Vernacular In Dante's De Vulgari Eloquentia

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De Vulgari Eloquentia fruitfully combines a number of branches of knowledge that medieval tradition had previously tended to separate: it brings together rhetorical and factual elements drawn from the realms of history, geography, philosophy, biblical exegesis and political theory, as well as the fundamentally linguistic matters that are its professed concern, in a way that is not, by and large, characteristic of any of the more narrowly definable genres of medieval writing about language or literature. (xvii) One can deduce that today’s modern literature originated thanks to his work. Moreover, even though he defends the use of vernacular in his work, he wrote this in Latin. His aim in writing in Latin was to create a new movement. He wanted …show more content…

At first it was named as only Commedia. In this context, Dante wrote his work’s title connecting to the definition of Comedy in Aristotle’s Poetics. One can see two reason behind this. Firstly, the use of vernacular is one of the comedy’s features. One can deduce it from Aristotle’s Poetics. While he is making the definiton of Tragedy, he says “ in embellished speech, with each of its elements [used] separately in the [various] parts [of the play]” (Aristotle 2001, 95). Secondly, contrary to tragedy, comedies does not have tragic ending and this work does not contains a tragic ending. Because of this two feature, it is called as Commedia. Later the word Divina was added by Giovanni Boccaccio. It is accepted as the most important work of the Middle-Ages. It has 600 characters who are known by common in history, including the characters from the myths of Greek, Ancient Greek’s and Rome’s philosophers, people who helped humanity in positive way and people who helped humanity in negative way. It includes nearly all those who have an historic importance. It consists of three parts, Inferno(Hell), Purgatorio(Purgatory) and Parasido(Heaven). Dante seperates this 600 characters to these

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