Identifier: sciliteratur00jaco (find matches)
Title: Science and literature in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
Year: 1878 (1870s)
Authors: Jacob, P. L., 1806-1884
Subjects: Middle Ages Renaissance Science, Medieval Literature, Medieval
Publisher: London : Bickers and Son
Contributing Library: Getty Research Institute
Digitizing Sponsor: Getty Research Institute

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r twenty-fifth year he dedicated to her memory his immortal Divine Comedy, a poem at once religious and philosophical, and dividedinto three parts : Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. This vast trilogy, the firstpart of which is in every way the best, is written in tiercets, or rhymedtriplets; it embraces every branch of human knowledge, and presents inallegorical shape a striking picture of the history of the age, and especiallyof the poets contemporaries. Above all stands the pure and radiant imageof Beatrix. It is in this incomparable poem that Dante, by a judiciousselection of Italian dialects, and by transforming them into a unique andregular type, succeeded in establishing upon fixed principles the literarylanguage of his country, which, though simple, clear, and powerful, hadhitherto been somewhat rough and inchoate. Dante remains, after the lapseof six centuries, the great poet of Italy. None of the other nations of Europe produced any poet to equal him. In JVA TIONA L PUETRF. 433
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Fig. a;J8.—lliu Musiiui; ui Coi.lova, luuiidL-d liy Abdiriiui I , King of the Moors, about 092. 3 K 434 NATIONAL POETRY. Euglaucl, where the Anglo-Saxon tongue had in the end become merged inthe Franco-JSTorman dialect, an attempt was made to revive the nationalsongs, and all that can be cited in the way of English poetry is a translationof the Brut, by Wace, an imitation in verse of the Chronicle of Geoifroyof Monmouth by Robert of Gloucester. Spain, where the Romanic languagehad become naturalised since the eleventh century, at least in the provincesnot invaded by the Moors, did not even know the name of the author whowrote that poem of the Cid which she pointed to with pride as the firstpoetical record of her legendary history (Fig. 338). Spanish poets, amongstwhom appear Alfonso II., King of Arragon, and Alfonso XI., King of Castile,had already celebrated in a language which, though somewhat rough andcoarse, was energetic and noble, the loftiest sentiments of the human heart,esp

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