition, we begin to see him as a major poet.