Vita Nuova di Dante Alighieri. Con XV. Canzoni del medesimo. E la vita di esso Dante scritta da Giovanni Boccaccio. 2 volumes in one.

Florence, Bartolomeo Sermartelli, 1576. With woodcut printer's device of a tortoise with sail on the two title-pages, and several delicate woodcut initials. Roman and Italic letters. (4) ff., 116 pp., (2) ff., 80 pp. 8vo. Contemp. Italian limp vellum. In a cloth case. Florence, Bartolomeo Sermartelli, 1576. Editio princeps of Dante's (1265-1321) first sustained major work. He began his career when he was 18 years old as a lyric poet, and some of his early lyrics together with a prose narrative about his love of Beatrice are incorporated here in a combination of both prose and verse: It contains 42 brief chapters with commentaries on 25 sonnets, 1 ballata, and 4 canzoni, a fifth canzoni is left dramatically interrupted by Beatrice death. With Dante's other works, it helped to establish the Tuscan dialect in which it is written as the Italian standard. "The New Life" was completed by 1300. This present book was published after a codex in the possession of Niccolo Carducci and expurgated by the Florentine inquisitor general, whose imprimatur appears on leaf 4. The book is divided into 3 parts: the second part bears the title "Canzoni amorose, et morali di Dante Alighieri" on p. 71-116; the third part has its own title-page "Origine, vita, studi, e costumi del chiarissimo Dante Allighieri (sic)...Fatta, e compilata dall'Inclito M. Giovanni Boccaccio da Certaldo". - Occasional slighly foxing throughout like in the digitized copy in the BSB Munich. On the whole a nice copy of a very scarce book. - Brunet I, 1018; Mambelli, Annali delle Ed. Dantesche, 663; Gamba, Serie...Opere importanti, 414. LITERATURE ; LITERATURE: ITALIAN ;