to even the most conventional motifs. His rhetorical
resources and his technical virtuosity drew high praise
from Dante, who, in De vulgari eloquentia, cites two
of Guido’s poems as particularly elegant: Amor che
lungiamente m’hai menato (“Love who has driven me
for a long time”) and Ancor che l’aigua per lo foco lassi
(“Although water, because of fi re, loses”). The second
of these canzoni is quoted as an example of suprema
constructio because of its structural complexity and its
diffi cult rhyme scheme. Whereas the Sicilians treat the
motifs of atmospheric and other natural phenomena
merely as part of a comprehensive repertoire designed to
offer an illustration of the prevailing cultural-philosophi-
cal climate, Guido delle Colonne is able to move beyond
loosely connected encyclopedic detail to express subtle
analogies between a variety of natural phenomena, and
he skillfully applies these images to the nature of love.
A prime example of his virtuosity in dealing with these
motifs is the poem Ancor che l’aigua per lo foco lassi,
with its intricate associations of fi re and snow. It is from
this canzone that Guido Guinizzelli drew the inspiration
for his poem Al cor gentil ripara sempre amore (“Love
always dwells in the noble heart”).
See also Benoît de Sainte-Maure; Dante Alighieri
Further Reading
Bertoni, Giulio. Il Duecento. Milan: Vallardi, 1947, pp. 117–118.
Cesareo, G. A. “La patria di Guido dalle Colonne.” Giornale
Dantesco,9, 1901, pp. 81ff.
Chiantèra, Raffaele. Guido delle Colonne, poeta e storico latino
del secolo XIII. Naples, 1956.
Contini, Gianfranco. “Le rime di Guido delle Colonne.” Bollet-
tino del Centro di Studi Filologici e Linguistici Siciliani, 2,
1954, pp. 178–200.
——, ed. Poeti del Duecento. Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1960,
Vol. 1, pp. 95–110.
Dionisotti, Carlo. “Proposta per Guido Giudice.” Rivista di Cul-
tura Classica e Medioevale, 7, 1965, pp. 452–466.
Marti, Mario. “Il giudizio di Dante su Guido delle Colonne.” In
Con Dante fra i poeti del suo tempo. Lecce: Milella, 1966,
pp. 29–42.
Monaci, Ernesto. Crestomazia italiana dei primi secoli, rev. ed.,
ed. Felice Arese. Rome, Naples, and Città di Castello: Società
Ed. Dante Alighieri, 1955, pp. 258–263.
Pasquini, Emilio, and Antonio Enzo Quaglio. Il Duecento dale
origini a Dante. Bari: Laterza, 1970, pp. 203–210.
Torraca, Francesco. “Il giudice Guido delle Colonne di Mes-
sina.” In Studi su la lirica italiana del Duecento. Bologna:
Zanichelli, 1902, pp. 379–468.
Zacca, E. Vita e opere di Guido delle Colonne, Palermo, 1908.
Frede Jensen
GUILHEM IX (William IX, 1071–1126)
The fi rst troubadour was also the seventh count of
Poitiers, ninth duke of Aquitaine, and grandfather of
Eleanor of Aquitaine. One of the few who returned to
France after the First Crusade (1096–99), he success-
fully led a crusading army to Spain in 1120. Contem-
porary anecdotes recall him entertaining crowds with
jokes, verses, and stories; some sources style him a
reckless, violent, sarcastic infi del who earned his ex-
communication.
Eleven songs survive, one of doubtful attribution.
Though often seeming to parody or recast a preexist-
ing tradition, Guilhem’s work lays the foundation for
later troubadour song, including the love lyric, satire,
and pastorela; the fi gures of warrior and lover, boasting
and humility, ribaldry and nascent courtliness are all
represented. Three songs addressed to his “companions”
jocularly compare women to property (horses, fi shing
holes, woodlands), subject to legal disputes; in three
more, the poet, disguised as a fool or madman, claims
prowess in both word games and sexual games. Four
meditate more soberly on love, using feudal and natural
metaphors; these inaugurate in Occitan the vocabulary
and topoi of fi n’amors, among them the nature intro-
duction, with woods and birdsongs inspiring the poet
and the paradoxical joy that cures the sick and drives
wise men insane. Natural imagery is not confi ned to
the exordium: in a middle strophe, Guilhem compares
fragile love to a hawthorn branch that trembles at night
in the freezing rain, then gleams with sunlight the next
day. The same poem includes indoor, domestic scenes.
Recalling a “battle” with his lady that ended in mutual
desire, he concludes that words are cheap: “Let others
brag of love; we have the bread and the knife.” A fi nal
farewell song recants his youthful frivolity and impiety;
throwing off his furs, he relinquishes Poitiers to the care
of his old enemy Foulques of Anjou.
Researches into Guilhem’s sources of inspiration
involve the origins of troubadour poetry itself. In the
pastorela-like “poem of the red cat” (Farai un vers, pos
mi sonelh), whose hero feigns muteness (or foreignness)
to fool two ladies who abduct him for an eight-day orgy,
the words babariol, babarian have suggested to some a
possible Andalusian-Arabic infl uence. Guilhem’s range
of registers is interpreted sometimes as schizophrenia
(was he two poets?), sometimes as a progression that
invents courtliness in moving from bawdy to idealistic
views of love. If his Farai un vers de dreit nien mocks
distant love:
Anc non la vi ez am la fort;...
Quan no la vei, be m’en deport,
Noøm prez un jau:... /
No sai lo luec ves on s’esta
(“I’ve never seen her and 1 love her a lot. /... When
I don’t see her, I’m quite happy; / 1 don’t care a rooster.
/... I don’t know where she lives”), then what was its
antecedent? This and the “red cat” song were, he claims,
composed while sleeping; the two poems thus suggestGUIDO DELLE COLONNE