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
| Ath AR ASI BEC BL BSDI BSGRT C CeS CPF DA DAI DaSt DC DDJ EsC fol. fols. GD GSLI IMU It LGRP LIt LN MDC MedR MH MLR MS, MSS NA PL PQ Prop R RBLI RCLI RFE RP SFI Sp SPCT StD UCPMP VE VN ZRP |
Athenaeum Archivium Romanicum Archivio Storico Italiano Bibliothèque de l'École des Chartes Brunetto Latino/Latini Bullettino della Società Dantesca Italiana Biblioteca Scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana century, e.g. 13 C=13th century Cultura e Scuola MLA, Collection of Photographic Facsimiles Dante Alighieri Dissertation Abstracts International Dante Studies Divina Commedia Deutsches Dante-Jahrbuch Esprit Créateur folio, folios Giornale Dantesco Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana Italia Medievale e Umanistica Italia Literaturblatt für Germanischer und Romanischer Philologie Lettere Italiane Lingua Nostra Motivi per la Difesa della Cultura Medioevo Romanzo Medievalia et Humanistica Modern Language Review manuscript, manuscripts Nuova Antologia Patrologia Latina cursus completus, ed. J.P. Migne Philological Quarterly Il Propugnatore Romania Rassegna Bibliografica della Letteratura Italiana Revista Critica della Letteratura Italiana Revista de Filologia Española Romance Philology Studi di Filologia Italiana Speculum Studi e Problemi di Critica Testuale Studi Danteschi University of California Publications in Modern Philology De vulgari eloquentia Vita nuova Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie |
See also the
Biblioteca e Bottega
Fioretta Mazzei
holdings at:
http://www.florin.ms/libgimel.html#brunettolatino, or GIMEL,
general;
http://www.florin.ms/libkheth.html
or KHETH,
microfilms and
microfiche of
manuscripts, etc.
http://www.florin.ms/libvau.html#jbh,
or VAU,
JBH publications,
searching for
'brunetto';
http://www.florin.ms/libzayin.html#brunettolatino,
or ZAYIN,
paleography and
codicology, which
includes the Moleiro
manuscript facsimile
of the St Petersburg Li Livres du
Tresor and its
commentary volume;
http://www.florin.ms/libtet.html#brunettolatino,
or TET,
offprints and
articles holdings
on Brunetto
Latino.
Publications:
Brunetto
Latini.
Li Livres dou Tresor: St
Petersburg, Russian National
Library, Fr.F.v.III n° 4.
Barcelona: Moleiro, 2000.
Facsimile edition. mmoleiro@moleiro.com
____
Julia
Bolton
Bolton Holloway, Twice-Told
Tales: Brunetto Latino and Dante
Alighieri. New York: Peter
Lang , 1993. xiv + 552 pp.,
plates, maps. ISBN 0-8204-1954-0.
Reviewed, Gloria Allaire, Annali
d'italianistica. Available for
25 euro/dollars, from Julia
Bolton
Bolton Holloway To order use
PayPal
_____
Brunetto
Latini: An Analytic Bibliography
. London: Grant and Cutler, 1986.
Research Bibliographies and
Checklists. Ed. Alan Deyermond.
153 pp. Reviewed: Italian
Studies; Zeitschrift für
Romanische Philologie; Les
Lettres Romanes; Romanische
Forschungen. ISBN
0-7293-0216-4 or 84-599-1681-2.
Available
for
15
euro/dollars from Julia
Bolton
Bolton Holloway
