Commentary Purg XXVI 119-120

'Giraut de Borneil, one of the most famous troubadours of his century, born at Essidueil, near Limoges, ca. 1175, died ca. 1220' (Gerardus de Brunèl).  Dante refers to him a number of times in De vulgari eloquentia and once in Convivio, never slightingly -- quite the opposite is true.  Hence Dante's about-face here is dramatic.  In V.E.II.ii.9 he had made Giraut his own Provençal counterpart: Dante presented himself as the leading poetic celebrant of virtue in Italian, while Giraut was presented in exactly the same role for his language group.  In the same passage Arnault Daniel was put into the identical relationship with Dante's then first friend, Cino da Pistoia; they are the twin wonders of amorous poetry.  However, and as Barolini points out (Baro.1984.1), pp. 98-99, Giraut is clearly ranked above Arnaut.  For consideration of Dante's possible reasons for wanting now to distance himself from Giraut see Picone (Pico.1980.1) and Mengaldo (Meng.1997.1).  And for a set of formulations that attempts to deal with the whole range of the Comedy's revisionism regarding Dante's poetic precursors, see Barolini (Baro.1984.1), pp. 175-87.