BRUNETTO LATINO, MAESTRO DI DANTE ALIGHIERI:

AN ANALYTIC AND INTERACTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY
 

PRIMARY SOUCES / SECONDARY SOURCES

Preface

Scholarship on Brunetto Latino, who greatly influenced Dante Alighieri, is not extensive. However, it necessarily covers a very broad area since Brunetto Latino was active in Florentine politics, then, exiled, travelling to Spain and France, following that returning to his native city, as well as perhaps travelling as far afield as Aragon, Constantinople and Outremer, during which time he dictated texts in French and Italian, as well as writing Latin letters of state. His writing was influenced by translations from Greek and Arabic, and by Latin, Spanish and French texts, which he republished, in French and in Italian. He is both a Florentine and a European writer. His documents and manuscripts are found in a notarial chancery script when in Latin, and usually in the Bolognan libraria or book hand when in Italian and French, though French scribes copy them out in their northern Gothic, while later manuscripts in Italy will be in a fine Humanist script. There are several major divisions in Brunetto Latino scholarship. One centres upon his Tesoretto, a charming Italian dream-vision poem which is the prototype for Dante's Commedia. Another centres upon Li Livres dou Tresor, an encyclopedic work written in French, then translated into Italian as Il tesoro. A third is on his Rettorica and other translations of Cicero and Sallust into Italian. A fourth category deals not so much with his literary works as with his political career during the shaping of the democratic Florentine comune, modeled upon the Ciceronian Roman Republic and also influenced by Athenian democracy. A fifth category deals with Dante's adverse portrayal of Latino as a sodomite. A sixth traces his presence in the works of subsequent writers. Most of these categories overlap untidily, but are cross-referenced in this analytic bibliography. Alphabetization is by surnames after 1600, but is usually by first names before that date: e.g. Zingarelli, Nicola, but Dante Alighieri. Items that I have not seen are *asterisked. Microfilmed, photocopied or printed items in Biblioteca e Bottega Fioretta Mazzei are prefized by °. Bibliography items are renumbered from the 1986 edition.

This work is in preparation for an International Edition of Brunetto Latino's Works, including the volumes with his Italian writings. As part of this project it is to be hoped that M. Moleiro will look favourably on a project publishing in facsimile the following manuscripts:

He already has published:

I wish especially to thank Professors Jaime Ferreiro Alemparte, Pietro Beltrami, Laurent Brun, Daniela De Rosa, Jean Luc Deuffic, Alan Deyermond, Paolo Divizia, Charles Faulhaber, John Fleming, Marco Giola, Angus Graham, Robert Hollander, Richard Kay, Michael Kleine, Robert A. MacDonald, Irene Maffia Scariati, Diana Modesto, Emil J. Polak, Jean Preston, Barbara Reynolds, Sir Richard Southern, Alison Stones for their guidance and generosity, as well as Franca Arduini, Paul Gehl, Christopher de Hamel, Manuel Moleiro, Sion Segre-Amar, Hans-Erich Teitge, numerous colleagues at Princeton and Boulder, countless libraries in Italy, France, Belgium, Poland, Germany, England, America, and Nathaniel Kuhn, M.D., son of Thomas Kuhn, for the 1986 indexing.

Over a quarter a century ago Alan Deyermond wrote the contract for this book and I signed it on a lunch ticket at the Prospect Club, Princeton University, suggesting it also be updated with supplements, and I am everlastingly grateful to his memory. I should like to mention here what I call 'Red Herrings', assertions made by scholars upon false premises which then get parrotted through time by further generations of scholars, leading everyone astray. Imbriani (M) in 1878, proclaimed, despite all the previous evidence in primary materials, that Brunetto Latino was never Dante Alighieri's teacher, and nearly everyone followed suit. Carrer, in his 1839 edition (C.26), on the basis of one late Venetian manuscript (BbII.35), said Bono Giamboni translated Li Livres dou Tresor into Italian as Il Tesoro, and editors and librarians avidly followed him, even writing on manuscripts and in library catalogues, that erroneous ascription. Weise (C.46) decided that since he believed Il mare amoroso (N) was BL's and it occurred in the same manuscript as Il Tesoretto in Ba.16 that that MS was the earliest and best for that work and all editors (Pozzi, C.73, Mazzoni, C.75, Ciccuto, C.87) followed suit, even when Il mare amoroso was no longer ascribed to BL, the sole exceptions being Ubaldini (C.10), Zannoni (C.19) and Bolton Holloway (C.85, C.96). A further serious problem occurred where Concetto Marchesi (Jb, Ke) believed that a particular manuscript containing Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, because it bore the date '1243', was written then and not at the date of its colophon '1313', given by the same scribe. He asserted this was the manuscript used by Brunetto Latino - who had died in 1294. This assertion led Maria Corti astray and, following her, many others. Instead, it was typical for translations of the Ethics to present the date 1243 or 1244, even when copied out later. A similar problem occurs with the assertion by Dillay (Jb) of a particular Alfraganus manuscript being that used by BL. It is wiser in both instances to list a field of possible manuscripts to be studied and compared.

B. Manuscripts
  a. Il tesoretto and Il favolello
  b. Li Livres dou Tresor   I. French
                                       II. Italian (Il tesoro)
                                       III. Other  Languages
  c. La rettorica
  d. Orazioni, Epistolarium
  e. Sommetta
  f. Other works
  g. Problems of editing   I. Il tesoretto
                                     II. Li Livres dou Tresor
                                     III. Il tesoro
                                     IV. La rettorica
C. Editions in Chronological Order

SECONDARY SOURCES File II: BrunLatbibl2.html

D. Bibliographies and Reviews of Scholarship
E. General Studies
F. Politics, Rhetoric, Poetics
G. Didactic Allegory, Cosmography, Bestiaries and Encyclopedism
H. Languages and Linguistics
I. Art
  a. Il tesoretto Illuminations
  b. Li Livres dou Tresor Illuminations
  c. Giotto portrait

  d. Inferno XV miniatures
J. Sources
  a. Classical and Patristic Sources
  b. Medieval and Arabic Sources
  c. Theme of Treasure
K. Contemporaries
  a. Federigo II e Alfonso el Sabio
  b. Rustico di Filippo e Palamidesse
  c. Adam de la Halle
  d. Bono Giamboni e Fra Guidotto da Bologna
  e. Taddeo di Alderotto
  f. Il Fiore
  g. Provençal poets
L. Influence
  aI. Guido Cavalcanti
  aII. Francesco da Barberino
  b. Dante Alighieri  I. Vita Nuova, 'Pulzeletta' Sonnet
                           II. De vulgari eloquentia and Convivio
                           III. Inferno XV
                               A. Early Commentaries
                               B. Modern Commentaries
                           IV. Reasons for Dante's punishment of BL in Inferno XV
  c. Medieval and Renaissance
                            I. Italy
                            II. France
                            III. England
                            IV. Spain
  d. Modern
M. Biography and Chronology
N. Doubtful Works
O. Lost Works
P. Recommended Works
Q. Theses/ Dissertations
R. BL on the World Wide Web
S. Library Holdings

Abbreviations