Читать книгу A history of Italian literature онлайн

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The literary merits of the Italian language are more fully expounded in another work of Dante’s, which, however, he composed in Latin, that his arguments might reach those who would not have condescended to read the vernacular. TheDe Vulgari Eloquio, originally entitledDe Eloquentia Vulgari, orOf the Vulgar Tongue, is shown by historical allusions to have been composed by 1304. Like theConvito it is unfinished, only two books of the four of which it was to have consisted having been written. Dante’s conception of the capabilities of his native tongue does him honour, even though he restricts the number of subjects adapted to it, and would deny its use to all but gifted writers. It is a still higher honour to have recommended it more effectually by his example than by his reasonings, which, as was inevitable in his age, frequently rest upon entirely fanciful and visionary data. His account, nevertheless, of the Italian dialects as they existed in his day, and his precepts on the metrical structure of Italian poetry, which he seems not to have then contemplated as capable of existing apart from music, retain a substantial value for all time.