ARNALDO DANIELLO (ARNAUTZ DANIEL)

ARNALDO DANIELLO (ARNAUTZ DANIEL). - A Provençal troubadour of the second half of the 12th century. From a brief contemporary biography in the Provençal language and from his eighteen poetic compositions, all of an abstract and amorous character, only a few details can be gleaned: he was born in Ribérac in the Dordogne (the date is unknown); he participated in the ceremony of the national gathering of Philip Augustus (21 May 1181); he was at the court of Richard the Lionheart in Poitiers. He sang of “fin’amor” for imaginary women or, in any case, women designated in the Provençal manner by a single *senhal* (a charming pseudonym; literally “signal”). He was the leading exponent of the so-called “trobar clus” (closed or hermetic speech), a poetic style common to a group of Provençal troubadours who delighted in an ingenious obscurity of expression, rich in vivid imagery. Dante held A. in high esteem, and it was to his favorable judgments that the Provençal poet owed his fame in Italy from the 14th century onward. Dante admired him in particular as the inventor of the sestina and as a master of complex and elaborate technical devices (cf. *De Vulg. Eloq.*, II, 2, 6, 10, 13); in Canto XXVI of the *Purgatorio*, after extolling him, through the mouth of Guido Guinizelli, as the greatest Provençal poet (vv. 118–19), he has him speak in his own language (vv. 140–47). Petrarch, in *Trionfo d’Amore*, IV, begins his series of great troubadours with A. (“Fra tutti il primo Arnaldo Danielo - Gran maestro d'Amor, ch'a la sua terra - Ancor fa onor col suo dir strano e bello”).