ABSTRACT
The introduction of Provencal poetry into Italy produced at first a number of close imitations of the troubadours’ manner; but the essentially civic society of the peninsula, where feudalism had never really taken root, could not fully assimilate the chivalric conception of love. Instead, the Italian poets, especially after Guido Guinizelli, transformed the chivalric ideal into a philosophical one. The beloved, from being simply the liege-lady of the troubadours, becomes a being of more than earthly perfection who raises the lover towards the bliss of paradise. Questions of love and gallantry and of the respective merits and social functions of men and women were favourite topics for arguments which, if they were sometimes fairly serious, passed often into an ingenious game. The philosophical elements, in fact, soon became stereotyped, and the drawing of manners and character and discussions on extraneous questions became more and more prominent.
