Chapter II: The Triumvirate

Chivalrous Poetry--Ideal of Chivalrous Love--Bolognese Erudition--New Meaning given to the Ideal--Metaphysics of the Florentine School of Lyrists--Guido Cavalcanti--Philosophical Poems--Popular Songs--Cino of Pistoja--Dante's _Vita Nuova_--Beatrice in the _Convito_ and the _Paradiso_--The Preparation for the _Divine Comedy_ in Literature--Allegory--The _Divine Comedy_--Petrarch's Position in Life--His Conception of Humanism--Conception of Italy--His Treatment of Chivalrous Love--Beatrice and Laura--The _Canzoniere_--Boccaccio, the Florentine Bourgeois--His Point of View--His Abandonment of the Chivalrous Standpoint--His Devotion to Art--Anticipates the Renaissance--The _Decameron_--_Commedia Umana_--Precursors of Boccaccio--Novels--_Carmina Vagorum_--Plan of the Book--Its Moral Character--The _Visione Amorosa_--Boccaccio's Descriptions--The _Teseide_--The _Rime_--The _Filocopo_--The _Filostrato_--The _Ameto_, _Fiammetta_, _Ninfale_, _Corbaccio_--Prose before Boccaccio--_Fioretti di San Francesco_ and _Decameron_ compared--Influence of Boccaccio over the Prose Style of the Renaissance--His Death--Close of the Fourteenth Century--Sacchetti's Lament 59