The Words of the prosaici dittatori: A Study of Prose Language in the Vita nova

Abstract

The bipartite structure of the prosimeter corresponds to a substantial linguistic dichotomy: on the one hand the ‘lyrical’ vernacular of Gallo-Romance and Sicilian origin, on the other the ‘didactic’ vernacular of prose. The language of prose, in particular, is distinguished by realism, which pertains to the representation of settings and characters, compensating for the descriptive indeterminacy of poetry and bridging the gap between reality and its figuration through the use of grammatical structures typical of that scientific literature probably enjoyed by Alighieri at the ‘schools’ of the laity. The essay examines those lexical and syntactic Latinisms that denote the compilative-exegetic vocation of Vitanovan prose, projecting Dante’s text into the cultural horizon of Florentine literary prose of the thirteenth century and of contemporary vernacular translations of the classics, characterized, in addition to the linguistic transposition, by the exegetic supplement of the sposizione: consider Brunetto’s Rettorica and Bono Giamboni’s Fiore di rettorica, which, according to Cesare Segre, together with the later vernacular translation of Zucchero Bencivenni’s Somme le roi, constitute the “pre-Dantean Florentine triumvirate”.