Everything about De Vulgari Eloquentia totally explained
De vulgari eloquentia (
On Eloquence in the vernacular) is the title of an 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
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's 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 wasn't something static, but something that
evolves and needed a
historical contextualisation.
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's still not known why Dante so abruptly aborted his essay. Indeed it's 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.
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.
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 were not of the original work, but of an intermediary one.
The major Occitan work that influenced Dante was probably
Razos de trobar by the
Catalan troubadour Raimon Vidal de Bezaudun and the
Vers e regles de trobar, an amplification of Vidal's manual, by
Jofre de Foixà. Both of these works were Occitan manuals of grammar for troubadour poetry. They implicitly and explicitly defended the Occitan as the best vernacular for song and verse, prompting Dante to come to the defence of his beloved Tuscan tongue. The popularity of both singin and composing in Occitan by Italians prompted Dante to write:
A perpetuale infamia e depressione delli malvagi uomini d'Italia, che commendando lo volgare altrui, e li lore proprio dispregiano, meaning "It is to the perpetual shame and sadness of the abominable Italians that they've taken command of another vernacular and despise their own."
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
Livre du 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.
Sources
- Graham-Leigh, Elaine. The Southern French Nobility and the Albigensian Crusade. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2005. ISBN 1 84383 129 5
- Ewert, A. "Dante's Theory of Language."
The Modern Language Review, Vol. 35, No. 3. (Jul., 1940), pp 355–366.
- Weiss, R. "Links between the "Convivio" and the 'De Vulgari Eloquentia'." The Modern Language Review, Vol. 37, No. 2. (Apr., 1942), pp 156–168.
- Dante Alighieri, "De vulgari eloquentia," edited and translated by Steven Botterill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Further Information
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