(La) Nina Siciliana was the composer of one Italian sonnet, and a candidate to be the first Italian woman poet. She only came to light in 1780, along with 74 other poets, in the Étrennes du Parnasse (or Choix de Poësies).[1] She is now considered legendary by most scholars.[2]
Adolfo Borgognoni first proposed that Nina was a fictional construct of male poets in 1891 and was soon followed by Giulio Bertoni.[3] Specifically Borgognoni thought she was invented by the successors of printer Filippo Giunti: essa [Nina] nacque in Firenze, nella officina degli Eredi di Filippo Giunti, l'anno del Signore 1527 ("this one [Nina] was born in Florence, in the office of the heirs of Filippo Giunti, the year of the Lord 1527").[4] The historicity of Nina - and tangentially the sex of the author of the poem traditionally assigned to her - has been debated ever since.[5] Liborio Azzolina tried to resuscitate her and also Compiuta Donzella, whom Borgognoni, with less supporters, also ascribed to later male poets' imaginations.[6] More recently the Italian scholar Lino Pertile has called her fantomatica (phantomlike) and Paolo Cherchi dismissed her as "mythical", to be followed by Anne Klinck.[7]
Francesco Trucchi was the first to assign a poem to Nina: the sonnet Tapina in me, c'amava uno sparvero ("Alas for me, I loved a sparrowhawk"), probably composed in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century.[8] Nina was apparently inspired to write by the poems Dante da Maiano addressed "To his Lady Nina, of Sicily".[9] Francesco de Sanctis, the foremost Italian literary critic of his day, praised la perfetta semplicità of Nina and Compiuta.[4] One recent scholar who accepts Nina's existence and derides doubters has noted similarities between Nina and Alamanda de Castelnau.[10]