This study sets out to refute the traditional conception of Tuscan invective verse (so-called comic-realistic poetry) in the duecento as belonging to the middle or low style defined in the Artes poetriae from Galfrid to Dante. The subjects addressed and the rhetorical devices employed are impossible to square with the recommendations formulated in the poetics of the time. Nor can the comic passages of the »Commedia« be adequately described in these terms. A section on the productive reception accorded to these works investigates the influences of research paradigms on the description of invective poetry in historical novels and short stories.