Haug, Walter. “Wolframs ‘Willehalm’—Prolog im Lichte seiner
Bearbeitung durch Rudolf von Ems,” in Kritische Bewährung:
Beiträge zur deutschen Philologie: Festschrift für Werner
Schröder zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Ernst-Joachim Schmidt.
Berlin: E. Schmidt, 1974, pp. 298–327.
Walliczek, Wolfgang. “Rudolf von Ems,” in Die deutsche Lit-
eratur des Mittelalters. Verfasserlexikon, ed. Kurt Ruh et al.
Berlin: de Gruyter, 1991, vol. 8, coll. 322–345.
Wenzel, Horst. “Höfi sche Geschichte.” Europäische Hochschul-
schriften 1, 284 (1980): 71–87.
Wunderlich, Werner. Der ‘ritterliche’ Kaufmann: literatursozi-
ologische Studien zu Rudolf von Ems’ “Der guote Gerhart.”
Scriptor. Hochschulschriften. Literaturwissenschaft 7. Kro-
nberg im Taunus: Scriptor, 1975.
Zaenker, Karl A. “The Manuscript Relationship of Rudolf von
Ems’ Barlaam und Josaphat.” Ph.D. diss., University of Brit-
ish Columbia, 1974.
Sibylle Jefferies
RUSTICO FILIPPI
(c. 1230–c. 1280 or 1285)
The Florentine poet Rustico Filippi (Rustico di Filippo)
is credited with initiating the comic style in the me-
dieval Italian lyric. Rustico wrote fi fty-seven sonnets
transmitted by the Vaticano manuscript Latino 3793,
and a tenzone with Bondie Dietaiuti found in three
other codices. Half of his sonnets were written in the
serious style of courtly love; the other half provide one
of the earliest examples of the comic, or jocose, style
in Italian literature. Brunetto Latini, who considered
Rustico one of his closest friends and an accomplished
poet, dedicated the Favolello to him. Rustico was also
the acknowledged teacher of Jacopo da Lèona and is the
protagonist of a comic sonnet by Jacopo. Rustico was
an ardent Ghibelline.
Rustico’s comic sonnets fall into two categories:
personal invective, and caricature directed against Flo-
rentines of all ages and social conditions. Among the
fi gures he caricatured are warriors who inspire laughter
rather than awe, a miser, a cuckolded husband, a man
who is the paradigm of laziness, people with offensive
body odors, libertines on the prowl, and prostitutes.
Rustico displays a great talent for euphemism and uses
a plethora of creative metaphors, similes, paraphrases,
and hyperbole to describe his characters, the sexual act,
and certain parts of the human anatomy. Several of the
comic sonnets are linked. For example, there is a three-
sonnet group that begins with Poi che guerito son de le
mascelle, recounting the implausible proposals made by
a matchmaker to a poor father with two daughters; and
there is a two-sonnet group beginning with Su, donna
Gemma, co la farinata, which ponders the suspicious
reasons behind the sudden loss of weight of a young
girl named Mita. The best-known of Rustico’s comic
sonnets, Quando Dïo messer Messerin fece, describes
Albizzo de’ Caponsacchi as a unique combination of
bird, beast, and man—a miracle of God’s creation.
In the sonnet describing “messer Messerin,” and in
other sonnets, Rustico frequently compares the targets
of his caricatures to animals, at a time when such
comparisons were in vogue in the serious courtly love
lyric. Whereas in his comic poetry Rustico mocked
the overuse of animal comparisons, he avoided them
altogether in his twenty-eight sonnets and the tenzone
in the traditional courtly style. In these compositions,
he experimented with various rhetorical devices in order
to achieve more drama and more narrative fl exibility.
Among his innovations, he broke the unity of address,
extended personifi cation from the conventional god of
love to other items involved in the psychomachia of
courtly love (the heart, the eyes), and abandoned the
extended simile. One sonnet that illustrates all these
elements is Amor fa nel mio cor fermo soggiorno. The
integration of dramatic techniques into the lyric, and the
cultivation of a kinetic rather than a descriptive style,
reached a culmination in the poetry of the dolce stil
nuovo. Thus Rustico was an innovator in introducing
comic poetry to Italian literature and, to a lesser extent,
in the development of the love lyric.
See also Brunetto LatiniFurther ReadingEditions
Contini, Gianfranco. Poeti del Duecento, Vol. 2. Milan and
Naples: Ricciardi, 1960, pp. 353–364.
Federici, Vincenzo. Le rime di Rustico di Filippo, rimatore
fi orentino del sec. XIII. Bergamo: Istituto Italiano d’Arti
Grafi che, 1899.
Figurelli, Fernando. La poesia comico-giocosa dei primi due
secoli. Naples: Pironti, 1960, pp. 74–112.
Marti, Mario. Poeti giocosi del tempo di Dante. Milan: Rizzoli,
1956, pp. 29–91.
Massèra, Aldo Francesco. Sonetti burleschi e realistici dei primi
due secoli. Bari: Laterza, 1920. (See also rev. ed, ed. Luigi
Russo, 1940, Vol. 1, pp. 1–30.)
Rustico Filippi. Sonetti, ed. Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo. Turin:
Einaudi, 1971.
Vitale, Maurizìo. Rimatori comico-realistici. Turin: UTET, 1956,
pp. 99–197. (Reprint, 1976.)
Translations
Dante and His Circle, with the Italian Poets Preceding Him
(1100–1200–1300), trans. Dante Gabriel Rossetti. London:
Ellis and Elvey, 1892, pp. 360–362.
Poems from Italy, ed. William Jay Smith and Dana Gioìa. Saint
Paul, Minn.: New Rivers, 1985, pp. 32–33.
Tusiani, Joseph. The Age of Dante: An Anthology of Early Italian
Poetry Translated into English Verse and with an Introduction.
New York: Baroque, 1974, pp. 56–57.
Critical Studies
Baldelli, Ignazio. “Dante e i poeti fi orentini del Duecento.” In
Lectura Dantis Scaligera. Florence: Le Monnier, 1968.
Buzzetti Gallarati, Silvia. “Sull’organizzazione del discorsoRUDOLF VON EMS