The Forerunners of Dante: A Selection From Italian Poetry Before 1300 (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

Excerpt from The Forerunners of Dante: A Selection From Italian Poetry Before 1300

Italy is unique among European countries in having twice seen its literature culminate, at epochs, indeed, far remote one from the other; and each time in a poet who by common consent holds rank among the four or five greatest among men of European speech. The older Italian, which we call Latin, and the later Latin, which we call Italian, must not be regarded as parent and child; they are the same individual at various stages of development, as Dante was well aware. Throughout the treatise on language and literature to which he gave the name of De Vulgari Eloque'rztz'éz, the word he uses to designate his own mother-tongue is Latino. The three chief 'romance' languages, as we now style them, are for him French, 'spanish' (including Provencal), and 'latin'; the vernacular of Italy is vzzégm'e latz'num. His instinct was quite right; he would have understood Virgil, in all probability, though he had never read another word of ancient Latin, while Virgil would have understood him, and recognized in his speech something very closely resembling what he had heard every day in the streets of Rome, or the country lanes round Mantua.

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