An Ecology of World Literature by Alexander Beecroft

Author:Alexander Beecroft [Beecroft, Alexander]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-78168-574-7
Publisher: Verso Books
Published: 2015-03-02T16:00:00+00:00

One of the first points to observe is that Dante nowhere identifies the vernacular language he defends as “Italian.” He does use Ytalia to describe a geographic region corresponding fairly closely to both the Roman understanding of Italy and to the modern nation-state and refers at times to the Ytalii as the inhabitants of that territory. It is therefore all the more striking that the term he uses for the generalized vernacular common to that population is consistently Latium vulgare, or “vulgar/popular Latin.” The choice of this term is, I would argue, significant. Dante divides the linguistic geography of the world into a Greek part, a northern European part, corresponding roughly to the Germanic and Slavic languages (where, according to Dante, the word for “yes” is io), and a third part, corresponding in essence to the Romance languages, which is itself divided into three, based on the different words for “yes” used there:

All the rest of Europe that was not dominated by these two vernaculars was held by a third, although nowadays this itself seems to be divided in three: for some now say oc, some oïl, and some sì, when they answer in the affirmative; and these are the Hispanic, the French, and the Italians [Latini]. Yet the sign that the vernaculars of these three peoples derive from one and the same language is plainly apparent: for they can be seen to use the same words to signify many things, such as “God,” “heaven,” “love,” “sea,” “earth,” “is,” “lives,” “dies,” “loves,” and almost all others.21

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