De Grammatica (2006)

In "De Vugari eloquentia," "gramatica" is deployed to lead to the idea of Italian/Florentine vernacular as the new classical language, connected to the argument for Italian as “poetic language” – that is, grosso modo, the language most suited to poetry, that poetry should be in, and that which makes poetry poetry: se duobus privilegiis actestatur preesse: primo quidem quod qui dulcius subtiliusque poetati vulgariter sunt … hii familiares et domestici sui sunt; secundo quia magis videntur initi gramatice que comunis est, quod rationabiliter inspicientibus videtur gravissimum argumentum. DVE I.X §2 "Gramatica" is the key term at the core of the argument, the point of conjunction of both ideas. Now, to be fair, here and elsewhere Dante does praise Occitan poetry (a.k.a. "in lingua … oc" ) and its poets. Indeed, he uses "poetati" later in the same passage – and this is one of the earliest Medieval uses of the term, and one of the first instances of "poeta" and correlates being applied to post-Classical and non-Latin poets. But I digress. The point is that not only does this connected idea of gramatica and poetic language appear in earlier or contemporary Catalan and Occitan poetics treatises, the way it is expressed there – and the context – are what might loosely be termed very interesting indeed. Now, I’ve drawn some implications and reached some conclusions, and been a bit more Bold in conversation. But am in process of thinking about this anew, in terms of cultural translatio, an Occitan “renaissance” at the turn of the 14th c., and prequels to Pléiade linguistic politics and the like. That is, the strong language/literature/identity link; with nationalism linking identities personal and political; and how this fits with other things going on at the time, such as The Private, The Individual, Subjectivity, and other Capitalised Ideas Von Und Zu That Ilk. In France – but with wider ramifications. Full text online at: http://metametamedieval.com/2008/07/19/de-grammatica/