Abstract
These pages contain the first published edition of La reina, con grave fiamma incesa, a vernacular dialogue in Dantesque terza rima between Dido and her sister Anna based on Book IV of the Aeneid (vv. 1-55). The work exists in just one late-14th century manuscript (MS II.IV.248) housed at the Biblioteca Nazionale in Florence, and it is the first in a series of four texts present in the manuscript that comprise four distinct moments in the broader context of deprecatio amoris. The decision made by this anonymous author to reinterpret the tragic story of Dido and Aeneas using the vernacular and terza rima reflects a choice previously implemented by Alberto della Piagentina for his vernacular edition of Boethius’ De consolatione (1322-1332), the highest auctoritas on the elegiac style. Thus, the text in question is of particular interest in relation to developments in the 14th century vernacular elegy before it came to be codified as a genre in its own right.
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