Sicilian School

The Sicilian School was a small community of Sicilian, and to a lesser extent, mainland Italian poets gathered around Frederick II, most of them belonging to his court, the Magna Curia. Headed by Giacomo da Lentini, they produced more than three-hundred poems of courtly love between 1230 and 1266, the experiment being continued after Frederick's death by his son, Manfred.

These poets drew inspiration from the troubadour poetry of Occitania written in langue d'oc, which applied the feudal code of honor to the relation between a man (acting as the vassal) and a woman (acting as king or superior). This is a reversal of the traditional role of women, traditionally dependent on men, and marks a new awareness in medieval society: the decadence of feudalism with the increasing power of the middle class, causes a shift in the reading public, the epic (traditionally devoted to great military pursuits) gradually giving way to the lyric (generally focused on love). In the lower Middle Ages more and more women were reading books than ever before and poetry tried to adapt to their point of view and their newly acquired role in society.

This features French poetry, then very influential in Italy. What distinguishes the Sicilian School from the troubadours, however, is the introduction of a kinder, gentler type of woman than that found in their French models; one who was nearer to Dante's madonnas and Petrarch's Laura, though much less characterised psychologically. The poems of the Sicilians hardly portray real women or situations (Frederick's song cannot be read as autobiographical), but the style and language are remarkable, since the Sicilians (as Dante called them) created the first Italian literary standard by enriching the existing vernacular base, probably inspired by popular love songs, with new words of Latin and Provençal origin.

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