De vulgari eloquentia

De vulgari eloquentia (lat: About the eloquence in the vernacular ) is a work by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri. It was written in four books 1303-1305, of which only the first volume completely and the second volume have been preserved up to the 14th chapter. De vulgari eloquentia deals mainly with the neolatinischen languages. Since Dante thus turned not only to the Italian, but all European scholars, he wrote the book in Latin.

Content

At the beginning, the author deals with the origin of language: The Tower of Babel have confused the languages ​​, but was reasonable to assume for the first word of Adam the Hebrew word for "God." The creature must have seen their Creator. Then Dante analyzes the languages ​​of his time: the spoken Romance varieties he divided it into the lingua d'oc ( spoken in the south of France ), the lingua d' oïl ( spoken in northern France ) and the lingua del sì (predecessor of the Italian ). He also knows a group of affirmation particles Io, including the he German, the English, the Saxon, Hungarian and Slavic languages ​​into account. The third group was Greek. The Latin or the "grammar " and the ancient Greek he declared also to historical time not spoken languages ​​. These languages ​​have been designed and fixed for the purpose of tradition, so that they could be read by immutability also by posterity.

The lingua del sì Dante divides into 14 dialect groups; However, his opinion was suitable for writing and none of these densities, because they were with each other too different. But there is a lack of a political center, which allows the formation of a uniform vernacular, a uniform language.

Then examines Dante the sealing styles of his time. He distinguishes between two types: the stile comico who turns to the common people, and the stile umile for a more upscale audience.

Importance

Even if the work from the perspective of today's linguistics contains many non-valid sections are narrated by Dante contemporary perspectives on the relationship between the Latin and the Romance languages ​​. In addition, he joins one of the first, the unity of the people with the standardization of the language.

Translations

  • About the vernacular, KL Kannegießer, Leipzig 1845
  • About the densities in the mother tongue, F. and J. Balogh Dornseiff, Darmstadt 1925
  • De vulgari eloquentia, Claudio Marazzini and Concetto del Popolo, Milan 1990, lat - ital.
  • De vulgari eloquentia: with the Italian translation of Gian Giorgio Trissino (1529 ), M. Frings and J. Kramer, Stuttgart 2007, lat.-ital.-dt.
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