tini and Guido delle Colonne are familiar
to students of Dante. After their time no one questioned the fact that
lyric poetry written in Italian was a possible achievement. The
influence of the Sicilian school extended to Central Italy and Tuscany;
Dante tells us that all Italian poetry preceding his own age was known
as Sicilian. The early Tuscan poets were, mediately or immediately,
strongly influenced by Provencal. The first examples of the sonnet, by
Dante da Majano, were written in that language. But such poetry was
little more than a rhetorical exercise. It was the revival of learning
and the Universities, in particular that of Bologna, which inspired the
_dolce stil nuovo_, of which the first exponent was Guido Giunicelli.
Love was now treated from a philosophical point of view: hitherto, the
Provencal school had maintained the thesis that "sight is delight," that
love originated from seeing and pleasing, penetrated to the heart and [107]
occupied the thoughts, after passing through the eyes. So Aimeric de
Pegulhan.

Perque tuit li fin aman
Sapchan qu'amors es fina bevolenza
Que nais del cor e dels huelh, ses duptar.

"Wherefore let all pure lovers know that love is pure unselfishness
which is born undoubtedly from the heart and from the eyes," a sentiment
thus repeated by Guido delle Colonne of the Sicilian school.

Dal cor si move un spirito in vedere
D'in ochi'n ochi, di femina e d'omo
Per lo quel si concria uno piacere.

The philosophical school entirely transformed this conception. Love
seeks the noble heart by affinity, as the bird seeks the tree: the noble
heart cannot but love, and love inflames and purifies its nobility, as
the power of the Deity is transmitted to the heavenly beings. When this
idea had been once evolved, Provencal poetry could no longer be a moving
force; it was studied but was not imitated. Its influence had lasted
some 150 years, and as far as Italy is concerned it was Arabic learning,
Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas who slew the troubadours more certainly
than Simon de Montfort and his crusaders. The day of superficial [108]
prettiness and of the cult of form had passed; love conjoined with
learning, a desire to pierce to the roots of things, a greater depth of
thought and earnestness were the characteristics of the new school.

Dante's debt to the troubadours, with whose literature he was well
acquainted, is therefore the debt of Italian literature as a who