«Quicquid poetantur Ytali Sicilianum vocatur»: i confini della lirica del Duecento

In Dante’s words, Italian poetry before him was a unique and homogeneous tradition. Scholars traced different steps in it, from the Sicilian origins to the first Tuscan heirs up to Guittone d’Arezzo’s generation. This article disagrees with some theories about those boundaries, aroused by the editors of the new edition of the Sicilian and the so-called Siculo-Tuscan corpus. Evidence is shown against (a) the consistence of a northern organic transmission of Sicilian poetry, alternative to the Tuscan songbooks; (b) the inexistence of an archetype beyond them; (c) the use of a “natural” Sicilian language by the Sicilian poets; (d) the cultural identity of the Siculo-Tuscan corpus as it is shaped by the edition (following the old Panvini’s criteria).