Dante: De vulgari eloquentia

The first Latin-English text of Dante's treatise on language, together with notes and introduction.

Dante (Author), Steven Botterill (Edited and translated by)

9780521409230, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 15 September 2005

136 pages
21.3 x 14 x 1.3 cm, 0.186 kg

"This useful and readable new translation is certainly a welcome addition to the literature on Dante for both undergraduates and scholars." Choice

De vulgari eloquentia, written by Dante in the early years of the fourteenth century, is the only known work of medieval literary theory to have been produced by a practising poet, and the first to assert the intrinsic superiority of living, vernacular languages over Latin. Its opening consideration of language as a sign-system includes foreshadowings of twentieth-century semiotics, and later sections contain the first serious effort at literary criticism based on close analytical reading since the classical era. Steven Botterill here offers an accurate Latin text and a readable English translation of the treatise, together with notes and introductory material, thus making available a work which is relevant not only to Dante's poetry and the history of Italian literature, but to our whole understanding of late medieval poetics, linguistics, and literary practice.

Introduction
Select bibliography
A note on the text
De vulgari eloquentia Book I, Book II
Explanatory notes
Index.

Subject Areas: Poetry by individual poets [DCF]