Movo di basso e vogli’alto montare: un personaggio fittizio duecentesco?

This paper aims to analyse Movo di basso e vogli’alto montare by Bonagiunta Orbicciani, in order not only to shed a light on its meaning but also to point out its didactic features. The sonnet’s protagonist, who portrays himself as the arrogant par exellence, is in fact a fictional character, used by Bonagiunta to promote the opposite behaviour. The visual characteristics of the poem, along with the ambiguous presence of the lyrical ‘I’, are thus investigated to understand how this negative exemplum strategy can be contextualized in the XIIIth Century Italian poetry background.