De vulgari eloquentia

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De vulgari eloquentia (On the Eloquence of Vernacular) is the title of an important essay by Dante Alighieri, written in Latin and initially meant to consist in four books, but aborted after the second. It was probably written in the years that preceded Dante's exile, between 1303 and 1305. The first book deals with the relationship between Latin and vernacular, and the searching of an illustrious vernacular in the Italian area, while the second is an analysis of the structure of the song, a very important and noble literary genre.

Latin essays were very popular in the Middle Ages, but Dante made some innovations in his work: firstly the topic, which is the vernacular, was an uncommon choice at that time. Secondly, the way Dante approached this theme, that is giving to vernacular the same dignity that was only meant for Latin. Finally, Dante wrote this essay in order to analyse the origin and the philosophy of vernacular, because, in his opinion, this language was not something static, but something that evolves and needed an historical contextualisation.

Contents

[edit] Structure

Dante interrupted his work at the fourteenth chapter of the second book, and though historians have tried to find a reason for this, it is still not known why Dante so abruptly aborted his essay. Indeed it is an unfinished project, and so information about its intended structure is limited. Though at some point, Dante mentions a fourth book in which he planned to deal with the comic genre, the mediocre one, nothing at all is known about the third book. It is thought, however, that the first book was meant to be a sort of preface to the following three books, and so shorter than the other ones.

[edit] Content

In the beginning, Dante faced the historical evolution of the language, that he thinks was born unitary and, in a second time, was separated in different idioms because of the presumptuousness demonstrated by the humankind at the Tower of Babel time. He compiled a map of the geographical position of the languages he knows, dividing the European territory into three parts: one to the east, with the Greek languages; one to the north, with the Germanic languages; one to the south, separated into three languages identified by the affirmation adverb: oc language, oïl language and sì language. He then discussed the grammar, which is a static language consisting of unchanging rules, needed to make up for the natural languages. In the chapters ten to fifteen of the first book, Dante writes about his research for the illustrious vernacular, among the fourteen varieties he claims to have found in the Italian region. In the second book, Dante deals with literary genres, specifying which are the ones that suit the vernacular.

[edit] Models

Dante takes inspiration from rhetoric essays in Latin, Occitan and Italian, and from philosophical readings. The main classic rhetoric text from which he drew information were the Ars Poetica by Horace, the Rhetorica ad Herennium by an anonymous author, and De Inventione by Cicero. About the philosophical works, it's important to know that Dante read not only first hand texts, but also summaries that sometimes weren't of the original work, but of an intermediary one.

Directly or indirectly, Dante came to read Saint Augustine's works, the De Consolatione Philosophiae by Boëthius, Saint Thomas Aquinas's works and some encyclopedic dictionaries like the Etymologiae by Isidore of Seville and the Tresor by Brunetto Latini. He takes also inspiration from Aristotelian philosophy, and in Dante's work are traceable some references to texts by representatives of what is sometimes referred to as Radical Aristotelianism.

[edit] See also

Other works by Dante:

Wikipedia articles on:

  • Averroes & Averroism: for discussion of the concepts of Radical Aristotelianism and heterodox Aristotelianism

[edit] External links

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