The manuscript tradition of ancient Italian lyric poetry is almost entirely entrusted in miscellaneous manuscripts. After the very early stages limited to sec. XIII, this tradition lacks significant breaks, so a large part of extant manuscripts transmit ancient texts (belonging to 13th and 14th centuries) together with more recent poems (15th or 16th centuries). It is therefore crucial to focus on the historical background in which manuscripts were composed and textual sequences were formed in order to understand the development of the tradition and the actual dissemination of texts in different milieux.
Through a series of examples, some taken from the project TraLiRO (Texts and Transmission of Medieval Romance Lyric Poetry), the essay illustrates some kinds of miscellanies containing Italian lyric poetry and highlights some of the philological and critical consequences that the study of these manuscripts may produce
