Cypriot Canzoniere Explained

The Cypriot Canzoniere (Song-book) οr the Cypriot Rime d'Amore (Love Rhymes; Greek: Ρίμες Αγάπης) is a collection of 16th century poems in the Cypriot dialect influenced by the Italian Renaissance poetry and especially Petrarchism. They were written by a one or more, anonymous Cypriot poets that were directly influenced by Italian poetry. The manuscript consists of 156 poems focusing mostly on love themes. Some of the poems are direct translations of Petrarch and Sannazaro.^{[1] [2]} They are the first poems directly influenced by the Renaissance in the Greek language, for example they introduced the ottava and terza.^[3] The societal, cultural and musical norms in Venetian Cyprus are documented by the chronicler Etienne Lusignan and help shed light into the references of the poems.^[4]

The poems survive in a single manuscript, codex IX 32, currently located at the Marcian Library in Venice.^[5] They were first published by the French philologist Émile Legrand in 1881.

See also

• Cypriot dialect
• Venetian Cyprus
• Leontios Machairas
• Georgios Boustronios

References

1. Rodosthenous-Balafa, M. Petrarchism and Anti-petrarchism: The Manneristic Response of the Cypriot Canzoniere and Chortatsis's Panoria, in Culture and Society in Crete: From Kornaros to Kazantzakis. In: Liana Giannakopoulou, E. Kostas Skordyles (Eds.). Culture and Society in Crete: From Kornaros to Kazantzakis. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 13-31
2. Rodosthenous-Balafa, M. (2014). That nightingale that sweetly mourns": Comments on the thematics and poetics of the Cypriot Canzoniere. In: Efrosini Camatsos, Tassos A. Kaplanis, Jocelyn Pye (Eds.). "His Words Were Nourishment and His Counsel Food": A Festschrift for David W. Holton. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 67-80.
3. Web site: Polignosi. Πετράρχης Francesco Petrarca. 2021-02-28. www.polignosi.com.
4. Mathiopoulou - Tornaritou. Elsie. 2007. A Critical Reading of the Cypriot Renaissance Canzoniere of the Venice Marcian Library (Marc. Gr, IX 32). Could this be the Oldest Neo-Hellenic Anthology known?. Études helléniques/Hellenic Studies. 15. 2. 63-77.
5. Garbonaro. Giovanna. 2017. Poesia e Musica nel Canzoniere cipriota del cod. Marc. Gr. IX.32 (=1287): Il caso della Lirica nr. 41.. Byzantina Symmeikta. 27. 129-144. 10.12681/byzsym.10680. free.

Further reading

• Émile Legrand. (1881). Bibliothèque Grecque Vulgaire II. 58-93.
• Θέμις Σιαπκαρά-Πιτσιλλίδου (ed.). (1976). Ο πετραρχισμός στην Κύπρο. Ρίμες αγάπης: από χειρόγραφο του 16ου αιώνα με μεταφορά στην κοινή μας γλώσσα. Αθήνα: Τυπογραφείο Γ. Τσιβεριώτη.
• G. Zoras, (1976). Τα Κυπριακά ερωτικά ποιήματα του 16ου αιώνα. In: Parnassos 18, Athens, 469-474.

External links

• Some of the poems with commentary (in Greek).