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 of four books, but
abandoned in the middle of the second. It was probably composed shortly after
Dante went into exile; internal evidence points to a date between 1302 and 1305.
The first book deals with the relationship between Latin and vernacular, and the
search for an illustrious vernacular in the Italian area, while the second is an
analysis of the structure of the "canto" or song (also spelled "canzone" in Italian), 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 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 the vernacular,
because, in his opinion, this language was not something static, but something that
evolves and needed a historical contextualisation.

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 and the "mediocre"
style, 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 others.

Content[edit]

In the beginning, Dante tackles the historical evolution of language, which he thinks
was born unitary and, at a later stage, was separated into different idioms because
of the presumptuousness demonstrated by humankind at the time of the building of
the Tower of Babel. He compiles 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,
which he believed included Magyar and Slavic languages; one to the south,
separated into three Romance languages identified by their word for 'yes': oc
language, ol language and s language. He then discusses "gramatica" grammar,
which is a static language consisting of unchanging rules, needed to make up for
the natural languages. In chapters ten to fifteen of the first book, Dante writes
about his search 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[edit]

Dante takes inspiration from rhetorical essays in Latin, Occitan, and Italian, and
from philosophical readings. The main classical rhetorical texts 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 is
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 Foix.[1][2] Both of these works were
Occitan manuals of grammar for troubadour poetry. They implicitly and explicitly
defended 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 singing
and composing in Occitan by Italians prompted Dante to write: A perpetuale infamia
e depressione delli malvagi uomini d'Italia, che commendano lo volgare altrui, e lo
loro proprio dispregiano, dico...,[3] meaning "To the perpetual shame and lowness of
the wicked men of Italy, that praise somebody else's vernacular and despise their
own, I say..." ( Convivio, treatise I, XI )

Directly or indirectly, Dante came to read Saint Augustine's works, the De

Consolatione Philosophiae by Bothius, 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.