While dealing with the Novelle and the semi-popular literature of thistransition period, I have hitherto neglected those numerous minor poetswho continued the traditions of the earlier trecento.[158] There aretwo main reasons for this preference. In the first place, the novellewas destined to play a most important part in the history of theRenaissance, imposing its own laws of composition upon species so remoteas the religious drama and romantic epic. -159-In the second place, thedance-songs, canzonets and madrigals of Sacchetti's epoch lived upon thelips of the common folk, who during the fifteenth century carriedItalian literature onward through a subterranean channel.[159] Whenvernacular poetry reappeared into the light of erudition and the Courts,the influences of that popular style, which drew its origin fromBoccaccio and Sacchetti rather than from Dante or the Trovatori,determined the manner of Lorenzo de' Medici and Poliziano. Meanwhile thelearned poems of the latest trecentisti were forgotten with the lumberof the middle ages. For the special purpose, therefore, of this volume,which only regards the earlier stages of Italian literature in so far asthey preceded and conditioned the Renaissance, it was necessary to givethe post of honor to Boccaccio's followers. Some mention should,however, here be made of those contemporaries and imitators of Petrarch,in whom the traditions of the fourteenth century expired. It is notneedful to pass in review the many versifiers who treated the old themesof chivalrous love with meritorious conventional facility. The true lifeof the Italians was not here; and the phase of literature which theSicilian School inaugurated, survived already as an anachronism. Thecase is different with such poetry as dealt immediately withcontemporary politics. In the declamatory compositions of this age, wehear the echoes of the Guelf and Ghibelline wars. The force of thatgreat struggle was already spent; but the partisans of either faction,passion enough sur-160-vived to furnish genuine inspiration. Fazio degliUberti's sermintese on the cities of Italy, for example, was writtenin the bitter spirit of an exiled Ghibelline.[160] His ode to CharlesIV. is a torrent of vehement medieval abuse, poured forth against anEmperor who had shown himself unworthy of his place in Italy[161]:
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