LA “SESTINA” DI ARNAUT DANIEL: PERMUTAZIONE E RIME

In reflecting on the permutative complexity of Arnaut Daniel’s Lo ferm voler qu’el cor m’intra, it has often been debated to what extent that refined structure was perceptible, in terms of the oral reception of the text and in an essentially song-like performative dimension, by an audience certainly more accustomed than us to rhyming games and the mechanisms of interstrophic variation, but nevertheless not substantially different from a cognitive point of view. In some cases, it has gone so far as to argue that Arnaut’s permutation is, in fact, only detectable in the presence of an analysis of the written dictation and would not be perceptible in any way during the performance. On the basis of this reflec- tion, I would like to discuss the specificity of the sestina syllable words, studying their phonic and semantic aspect, as well as the impact they have on short-term memory mechanisms. An attempt will be made to highlight, for instance, whether words pertinent to the style of the trobar car, essentially based on the rarity of rhymes, are functional in a memorization discourse.