HISTORY OF THE ITALIAN LANGUAGE

The course is part of the Master Degree in Italian Literature and Philology.
The course aims to provide students with advanced competences in the linguistic analysis of written texts, both old and modern, and their historical and cultural contextualization. The achievement of this objective will enable students to apply autonomously the methods and tools of historical linguistics, discourse analysis and stylistics to texts of the past and Contemporary Era, both literary and non-literary.

1. Knowledge and comprehension:
1.1 To be acquainted with Dante's linguistic ideas, the steps of their evolution, and the texts in which they are presented.
1.2 To understand the originality of Dante's linguistic thought in the late Middle Ages and his debt to the biblical, classical and Medieval traditions.
1.3 To be familiar with the fortune of Dante's linguistic thought all through the Italian "questione della lingua", from the 16th until the 19th centuries.
2. Capability of applying knowledge and comprehension:
2.1 To be capable of distinguishing between the several steps of elaboration of Dante's linguistic ideas, for what concerns both theories on language, its nature and origins, and the relationship between Latin and the Italian vernaculars and their use in literature.
2.2 To be capable of recognizing the main sources of Dante's linguistic thought and explain how Dante reuses them in his works.
3. Judgement ability:
3.1 To evaluate critically the originality of Dante's linguistic thought in the late Middle Ages.
3.2 To interpretate correctly Dante's linguistic terminology by exploiting the student's knowledges of linguistics and history of the Italian language.
4. Communication ability:
4.1 To be able to communicate properly the characteristics and evolution of Dante's linguistic thought.
5. Learning abilities:
5.1 To be able to study critically the reference texts, by hierarchizing information and making connections between different notions.

Students must possess the basic principles of History of the Italian language and History of the Italian literature, generally acquired through the courses of Linguistics and Literature of the Bachelor Degree in Lettere.
Students must have achieved the formative objectives of History of the Italian language I and II (or Italian Linguistics I and II) and Italian Literature I (the Middle Ages).

Title of the course: Dante's linguistics
Dante's reflection on language represents a major point in his thought and poetics, all through his career from the Vita nuova until the Commedia. The work in which Dante illustrates his ideas organically and systematically is the De vulgari eloquentia, "a theoretical jewel, comparable, for its exceptionality, to the 'miracle' of the Commedia" (Tavoni). Of great importance are also the linguistic reflections contained in the Vita nuova, in the Convivio and, above all, the reflexes of his ideas in the Commedia (not without - even radical - changes of mind).
During the lessons, after underlining the importance of Dante's "philosophy of language" (D'Ovidio), for what concerns both the coeval society, and the influence of Dante's ideas all through the "questione della lingua", a selection of readings from the Vita nuova, the Convivio and, above all, the De vulgari eloquentia and the Commedia will be read and commented upon, thus showing the development of the Poet's linguistic thought. The analysis will concentrate on the two main themes of Dante's reflection on language, i.e., on one hand, his theory on the nature and origins of language from Adam to Babel and the linguistic fragmentation of Medieval Italy, on other hand, his evaluation of the relation between Latin and the Italian vernaculars and his claim for the literary legitimacy of the "vulgare Latium", originally conceived as a unitary linguistic system common to the whole Italian peninsula.

1. Dante, De vulgari eloquentia, a cura di Mirko Tavoni, Milano, Mondadori, 2017.
2. Riccardo Tesi, La lingua della grazia. Indagini sul "De vulgari eloquentia", Padova, Esedra, 2016.
3. Massimiliano Corrado, Dante e la questione della lingua di Adamo. De vulgari eloquentia, I 4-7; Paradiso XXVI 124-38, Roma, Salerno ed., 2010.

Moreover, students are required to learn the notes taken during the lessons and to read carefully the texts (from Convivio and Commedia) and essays commented upon. All readings will be made available in the e-learning platform moodle.unive.it.

Students will have to pass an oral exam of 20-30 minutes. During the exam, students will demonstrate their knowledge of the subjects that have been illustrated in the lessons and that are described in the reference texts.

oral

Frontal teaching. All materials read and commented upon during the lessons will be available in the e-learning platform moodle.unive.it. Although the course is not conceived as a seminar, feedback from students will be constantly solicited, according to an interactive and dynamic idea of teaching.

Italian

Students not attending the classes will have to contact Prof. Baglioni and agree with him a different program.