The poets of the Sicilian School usually composed in the Sicilian language. At a time when all the Italian languages were very similar,
Tuscan copyists altered the Sicilian word endings and other orthographic conventions to produce Tuscanised texts. Stefano's
canzone Pir meu cori alligrari, is the only work of the Sicilian School that is preserved in both Sicilian (which has five vowel sounds) and Tuscan (which has seven).
Gian Maria Barbieri reported to have found it in a "libro siciliano", probably an
Occitan chansonnier from Sicily, and copied it. This copy was first printed in 1790 by
Gerolamo Tiraboschi. The original has since been lost.
Pir meu is written in
coblas unissonans, with two feet of abC form and a
sirma that is dDEeFF, followed by a
tornada that is identical in structure. One of the central images in the piece is that of
la dulzuri / chi fa la tigra in illu miraturi: "the delight / that the tigress has in her own mirror". Stefano likens seeing his lady for the first time to this delight. This image was first employed in a
canso of
Rigaut de Barbezieux: the tigress is said to be enchanted by her own beautiful stripes and so be forget about the hunters that pursue her. The mirror image may also be used to structure the motifs of the poem, the second half being a motivic mirror-image of the first. While
Pir meu is written in the standardised Sicilian of court poetry, the
volgare (siciliano) illustre, the first stanza shows hints of the common tongue (
siciliana-comune). Stefano's poem has been used, with varying degrees of liberty, to re-create Sicilian versions of the Tuscanised legacy of other Sicilian poets. Besides
Pir meu, Stefano left two other songs,
Assai cretti celare and
Assai mi placeria. A fourth,
Amor, da cui move tuttora e vene, customarily assigned to
Pier delle Vigne, has been lately ascribed to Stefano. It is characterised among his works for its dependence on
bestiaries for creating
simile and
image. He alludes to a
deer and a
unicorn. ==Notes==