The Italian peninsula consisted of 15 or more small “city-states” such as Venice, Florence, and Pisa in the north and Amalfi and Naples in the south, along with Rome, the “papal state”. Although the languages of all of these city-states evolved from the Latin spoken in Roman times, they developed with significantly different dialects. Although the spoken languages evolved, all the legal, commercial, political and literary works were written in classical Latin, unchanged from Roman times. Dante had a strong interest in the concept of the vernacular language as evidenced by his early essay “De Vulgari Eloquentia” (written in Latin), in which he discusses the evolution of language and argues that the commonly spoken dialects should be considered the equal to Latin. Because Dante was born and grew up in Florence, he wrote the Divine Comedy in his Tuscan dialect and this became established as what is now known as
The Italian peninsula consisted of 15 or more small “city-states” such as Venice, Florence, and Pisa in the north and Amalfi and Naples in the south, along with Rome, the “papal state”. Although the languages of all of these city-states evolved from the Latin spoken in Roman times, they developed with significantly different dialects. Although the spoken languages evolved, all the legal, commercial, political and literary works were written in classical Latin, unchanged from Roman times. Dante had a strong interest in the concept of the vernacular language as evidenced by his early essay “De Vulgari Eloquentia” (written in Latin), in which he discusses the evolution of language and argues that the commonly spoken dialects should be considered the equal to Latin. Because Dante was born and grew up in Florence, he wrote the Divine Comedy in his Tuscan dialect and this became established as what is now known as