Giacomo da Lentini

Giacomo da Lentini

Giacomo da Lentini, also known as Jacopo da Lentini or with the appellative Il Notaro, was an 13th-century Italian poet and inventor. He was a senior poet of the Sicilian School and was a notary at the court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. Giacomo is credited with the invention of the sonnet. His poetry was originally written in literary Sicilian, though it only survives in Tuscan. Although some scholars believe that da Lentini's Italian poetry about courtly love was an adaptation of the Provençal poetry of the troubadours, William Baer argues that the first eight lines of the earliest Sicilian sonnets, rhymed ABABABAB, are identical to the eight-line Sicilian folksong stanza known as the Strambotto. Read more on Wikipedia

His biography is available in different languages on Wikipedia. Giacomo da Lentini is the 2,767th most popular writer (up from 2,868th in 2019). (up from 2,249th in 2019)