Note 31 — Chapter IV · THE “DIVINA COMMEDIA”

Traces of an earlier design have been tentatively found in various places of the first seven cantos, and associated with Boccaccio’s story of Dante having begun the poem before his exile and resumed it after the recovery of his manuscript when the guest of Moroello Malaspina. In Boccaccio’s commentary upon the opening of Inf. viii., Andrea Poggi and Dino Perini are represented as rival claimants for the honor of having recovered the manuscript for Dante.