Primi appunti sulla "Vita nova" nel contesto della prosa del Duecento

The article examines the relationship between the prose of Vita nova and the rhetorical
treatises in the vernacular flourished in Florence in the late thirteenth century, aiming to
specify the function of models that the texts of contemporary prose in the vernacular were
able to play on the invention of the Dante’s libello not only at the level of punctual matches,
but also in the development of the form of the prosimeter and its functional implications.
The precepts of the Ciceronian ars dictaminis mediated in a communal key by the vulgar-
izations of Brunetto Latini and Bono Giamboni are suspected of having co-operated to con-
stitute the rhetorical paradigm of Dante’s prose, constituting for the young Alighieri the
immediate and most authoritative precedent of prose of art, in whose groove the narrative
and exegetical framework could be inscribed, in which the non-lyrical segment of the libello
is split into two.