SOURCE: "Lights and Shadows in Dante's Vita Nuova," in High Points in the History of Italian Literature, David McKay Company, Inc., 1958, pp. 42-52.

In this essay, Vittorini examines disjunctions between the lyrics and the prose of the Vita Nuova, arguing that, while the poems more closely represent Dante's actual experience, the prose tries to make them conform to an ideal of courtly love.

It is well known that the Vita Nuova, written after the death of Beatrice, is a book of memories in which Dante rethinks the events of his youth in the light of what that young girl meant to him or, at least, of what he believed she meant to him after the episode of the Donna Gentile.

The meeting with the latter took place immediately after the first anniversary of Beatrice's death. The struggle between the pale image of the dead girl and the young...