Abstract
AbstractOn considering the vast critical literature concerning Dante and his works there is one corner of the field that, compared to the rest, seems surprisingly little worked. I refer to study of Dante's own point of view towards the words he uses. The object of this article is to emphasize the need for such a study and to indicate certain lines of approach. It may be useful at the outset to remind the reader of what Dante says on the subject of words in the De Vulgari Eloquentia. In that work he divides words into several different categories when considering the classification; suitable for use in canzoni. The treatise is unfinished and Dante changed some of his views later. It seems likely that at the time he was writing the work he considered the canzone as the highest art-form and the Divine Comedy is certainly not a canzone. If we were strictly logical therefore, we should agree that an application of these canzone word-categories to other literary forms is inappropriate. If, however, we take a br...
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