Dolce Stil Novo

Dolce Stil Novo (Italian pronunciation: [ˈdoltʃe ˌstil ˈnɔːvo]), Italian for "sweet new style", is the name given to a literary movement in 13th and 14th century Italy.^[1] Influenced by the Sicilian School and Tuscan poetry, its main theme is Divine Love. The name Dolce Stil Novo was used for the first time by Dante Alighieri in Purgatorio, the second canticle of the Divina Commedia. In the Divina Commedia Purgatory he meets Bonagiunta Orbicciani, a 13th-century Italian poet, who tells Dante that Dante himself, Guido Guinizelli, and Guido Cavalcanti had been able to create a new genre: a stil novo.

Poetry from this school is marked by adoration of the human form, incorporating vivid descriptions of female beauty and frequently comparing the desired woman to a creature from paradise. The woman is described as an "angel" or as "a bridge to God."^[2] Rather than being material in nature, the Love of the Dolce Stil Novo is a sort of Divine Love.^[1] Poetry of this movement also often includes profound introspection. Many literary critics have argued that introspection in Italian literary works was first introduced by the Stil Novo poets, and later developed by Francesco Petrarca.The two main concepts (introspection and love) are thus brought together as the poet enters his interior world to express his most inner feelings, which are caused by an excessively divine female beauty.^[1] The first expression of this style of writing is credited to Guido Guinizelli and his poem "Al cor gentil rempaira sempre amore." Precursors to the dolce stil novo are found in the Provençal works of the troubadours, such as the Genoese Lanfranc Cigala.^[3] The artists of the stil novo are called stilnovisti.^[1]

The importance of the Dolce Stil Novo lies in the fact that apart from being the manifestation of the first true literary tradition in Italy, it ennobled the Tuscan vernacular, which was destined to become the Italian national language.^[4]