Guelphs and Ghibellines - in Literature

In Literature

• In Dante's Inferno, participants in the conflict are featured prominently, Mosca dei Lamberti being the character suffering in hell for the schism for which he was held responsible.
• In The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio, one of the ladies is a firm adherent of the Ghibellines, to the point where she will not even praise Charlemagne.
• In the notes to the 1579 poem The Shepheardes Calendar, English poet Edmund Spenser's annotator E.K. claimed (incorrectly) that the words "Elfs" and "Goblins" derive etymologically from Guelphs and Ghibellines.
• Valperga: The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca is a historical novel by Mary Shelley, influenced heavily by both Dante and Boccaccio, that deals directly with the Guelph and Ghibelline conflict, its central figure being one of the latter, while his love, the Duchess of Valperga, is a Guelph.
• In his Cantos, Ezra Pound makes repeated mention of both Guelfs and Ghibellines. The pro-Papal Guelfs are associated with usury and corruption while the pro-Imperial Ghibellines are associated with law and order. The famous "fascist" canto, LXXII, makes mention of Ezalino (who would appear to be the sometime Ghibelline leader Ezzelino), "who didn't believe the world was made by a jew" (i.e. rejected papal and Christian claims and embraced the anti-Semitism of the Second World War in the fascist milieu in which the Canto was written).
• In Christ Stopped at Eboli, Carlo Levi compares the peasants and gentry of Agliano to the Guelphs and Ghibellines, respectively, with the Fascist government as the Holy Roman Empire and the desire to be left alone for local rule as the Papacy.
• In the Quentaris Chronicles series, there are two feuding families based on the Guelphs and Ghibellines: the Duelphs and the Nibhellines.
• In The Lost Steps by Alejo Carpentier, the narrator refers to the Guelphs and Ghibellines to describe the nature of the sudden guerrilla fighting that breaks out in the streets of a Latin American city.