Dante Alighieri, De vulgari eloquentia [On Common Eloquence]

John Took (University College London)

Ed. by Jo Ann Cavallo, Columbia University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.6.1: Italian Writing and Culture, 453-present.
Vol. editors: Carla Bregman (Independent Scholar - North America), Jo Ann Cavallo (Columbia University)

Domains

Rhetoric and Oratory

Dates

First circulation or publication 1300 - c. 1310

Places

Italy (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Treatise

Resources

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Dante's work, everywhere, is an essay in clarification, in seeking out and stating the rationale of his undertaking as a poet and philosopher; so, for example, the early

Vita nova

(c. 1293), where by way of what amounts to an essay in affective philosophy, in the redefining of love as a matter less of acquisition than of disposition, it is a question of his resolving the ambiguities of his own experience as a love poet in the Siculo-Tuscan tradition of vernacular verse making. So, too, the

Convivio,

belonging in an ideal chronology to the years 1304-1307, where by way of a now more properly pedagogical undertaking, of a guide to human happiness for the benefit of "those many men and women in this language of ours burdened by domestic and civic care" (I.ix.5 and i.4), it is a question of…

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2752 words

Citation: Took, John. "De vulgari eloquentia". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 17 February 2014 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=16059, accessed 26 November 2024.]