Remarks about the 'Cardarello poem'

The ms. BNCF II.IV.248 is the only witness of an anonymous serventese, O morte avventurosa, che a' dolci anni, probably written in the late fourteenth century. It tells the tragic story of two young lovers through the words of the male protagonist. The text presents a very complex physiognomy, both for the richness and variety of the elements that form the plot and for a certain expressive obscurity. Such obscurity, in many cases, goes as far as to reach the absence of meaning. The paper examines some aspects of the text that allow to trace it back to the genre of love complaint (whose fundamental characteristics are discussed); attempts to identify the cause of the lack of meaning in some anomalous and peculiar features of the manuscript, and finally focuses on the reception of the story narrated in the serventese, which will resurface between the fifteenth and the sixteenth century, first in the form of a historical anecdote and then as a novella.