Rustico Filippi (ca. 1230-ca. 1299) was probably the first Italian poet to explore the poetics of insult. During the Middle Ages, literature was categorized as a subset of ethics; through the descriptions of characters, all literature consisted of the praise of the worthy, or of the blame of the reprehensible. Literature enforced traditional morality by inspiring admiration or condemnation in its readers. By writing a series of insulting caricatures, Filippi developed the poetry of blame in medieval Italy. His sonnets put the unseemly characteristics and actions of fellow Florentines on...