Dissertation on Birds of Prey and the Sport - the Falconry Heritage ...

poetry. The Sicilians adopt quite a bit of animal imagery from their Provengal forbears,
but neglect the falcons associated with love relationships. The Stilnovistic poets largely,
and probably consciously, forgo the animal similes common to Provengal, Sicilian, and
Siculo-Tuscan poets; therefore, their lack of references to falcons is not surprising.
Indeed, most falcons and hawks are found in Siculo-Tuscan poetry; here they are used as
in Provengal, and also to illustrate the anguish that the poets' love causes them to feel.
In the Trecento, there is no falconry imagery evident in aulic poetry. After the
Dolce Stil Novo, the falcons do not return to higher lyric poetry. Not even Petrarch uses
the image, preferring, in speaking of love as a hunt, to employ the fish or the deer.
Instead, the birds appear in many madrigals and cacce, alluding to very earthly erotic
love encounters, usually between a poet and a serendipitous shepherdess or the like.
In the third chapter, Dante's Divine Comedy comes under scrutiny for the poet's
ability to take a courtly image of love and transform it into both a symbol of
transcendental love, and of his own training as a pilgrim. His use of falconry imagery is
compared to his similar use of crane imagery to show a pattern by which birds in the
Comedy are seen as symbols of the journey to God.
The fourth chapter looks at prose, particularly the novella tradition. The courtly
undertones of falcons and hawks are affected by a changing Italian social scene. In the
Novellino, they appear only in stories that are defined as having taken place several
generations previously in courtly settings. In the works of Sacchetti and Sercambi, their
presence is more problematic and illustrative of a tension surrounding the appropriateness
of possession of hawks by various classes. In the Decameron, finally, a falcon is found
that, along with its owner, Federigo degli Alberighi, carries every connotation of the