SOURCE: Edwards, Robert. An Introduction to The Poetry of Guido Guinizelli, edited and translated by Robert Edwards, pp. xi-lxxx. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1987.

In the following excerpt, Edwards points out some difficulties in sorting out Guinizelli's biography, examines his accomplishments as poet and innovator, and considers his sources and influence.

Life of the Author

In the later thirteenth century, a “sweet new style” (Dolce Stil Nuovo) emerged in Italian lyric poetry. The figure first associated with this change in literary language, rhetoric, and sensibility is the Bolognese poet and judge Guido Guinizelli. His contemporaries discuss the innovations of Guinizelli's poetry as part of a polemic between the new style and the earlier Sicilian and Tuscan schools. Dante portrays Guinizelli as the actual founder of the Dolce Stil Nuovo and acknowledges him in Purgatorio 26 as his poetic father. As a figure in literary history, Guinizelli is clearly sketched...