ABSTRACT
In Chapter xxv of his Vita Nuova, Dante, having offered a brief history of the medieval Romance lyric tradition, voices the conviction that any vernacular poet ought to restrict the focus of his writing to the subject of love. This chapter focuses upon an important shift in Dante's poetics from the abandoned philosophical treatise the Convivio (c. 1304-07) to his masterpiece the Commedia (c. 1307-20). The relationship between these texts has been the subject of a great deal of critical inquiry, especially concerning their respective philosophical and theological foundations and the diverse intellectual tensions and affinities between them. The chapter aims to disengage the two texts' relationship from these dominant critical topics and to foreground instead the very different ways in which they handle the relationship between vernacular lyric poetry, desire, and subjectivity. The chapter considers the ways in which the Convivio's more restrictive treatment of desire and lyric poetry is viewed from the perspective of the Commedia.
