Frederick II: poetry and literature

The birth of Italian vernacular poetry is profoundly tied to the figure and environment of Emperor Frederick II of Swabia. The definition of the Sicilian poetic school, which actually dates back to the second half of the 9th century, identifies the literary production of the entire Regnum Siciliae, i.e. the Kingdom of Southern Italy, and not just the island. The poetic texts have reached us thanks to three manuscript songbooks which attest to the reception and diffusion of Swabian compositions in the Tuscan context. Frederick himself was a poet and responsible for translations of ancient philosophical and scientific works, such as those of Aristotle, decisive in the development of late medieval thought.
Peculiar traits of the Sicilian poetic school are the centrality of love themes, the revival of the Occitan lyric tradition and the use of the illustrious "Sicilian" vernacular (the actual phonetic traits of which are still debated). Alongside Frederick, Iacopo da Lentini (inventor of the sonnet) and the prothonotary and logothete Pier della Vigna (immortalized by Canto XIII from Dante's Inferno) stand out. Their texts inspired the poetry of Dolce Stil Novo and Dante considered them the only examples to take as a model in terms of language and form.