Ancora sul sonetto 'Nulla mi parve mai più crudel cosa'

The contribution reconsiders the attribution problem of the sonnet "Nulla mi parve mai più crudel cosa", traditionally oscillating between inclusion among Dante’s Rime dubbie and exclusion from the canon. After reconstructing the historical-philological framework of the tenzone with Giovanni Quirini and the role of the principal manuscript witnesses, the study shows how the arguments in favour of Dante’s authorship – based mainly on stylistic features – prove less solid than part of twentieth-century scholarship maintained. In light of a systematic comparison with the works of the Venetian poets around Quirini, and in particular with several anonymous sonnets of the so-called “orsa” circle, the paper proposes to attribute "Nulla mi parve" not to Dante but to a single anonymous poet of high cultural standing, capable of skilfully inlaying Ovidian myths and Dantesque stylistic elements. This poet, identified through thematic and lexical recurrences, would also be the author of the sonnets "Io credo veramente che sia scorsa" (76a), "Con plu sospiri avanti costei vegno" (103b) and "Maor letticia m’è veder tuo rima" (D.9a). The combination of internal and external evidence thus allows the historical-philological puzzle to be resolved by tracing the sonnet back to a Venetian, Dante-inspired milieu of the early Trecento, rather than to the hand of Dante Alighieri.