137-404: La Vita Nuova ( pronounced [la ˈviːta ˈnwɔːva] ; modern Italian for "The New Life") or Vita Nova (Latin and medieval Italian title ) is a text by Dante Alighieri published in 1294. It is an expression of the medieval genre of courtly love in a prosimetrum style, a combination of both prose and verse. Referred to by Dante as his libello , or "little book," La Vita Nuova
274-495: A Guelph whom Dante condemns to torment in the sixth circle of his Inferno , where the heretics are punished. Unlike Dante, Guido was an atheist. As Giovanni Boccaccio (Decameron, VI, 9) wrote during the generation after Cavalcanti's death, " Si diceva tralla gente volgare che queste sue speculazioni erano solo in cercare se trovar si potesse che Iddio non-fosse " (People commonly said his speculations were only in trying to find that God did not exist). During his lifetime, Florence
411-689: A local language of Italy , most frequently the language spoken at home in their place of origin. Italian is a major language in Europe, being one of the official languages of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and one of the working languages of the Council of Europe . It is the third-most-widely spoken native language in the European Union (13% of the EU population) and it
548-433: A beauty that our lowly minds couldn't sustain what our intellects saw so gently noble is she that when she fills my mind my soul feels my heart shiver so it can't continue …. This passage explains the conflict between the sensitive and intellectual, as Guido's heart shivers as his "our lowly minds couldn't sustain what our intellects saw." All this is driven by the lofty beauty of his lady. Cavalcanti
685-464: A chi ciò guarda. E tant'a piu d'ogn'altra ha canoscenza, quanto lo cielo de la terra e maggio: A simil di natura ben non tarda. beauty of women and wise hearts and noble armed cavaliers bird's song and love's reason adorned ships in strong seas serene air at dawn and white snow falling windlessly watery brooks and fields of all flowers gold, silver, lapis lazuli in adornment- these are transcended by
822-582: A dead figure saying – I warn you not to send them, I am wary of you because if the friend is who I am imagining his mind won't be ready to hear of the slight and the injustice I make you burn with I fear he won't take such a large loss as if his heart would leave him if he heard of the gravity of things and you well know I'm Love for this reason I leave you this semblance of me and carry away your thoughts. Guido tells Dante how desire, how "wanting" has ruined his heart. He dramatically reinforces his condition through
959-485: A derivative school of poetry that mimicked its French and Sicilian poetic ancestors, Stilnovismo brought an originality to and completely transformed the poetry of courtly love in that: 1) It was an urban poetry of the Tuscan commune , not of an aristocratic court. 2) It explored the philosophical, spiritual, psychological and social effects of love. 3) It championed the Tuscan vernacular . 4) It did all this while expressing
1096-449: A face with dead eyes I felt neither peace nor even rest in the place where I found Love and my Lady – who said to me – you won't escape because my strength is too great. Influenced by Averroës , the twelfth-century Islamic philosopher who commented on Aristotle , Cavalcanti saw humans with three basic capacities: the vegetative, which humans held in common with plants; the sensitive, which man shared with animals; and,
1233-531: A few months he decided to try to return to Florence. Guido Cavalcanti died of fever (probably malaria ) in August of the same year on his journey home. Guido's marriage to Beatrice degli Uberti should not be seen in the context of modern relationships where people marry each other for love, but rather in the context of his own age, when marriage was often motivated by business and/or political interests . As such, Guido's poetry, which dwells on love, should be seen as
1370-565: A huge number of civil servants and soldiers recruited from all over the country introduced many more words and idioms from their home languages— ciao is derived from the Venetian word s-cia[v]o ("slave", that is "your servant"), panettone comes from the Lombard word panetton , etc. Only 2.5% of Italy's population could speak the Italian standardized language properly when
1507-592: A l'angosciosa vita mia che sospirando la distrugge amore E' ven tagliando di sì gran valore che deboletti spiriti van via riman figura sol en segnoria e voce alquanta, che parla dolore. Questa vertù d'amor che m'ha disfatto Da' vostri occhi gentil presta si mosse: un dardo mi gittò dentro dal fianco. Sì giunse ritto ‘l colpo al primo tratto, che l’anima tremando si riscosse veggendo morto ‘l cor nel lato manco. You whose look pierced through my heart, Waking up my sleeping mind, behold an anguished life which love
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#17327656004771644-471: A little over one million people in the United States speak Italian at home. Nevertheless, an Italian language media market does exist in the country. In Canada, Italian is the second most spoken non-official language when varieties of Chinese are not grouped together, with 375,645 claiming Italian as their mother tongue in 2016. Italian immigrants to South America have also brought a presence of
1781-766: A lo core Un spirito amoroso che dormia: E poi vidi venir da lungi Amore Allegro sì, che appena il conoscia, Dicendo: "Or pensa pur di farmi onore"; E 'n ciascuna parola sua ridia. E poco stando meco il mio segnore, Guardando in quella parte onde venia, Io vidi monna Vanna e monna Bice Venire inver lo loco là 'v'io era, L'una appresso de l'altra miriviglia; E sì come la mente mi ridice, Amor mi disse: "Quell'è Primavera, E quell'ha nome Amor, sì mi somiglia." I felt myself waking up inside my core A loving spirit that sleeps: And then I saw Love coming from afar Cheerful yes, as soon as he knows it saying, "You think you can honour me;" and with each word laughing. And little being with me my lord, watching
1918-496: A loss of rationale. Dante, opposed to this belief, used Guido's definition for a perverted love instead, within the circle of lust. Cavalcanti is widely regarded as the first major poet of Italian literature : Dante sees in Guido his mentor; his meter, his language deeply inspire his work (cfr. De Vulgari Eloquentia ), though Guido's esthetic materialism would be taken a step further to an entirely new spiritual, Christian vision of
2055-637: A member of the Cavalcanti family, Guido had claimed ancestry dating back to the German barons of Charlemagne's court. He refused to occupy a position as a merchant, as he felt it offensive to his station and his heritage. By this time, the Guelphs began to fight among themselves. Guido Cavalcanti allied himself to the Cerchi, and outwardly expressed his disdain for his rival, Corso Donati . In 1300, Florence
2192-414: A philosophical exploration of love and not as that of a husband bound into and seeking satisfaction outside a marriage made for political purposes. Cavalcanti was a part of the Tuscan poetic movement known as the dolce stil novo (Sweet New Style), whose members are referred to by their Tuscan name, the stilnovisti . The formative influences on the stilnovisti came from two main sources. First, there
2329-683: A poem whose importance does not so much lie in its literary merits but in outlining what would be the fundamentals of the Stil Novo program, which was further perfected by a second generation of poets, including Dante , Cino da Pistoia , Lapo Gianni , and Guido himself. As Dante wrote in his De Vulgari Eloquentia , I, XIII, 4: "Sed quanquam fere omne Tusci in suo turpiloquio sint obtusi, nunnullos vulgaris excellentiam cognovisse sentimus, scilicit Guidonem, Lapum, et unum alium, Florentinos et Cynum Pistoriensem (...) ("Although most Tuscans are overwhelmed by their bad language, we judge that some have known
2466-658: A poetic and literary origin in the works of Tuscan writers of the 12th century, and, although the grammar and core lexicon are basically unchanged from those used in Florence in the 13th century, the modern standard of the language was largely shaped by relatively recent events. However, Romance vernacular as language spoken in the Italian Peninsula has a longer history. In fact, the earliest surviving texts that can definitely be called vernacular (as distinct from its predecessor Vulgar Latin) are legal formulae known as
2603-450: A political reconciliation, Guido married Beatrice, the daughter of Ghibelline party leader Farinata degli Uberti . Their marriage union proved unsuccessful, as the feuds between Guelph and Ghibelline families persisted. By 1293, a rebellion of middle-class Florentine merchants toppled both sides of noble families. Nobles were then forbidden to claim public office, until 1295, when they were offered eligibility to join Florence's guilds. As
2740-483: A remarkable anatomy of love, is divided into five stanzas of fourteen variously rhymed lines of eleven syllables each. The subject is divided into eight chapters dealing with In short, the sensitive, like the rational soul is located in the brain, but does not produce love feelings unless the eyes meet those of a particular woman who has an exclusive affinity to him. This complies with Aristotle 's theory of cause and effect, whereby no effect can proceed from an object if
2877-417: A renewed interest in linguistics in the 16th century, sparked a debate that raged throughout Italy concerning the criteria that should govern the establishment of a modern Italian literary and spoken language. This discussion, known as questione della lingua (i.e., the problem of the language ), ran through the Italian culture until the end of the 19th century, often linked to the political debate on achieving
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#17327656004773014-522: A result. Starting in late medieval times in much of Europe and the Mediterranean, Latin was replaced as the primary commercial language by languages of Italy, especially Tuscan and Venetian. These varieties were consolidated during the Renaissance with the strength of Italy and the rise of humanism and the arts . Italy came to enjoy increasing artistic prestige within Europe. A mark of
3151-436: A seven-vowel system, consisting of /a, ɛ, e, i, ɔ, o, u/ , as well as 23 consonants. Compared with most other Romance languages, Italian phonology is conservative, preserving many words nearly unchanged from Vulgar Latin . Some examples: Guido Cavalcanti Guido Cavalcanti (between 1250 and 1259 – August 1300 ) was an Italian poet. He was also a friend of and intellectual influence on Dante Alighieri . Cavalcanti
3288-479: A single language is that they have evolved so that they are no longer mutually intelligible ; this diagnostic is effective if mutual intelligibility is minimal or absent (e.g. in Romance, Romanian and Portuguese), but it fails in cases such as Spanish-Portuguese or Spanish-Italian, as educated native speakers of either pairing can understand each other well if they choose to do so; however, the level of intelligibility
3425-460: A small treatise on his philosophy of love. Starting from the model provided by the French troubadours , they took Italian poetry a step further and inaugurated the volgare illustre , that higher standard of Italian language that survives almost unchanged to the present day. The founder of this school, Guido Guinizzelli , a law professor at Bologna 's University wrote the first poem of this kind,
3562-558: A title for his 1866 painting Monna Vanna . La vita nuova is a 1902 cantata based on the text by Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari . Vladimir Martynov 's 2003 opera Vita Nuova premiered in the U.S. on February 28, 2009 at the Alice Tully Hall , performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra , conducted by Vladimir Jurowski . A modified version of the opening line of the work's Introduction was used on
3699-729: A unique response to a real-world problem. Certe mie rime a te mandar vogliendo del greve stato che lo meo cor porta, Amor aparve a me in figura morta e disse: – Non mandar, ch'i' ti riprendo, però che, se l'amico è quel ch'io 'ntendo, e' non avrà già sì la mente accorta, ch'udendo la 'ngiuliosa cosa e torta ch'i' ti fo sostener tuttora ardendo, temo non prenda sì gran smarrimento ch'avante ch'udit' aggia tua pesanza non si diparta da la vita il core. E tu conosci ben ch'i' sono Amore; però ti lascio questa mia sembianza e pòrtone ciascun tu' pensamento. When I wanted to send you certain poems about my heart's grave state Love appeared as
3836-513: A united Italian state. Renaissance scholars divided into three main factions: A fourth faction claimed that the best Italian was the one that the papal court adopted, which was a mixture of the Tuscan and Roman dialects. Eventually, Bembo's ideas prevailed, and the foundation of the Accademia della Crusca in Florence (1582–1583), the official legislative body of the Italian language, led to
3973-688: A wise heart. He then proceeds to create a series of images of nature's serene beauty, which he then explains are all transcended by his lady's beauty, grace and noble heart; i.e., her emotions that are pure, based on wisdom, something he is incapable of. Biltà di donna, e di saccente core e cavalieri armati che sien genti, cantar d'augelli e ragionar d'amore, adorni legni 'n mar forte correnti, aria serena quand'appar l'albore, e bianca neve scender senza venti, rivera d'acqua e prato d'ogni fiore, oro e argento, azzurro 'n ornamenti, ciò passa la beltate e la valenza de la mia donna e 'l su' gentil coraggio, sì che rassembra vile
4110-427: Is 89% with French, 87% with Catalan , 85% with Sardinian , 82% with Spanish, 80% with Portuguese , 78% with Ladin , 77% with Romanian . Estimates may differ according to sources. One study, analyzing the degree of differentiation of Romance languages in comparison to Latin (comparing phonology , inflection , discourse , syntax , vocabulary , and intonation ), estimated that distance between Italian and Latin
4247-759: Is also spoken by a minority in Monaco and France, especially in the southeastern part of the country. Italian was the official language in Savoy and in Nice until 1860, when they were both annexed by France under the Treaty of Turin , a development that triggered the " Niçard exodus ", or the emigration of a quarter of the Niçard Italians to Italy, and the Niçard Vespers . Giuseppe Garibaldi complained about
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4384-690: Is also spoken by large immigrant and expatriate communities in the Americas and Australia . Italian is included under the languages covered by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Romania , although Italian is neither a co-official nor a protected language in these countries. Some speakers of Italian are native bilinguals of both Italian (either in its standard form or regional varieties ) and
4521-791: Is at once powerful, persuasive and, here, mellifluous. The crowning achievement of Cavalcanti's poetic youth is his canzone Io non pensava che lo cor giammai in which he embodies his philosophical thoughts in a vernacular masterpiece. An analysis of two passages from this fifty-six-line poem reveals his core ideas on love. Io non pensava che lo cor giammai avesse di sospir tormento tanto, che dell'anima mia nascesse pianto mostrando per lo viso agli occhi morte. Non sentìo pace né riposo alquanto poscia ch'Amore e madonna trovai, lo qual mi disse: – Tu non camperai, ché troppo è lo valor di costei forte. I never used to think that my heart could have such tormented laments that my soul would be born crying revealing
4658-512: Is best remembered for belonging to that small but influential group of Tuscan poets that started what is now known as Dolce Stil Novo , to which he contributed the following (note: translations provided in parentheses do not match the titles by which are widely known in English manuals but are meant to be a more literal rendering of the Italian originals): "Rosa fresca novella" (New, Fresh Rose), "Avete in vo' li fior e la verdura" (You Are Flowers in
4795-400: Is helpful for understanding the context of his other works, principally La Commedia . Besides its content, La Vita Nuova is notable for being written in Tuscan vernacular, rather than Latin ; Dante's work helped to establish Tuscan as the basis for the national Italian language . American poet Wallace Stevens called the text "one of the great documents of Christianity," noting that
4932-534: Is higher than that between Sardinian and Latin. In particular, its vowels are the second-closest to Latin after Sardinian . As in most Romance languages, stress is distinctive. Italian is the official language of Italy and San Marino and is spoken fluently by the majority of the countries' populations. Italian is the third most spoken language in Switzerland (after German and French; see Swiss Italian ), although its use there has moderately declined since
5069-542: Is his masterpiece, the philosophical canzone Donna me prega (A lady asks me). It is a full-fledged treatise of his personal thoughts and beliefs on love. Through it, he transforms all that came before him and influenced him: courtly love , the troubadours , the Sicilian School and his peers of the Dolce stil novo . Guido says he was prompted to write it by his mistress, according to a formula very widespread in
5206-692: Is its ability to describe what goes through the poet's mind in a very detailed, personal manner, creating sensuous, autobiographic poetry. This is revolutionary compared to the rhetoric and academic-seeming manner of the Sicilian and Neo-Sicilian Schools that had preceded the Dolce Stil Novo and, perhaps, a sign of the changing times. Guido Cavalcanti indirectly appears twice in Dante's Divine Comedy . The first occurs in Inferno X, where Dante encounters
5343-399: Is killing with sighs. So deeply love cuts my soul that weak spirits are vanquished, and what remains the only master is this voice that speaks of woe. This virtue of love, that has undone me Came from your heavenly eyes: It threw an arrow into my side. So straight was the first blow That the soul, quivering, reverberated, seeing the heart on the left
5480-460: Is markedly lower between Italian-Spanish, and considerably higher between the Iberian sister languages of Portuguese-Spanish. Speakers of this latter pair can communicate with one another with remarkable ease, each speaking to the other in his own native language without slang/jargon. Nevertheless, on the basis of accumulated differences in morphology, syntax, phonology, and to some extent lexicon, it
5617-462: Is not difficult to identify that for the Romance varieties of Italy, the first extant written evidence of languages that can no longer be considered Latin comes from the ninth and tenth centuries C.E. These written sources demonstrate certain vernacular characteristics and sometimes explicitly mention the use of the vernacular in Italy. Full literary manifestations of the vernacular began to surface around
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5754-594: Is spoken as a second language by 13.4 million EU citizens (3%). Including Italian speakers in non-EU European countries (such as Switzerland, Albania and the United Kingdom ) and on other continents, the total number of speakers is approximately 85 million. Italian is the main working language of the Holy See , serving as the lingua franca (common language) in the Roman Catholic hierarchy as well as
5891-419: Is the first of two collections of verse written by Dante in his life. The collection is a prosimetrum , a piece containing both verse and prose, in the vein of Boethius ' Consolation of Philosophy . Dante used each prosimetrum as a means for combining poems written over periods of roughly ten years— La Vita Nuova contains his works from before 1283 to roughly 1293. The collection and its style fit in with
6028-549: Is used, and the town of Chipilo near Puebla, Mexico; each continues to use a derived form of Venetian dating back to the 19th century. Other examples are Cocoliche , an Italian–Spanish pidgin once spoken in Argentina and especially in Buenos Aires , and Lunfardo . The Rioplatense Spanish dialect of Argentina and Uruguay today has thus been heavily influenced by both standard Italian and Italian regional languages as
6165-530: Is why he speaks of “tormented laments” that makes his soul cry, that make his eyes dead, so he can feel “neither peace nor even rest in the place where I found love and my Lady.” Di questa donna non si può contare: ché di tante bellezze adorna vène, che mente di qua giù no la sostene sì che la veggia lo 'ntelletto nostro. Tant'è gentil che, quand'eo penso bene, l'anima sento per lo cor tremare, sì come quella che non può durare …. Of her one couldn't sing other than her coming in
6302-509: The Il Globo (Australia) and the La gazzetta del Sud Africa (South Africa). Italian is widely taught in many schools around the world, but rarely as the first foreign language. In the 21st century, technology also allows for the continual spread of the Italian language, as people have new ways to learn how to speak, read, and write languages at their own pace and at any given time. For example,
6439-991: The La Voce del Popolo ( Croatia ), the Corriere d'Italia (Germany), the L'italoeuropeo (United Kingdom), the Passaparola ( Luxembourg ), the America Oggi (United States), the Corriere Canadese and the Corriere Italiano (Canada), the Il punto d'incontro (Mexico), the L'Italia del Popolo ( Argentina ), the Fanfulla (Brazil), the Gente d'Italia ( Uruguay ), the La Voce d'Italia ( Venezuela ),
6576-702: The Gallo-Italic linguistic panorama of Northern Italy , the Italo-Dalmatian , Neapolitan and its related dialects were largely unaffected by the Franco- Occitan influences introduced to Italy mainly by bards from France during the Middle Ages, but after the Norman conquest of southern Italy , Sicily became the first Italian land to adopt Occitan lyric moods (and words) in poetry. Even in
6713-674: The Kingdom of Italy in the Dodecanese ). Italian is widely spoken in Malta , where nearly two-thirds of the population can speak it fluently (see Maltese Italian ). Italian served as Malta's official language until 1934, when it was abolished by the British colonial administration amid strong local opposition. Italian language in Slovenia is an officially recognized minority language in
6850-773: The Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia ), although the masses kept speaking primarily their local vernaculars. Italian was also one of the many recognised languages in the Austro-Hungarian Empire . Italy has always had a distinctive dialect for each city because the cities, until recently, were thought of as city-states . Those dialects now have considerable variety . As Tuscan-derived Italian came to be used throughout Italy, features of local speech were naturally adopted, producing various versions of Regional Italian . The most characteristic differences, for instance, between Roman Italian and Milanese Italian are syntactic gemination of initial consonants in some contexts and
6987-1033: The Middle Ages , the established written language in Europe was Latin, although the great majority of people were illiterate, and only few were well versed in the language. In the Italian Peninsula , as in most of Europe, most would instead speak a local vernacular. These dialects, as they are commonly referred to, evolved from Vulgar Latin over the course of centuries, unaffected by formal standards and teachings. They are not in any sense "dialects" of standard Italian, which itself started off as one of these local tongues, but sister languages of Italian. Mutual intelligibility with Italian varies widely, as it does with Romance languages in general. The Romance languages of Italy can differ greatly from Italian at all levels ( phonology , morphology , syntax , lexicon , pragmatics ) and are classified typologically as distinct languages. The standard Italian language has
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#17327656004777124-517: The Papacy or Holy Roman Emperor either to share in or to control the economic boom that was taking place in the leading cities of northern Italy during this time. The division between Guelphs and Ghibellines was especially important in Florence, although the two sides frequently rebelled against each other and took power in many of the other northern Italian cities as well. Essentially the two sides were now fighting either against German influence (in
7261-554: The Placiti Cassinesi from the province of Benevento that date from 960 to 963, although the Veronese Riddle , probably from the 8th or early 9th century, contains a late form of Vulgar Latin that can be seen as a very early sample of a vernacular dialect of Italy. The Commodilla catacomb inscription is also a similar case. The Italian language has progressed through a long and slow process, which started after
7398-528: The Western Roman Empire's fall in the 5th century. The language that came to be thought of as Italian developed in central Tuscany and was first formalized in the early 14th century through the works of Tuscan writer Dante Alighieri , written in his native Florentine . Dante's epic poems, known collectively as the Commedia , to which another Tuscan poet Giovanni Boccaccio later affixed
7535-532: The 111 Italian lecturer sections belonging to foreign schools where Italian is taught as a language of culture. As of 2022, Australia had the highest number of students learning Italian in the world. This occurred because of support by the Italian community in Australia and the Italian Government and also because of successful educational reform efforts led by local governments in Australia. From
7672-510: The 12th and 13th centuries. (Many of its poets can be found here in this list of troubadours and trobairitz .) Second, there was the poetry of the Sicilian School , which was a small community of Sicilian, and to a lesser extent, mainland Italian poets gathered around Frederick II , most of them belonging to his court, the Magna Curia. Headed by Giacomo da Lentini , they produced more than 300 poems of courtly love between 1230 and 1266,
7809-510: The 13th century in the form of various religious texts and poetry. Although these are the first written records of Italian varieties separate from Latin, the spoken language had probably diverged long before the first written records appeared since those who were literate generally wrote in Latin even if they spoke other Romance varieties in person. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the use of Standard Italian became increasingly widespread and
7946-562: The 1970s. It is official both on the national level and on regional level in two cantons : Ticino and Grisons . In the latter canton, however, it is only spoken by a small minority, in the Italian Grisons . Ticino, which includes Lugano , the largest Italian-speaking city outside Italy, is the only canton where Italian is predominant. Italian is also used in administration and official documents in Vatican City . Italian
8083-417: The Italian dialects has declined in the modern era , as Italy unified under Standard Italian and continues to do so aided by mass media from newspapers to radio to television, diglossia is still frequently encountered in Italy and triglossia is not uncommon in emigrant communities among older speakers. Both situations normally involve some degree of code-switching and code-mixing . Notes: Italian has
8220-489: The Italian language into a lingua franca used not only among clerks, nobility, and functionaries in the Italian courts but also by the bourgeoisie . Italian literature's first modern novel, I promessi sposi ( The Betrothed ) by Alessandro Manzoni , further defined the standard by "rinsing" his Milanese "in the waters of the Arno " ( Florence 's river), as he states in the preface to his 1840 edition. After unification,
8357-692: The Italian language, Guido's style has influenced all those who, like cardinal Pietro Bembo , helped turn the volgare illustre into today's Italian language . Cavalcanti was to become a strong influence on a number of writers associated with the development of Modernist poetry in English . This influence can be traced back to the appearance, in 1861, of Dante Gabriel Rossetti 's The Early Italian Poets , which featured translations of works by both Cavalcanti and Dante. The young Ezra Pound admired Rossetti and knew his Italian translations well, quoting extensively from them in his 1910 book The Spirit of Romance . In 1912, Pound published his own translations under
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#17327656004778494-482: The Meadow), "Biltà di donna" (A Woman's Beauty), Chi è questa che vèn (Who's This Lady That Comes My Way), "Li mie' foll'occhi" (My Crazy Eyes), "L'anima Mia" (My Soul), "Guido Orlandi", "Da più a uno" (From Many to One), "In un boschetto" (In A Grove), "Per ch'io no spero" (Because I Do Not Hope), "Voi che per gli occhi mi passaste il core" (see below), and "Donna me prega" (A Lady Asks Me), a masterpiece of lyric verse and
8631-556: The Mediterranean. The increasing political and cultural relevance of Florence during the periods of the rise of the Medici Bank , humanism , and the Renaissance made its dialect, or rather a refined version of it, a standard in the arts. The Renaissance era, known as il Rinascimento in Italian, was seen as a time of rebirth, which is the literal meaning of both renaissance (from French) and rinascimento (Italian). During this time, long-existing beliefs stemming from
8768-459: The Renaissance in Italy wrote, "It was not the revival of antiquity alone, but its union with the genius of the Italian people which achieved the conquest of the western world." In sum, Cavalcanti lived during and helped shape this time of great innovation that was spurred on by a desire to explore, create and experiment with new things. Cavalcanti was the son of Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti ,
8905-473: The Tuscan poets before them). Sometime in his twenties, Dante decided to try to write love poetry that was less centered on the self and more aimed at love itself. He intended to elevate courtly love poetry, many of its tropes and its language, into sacred love poetry. Beatrice for Dante was the embodiment of this kind of love—transparent to the Absolute, inspiring the integration of desire aroused by beauty with
9042-423: The appearance of Love—the medieval and Renaissance view of Love as Cupid matured into a grown man—in the guise of death, as if Guido is indeed on the verge of leaving this world. Love then warns him not to send this poem to Dante, who is not ready to deal with Guido's condition, given the depth of friendship Dante feels for him. Love also acknowledges that what he makes humanity suffer is "unjust," In sum, because of
9179-430: The beauty and grace of my Lady for her gentle heart which renders unworthy he who looks at her so she is wiser than anyone as the heavens are greater than the earth so to such a similar nature, goodness delays not. In this simple, but beautiful sonnet, we have, then, both something emblematic of the best poetry of the Dolce stil novo , while at the same an example of Cavalcanti's poetic idiom that
9316-444: The case of Northern Italian languages, however, scholars are careful not to overstate the effects of outsiders on the natural indigenous developments of the languages. The economic might and relatively advanced development of Tuscany at the time ( Late Middle Ages ) gave its language weight, although Venetian remained widespread in medieval Italian commercial life, and Ligurian (or Genoese) remained in use in maritime trade alongside
9453-701: The case of the Guelphs), or against the temporal power of the Pope (in the case of the Ghibellines). In Florence and elsewhere the Guelphs usually included merchants and burghers, while the Ghibellines tended to be noblemen. Towards the end of the 13th century, the Guelphs had secured their control of Florence through their multiple victories over the Ghibellines, including the battle at Benevento in 1266, and at Campaldino and Caprona in 1289. In 1267, as part of
9590-653: The colonial period. In the early 19th century, Eritrea was the country with the highest number of Italians abroad, and the Italian Eritreans grew from 4,000 during World War I to nearly 100,000 at the beginning of World War II. In Asmara there are two Italian schools, the Italian School of Asmara (Italian primary school with a Montessori department) and the Liceo Sperimentale "G. Marconi" (Italian international senior high school). Italian
9727-564: The context of his life. The chapters containing poems consist of three parts: the semi-autobiographical narrative, the lyric that resulted from those circumstances, and brief structural outline of the lyric. The poems present a frame story , recounting Dante's love of Beatrice from his first sight of her (when both were nine years old) all the way to his mourning after her death, and his determination to write of her "that which has never been written of any woman." Each separate section of commentary further refines Dante's concept of romantic love as
9864-573: The country (some 0.42% of the total population). Their numbers dropped dramatically after World War II following the Istrian–Dalmatian exodus , which caused the emigration of between 230,000 and 350,000 Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians. Italian was the official language of the Republic of Ragusa from 1492 to 1807. It formerly had official status in Albania due to the annexation of
10001-518: The country to the Kingdom of Italy (1939–1943). Albania has a large population of non-native speakers, with over half of the population having some knowledge of the Italian language. The Albanian government has pushed to make Italian a compulsory second language in schools. The Italian language is well-known and studied in Albania, due to its historical ties and geographical proximity to Italy and to
10138-446: The country. A few hundred Italian settlers returned to Libya in the 2000s. Italian was the official language of Eritrea during Italian colonisation . Italian is today used in commerce, and it is still spoken especially among elders; besides that, Italian words are incorporated as loan words in the main language spoken in the country (Tigrinya). The capital city of Eritrea, Asmara , still has several Italian schools, established during
10275-579: The country. The official census, carried out in 2002, reported 2,258 ethnic Italians ( Istrian Italians ) in Slovenia (0.11% of the total population). Italian language in Croatia is an official minority language in the country, with many schools and public announcements published in both languages. The 2001 census in Croatia reported 19,636 ethnic Italians (Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians ) in
10412-464: The design and fashion industries, in some sports such as football and especially in culinary terms. In Italy, almost all the other languages spoken as the vernacular —other than standard Italian and some languages spoken among immigrant communities—are often called " Italian dialects ", a label that can be very misleading if it is understood to mean "dialects of Italian". The Romance dialects of Italy are local evolutions of spoken Latin that pre-date
10549-588: The diffusion of Italian television in the country. Due to heavy Italian influence during the Italian colonial period , Italian is still understood by some in former colonies such as Libya. Although it was the primary language in Libya since colonial rule , Italian greatly declined under the rule of Muammar Gaddafi , who expelled the Italian Libyan population and made Arabic the sole official language of
10686-478: The educated gentlemen was to make the Grand Tour , visiting Italy to see its great historical monuments and works of art. It was expected that the visitor would learn at least some Italian, understood as language based on Florentine. In England, while the classical languages Latin and Greek were the first to be learned, Italian became the second most common modern language after French, a position it held until
10823-406: The emotions of courtly love and how they develop, how they are expressed in verse, how they reveal the permanent intellectual truths of the divinely created world and how love can confer blessing on the soul and bring it closer to God. The names of the people in the poem, including Beatrice herself, are employed without use of surnames or any details that would assist readers to identify them among
10960-409: The establishment of Italian, and as such are sister languages to the Tuscan that was the historical source of Italian. They can be quite different from Italian and from each other, with some belonging to different linguistic branches of Romance. The only exceptions to this are twelve groups considered " historical language minorities ", which are officially recognized as distinct minority languages by
11097-466: The excellence of the vernacular, namely Guido, Lapo and another [i.e: Dante himself], all from Florence, and Cino da Pistoia". Scholars have commented on the Dolce stil novo with Dante as probably the most spiritual and platonic in his portrayal of Beatrice ( Vita Nuova ), but Cino da Pistoia is able to write poetry in which "there is a remarkable psychological interest in love, a more tangible presence of
11234-529: The experiment being continued after Frederick's death by his son, Manfredi. This school included Enzio , king of Sardinia, Pier delle Vigne , Inghilfredi , Stefano Protonotaro , Guido and Odo delle Colonne , Rinaldo d'Aquino , Giacomino Pugliese , Arrigo Testa , Mazzeo Ricco , Perceval Doria , and Frederick II himself. The poets of Stilnovismo included the early forerunner Guido Guinizelli , Guido Cavalcanti and Dante , plus Cino da Pistoia , Lapo Gianni , Gianni Alfani, and Dino Frescobaldi. Far from being
11371-433: The fact that it was linguistically an intermediate between the northern and the southern Italian dialects. Thus the dialect of Florence became the basis for what would become the official language of Italy. Italian was progressively made an official language of most of the Italian states predating unification, slowly replacing Latin, even when ruled by foreign powers (such as Spain in the Kingdom of Naples , or Austria in
11508-476: The free website and application Duolingo has 4.94 million English speakers learning the Italian language. According to the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs , every year there are more than 200,000 foreign students who study the Italian language; they are distributed among the 90 Institutes of Italian Culture that are located around the world, in the 179 Italian schools located abroad, or in
11645-480: The gentler sex, as personified by Beatrice whose soul becomes Dante's guide to Paradise . Guido's controversial personality and beliefs attracted the interest of Boccaccio , who made him one of the most famous heretical characters in his Decameron , helping popularise the belief about his atheism . Cavalcanti would be studied with perhaps more interest during the Renaissance , by such scholars as Luigi Pulci and Pico della Mirandola . By passing to Dante's study of
11782-411: The heart and mind of the poet in original verse that utilized the sonnet , ballata and canzone forms of poetry. Cavalcanti was a central part of this accomplishment. In one of his earlier poems, Guido transforms the imagery of fin'amor , with its beautiful ladies and armed knights, into an idea that love has a philosophical component related to human intelligence and moral purity by equating it with
11919-495: The initial step in a spiritual development that results in the capacity for divine love (see courtly love ). Dante's unusual approach to his piece — drawing upon personal events and experience, addressing the readers, and writing in Italian rather than Latin — marked a turning point in European poetry, when many writers abandoned highly stylized forms of writing for a simpler style. Dante wanted to collect and publish
12056-413: The intellectual, which distinguished humans from the two lower forms. Averroës maintained that the proper goal of humanity was the cultivation of the intellect according to reason. Further, Averroës maintained that the intellect was part of a universal consciousness that came into the body at birth and returned to the universal consciousness after death. As such, it meant there was no afterlife, and, as well,
12193-489: The island of Corsica (but not in the neighbouring Sardinia , which on the contrary underwent Italianization well into the late 18th century, under Savoyard sway: the island's linguistic composition, roofed by the prestige of Spanish among the Sardinians , would therein make for a rather slow process of assimilation to the Italian cultural sphere ). The rediscovery of Dante's De vulgari eloquentia , as well as
12330-640: The language to that continent. According to some sources, Italian is the second most spoken language in Argentina after the official language of Spanish, although its number of speakers, mainly of the older generation, is decreasing. Italian bilingual speakers can be found scattered across the Southeast of Brazil as well as in the South. In Venezuela , Italian is the most spoken language after Spanish and Portuguese, with around 200,000 speakers. In Uruguay , people who speak Italian as their home language are 1.1% of
12467-498: The late 18th century when it tended to be replaced by German. John Milton , for instance, wrote some of his early poetry in Italian. Within the Catholic Church , Italian is known by a large part of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and is used in substitution for Latin in some official documents. Italian loanwords continue to be used in most languages in matters of art and music (especially classical music including opera), in
12604-534: The late 19th to the mid-20th century, millions of Italians settled in Argentina, Uruguay, Southern Brazil and Venezuela, as well as in Canada and the United States, where they formed a physical and cultural presence. In some cases, colonies were established where variants of regional languages of Italy were used, and some continue to use this regional language. Examples are Rio Grande do Sul , Brazil, where Talian
12741-567: The law. On the other hand, Corsican (a language spoken on the French island of Corsica ) is closely related to medieval Tuscan , from which Standard Italian derives and evolved. The differences in the evolution of Latin in the different regions of Italy can be attributed to the natural changes that all languages in regular use are subject to, and to some extent to the presence of three other types of languages: substrata, superstrata, and adstrata . The most prevalent were substrata (the language of
12878-446: The longing of the soul for divine splendor. The first full translation into English was published by Joseph Garrow in 1846. La Vita Nuova contains 42 brief chapters (31 for Guglielmo Gorni) with commentaries on 25 sonnets , one ballata , and four canzoni ; one canzone is left unfinished, interrupted by the death of Beatrice Portinari , Dante's lifelong love. Dante's two-part commentaries explain each poem, placing them within
13015-506: The love he has felt in life, Guido is ruined, and because of the depth of friendship Dante holds for him, Guido fears he may be ruined as well, seeing him in such a state. Through his study of Averroës , and perhaps due to his native temperament, Cavalcanti held the pessimistic view that humans were limited in the sort of ultimate attainment they could achieve. The intellect could never be brought into harmony based on reason with bodily desires. The crowning achievement of Guido's poetic career
13152-473: The lyrics dealing with his love for Beatrice, explaining the autobiographical context of its composition and pointing out the expository structure of each lyric as an aid to careful reading. The result is an important early example of emotional autobiography, as was Saint Augustine 's Confessions in the 5th century. However, like all medieval literature, it is far removed from the modern autobiographical impulse. Dante and his audience were also interested in
13289-462: The many people of Florence. Only the name "Beatrice" is used, because that was both her actual name and her symbolic name as the conferrer of blessing. Ultimately the names and people work as metaphors. In chapter XXIV, "I Felt My Heart Awaken" ("Io mi senti' svegliar dentro a lo core" , also translated as "I Felt a Loving Spirit Suddenly"), Dante recounts a meeting with Love, who asks the poet to do his best to honour her. Io mi senti' svegliar dentro
13426-566: The most conservative Romance languages). Spoken by about 85 million people, including 67 million native speakers (2024), Italian is an official language in Italy , San Marino , Switzerland ( Ticino and the Grisons ), Corsica , and Vatican City . It has official minority status in Croatia , Slovenian Istria , and the municipalities of Santa Tereza and Encantado in Brazil . Italian
13563-514: The movement called dolce stil novo . The prose creates the illusion of narrative continuity between the poems; it is Dante's way of reconstructing himself and his art in terms of his evolving sense of the limitations of courtly love (the system of ritualized love and art that Dante and his poet-friends inherited from the Provençal poets, the Sicilian poets of the court of Frederick II , and
13700-412: The nation was unified in 1861. Italian is a Romance language , a descendant of Vulgar Latin (colloquial spoken Latin). Standard Italian is based on Tuscan , especially its Florentine dialect , and is, therefore, an Italo-Dalmatian language , a classification that includes most other central and southern Italian languages and the extinct Dalmatian . According to Ethnologue , lexical similarity
13837-408: The number of printing presses in Italy grew rapidly and by the year 1500 reached a total of 56, the biggest number of printing presses in all of Europe. This enabled the production of more pieces of literature at a lower cost and Italian, as the dominant language, spread. Italian became the language used in the courts of every state in the Italian Peninsula , as well as the prestige variety used on
13974-418: The object has not the potential to accomplish it. When a woman's look meets the eyes of a man, the potential for love grows into passion, a spirit or fluid that possesses all his faculties. Such a passion needs more and more love to satisfy its ever-growing appetite, until (when desire outstrips human limits) he is led to insanity and death. This highly philosophical canzone was extremely influential, and it
14111-590: The official language of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta . Italian has a significant use in musical terminology and opera with numerous Italian words referring to music that have become international terms taken into various languages worldwide. Almost all native Italian words end with vowels , and the language has a 7-vowel sound system ('e' and 'o' have mid-low and mid-high sounds). Italian has contrast between short and long consonants and gemination (doubling) of consonants. During
14248-630: The openness of vowels, the length of the consonants, and influence of the local language (for example, in informal situations andà , annà and nare replace the standard Italian andare in the area of Tuscany, Rome and Venice respectively for the infinitive "to go"). There is no definitive date when the various Italian variants of Latin—including varieties that contributed to modern Standard Italian—began to be distinct enough from Latin to be considered separate languages. One criterion for determining that two language variants are to be considered separate languages rather than variants of
14385-584: The original inhabitants), as the Italian dialects were most probably simply Latin as spoken by native cultural groups. Superstrata and adstrata were both less important. Foreign conquerors of Italy that dominated different regions at different times left behind little to no influence on the dialects. Foreign cultures with which Italy engaged in peaceful relations with, such as trade, had no significant influence either. Throughout Italy, regional varieties of Standard Italian, called Regional Italian , are spoken. Regional differences can be recognized by various factors:
14522-458: The other hand, almost everyone still speaks the Corsican idiom , which, due to its linguistic proximity to the Italian standard language, appears both linguistically as an Italian dialect and therefore as a carrier of Italian culture, despite the French government's decades-long efforts to cut Corsica off from the Italian motherland. Italian was the official language in Monaco until 1860, when it
14659-614: The piece. Italian language Italian ( italiano , pronounced [itaˈljaːno] , or lingua italiana , pronounced [ˈliŋɡwa itaˈljaːna] ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire . Italian is the least divergent language from Latin , together with Sardinian (meaning that Italian and Sardinian are
14796-406: The population of Italy could speak Standard Italian. He reports that in 1951 that percentage had risen to 87%. The ability to speak Italian did not necessarily mean it was in everyday use, and most people (63.5%) still usually spoke their native dialects. In addition, other factors such as mass emigration, industrialization, and urbanization, and internal migrations after World War II , contributed to
14933-469: The proliferation of Standard Italian. The Italians who emigrated during the Italian diaspora beginning in 1861 were often of the uneducated lower class, and thus the emigration had the effect of increasing the percentage of literates, who often knew and understood the importance of Standard Italian, back home in Italy. A large percentage of those who had emigrated also eventually returned to Italy, often more educated than when they had left. Although use of
15070-528: The pronunciation of stressed "e", and of "s" between vowels in many words: e.g. va bene "all right" is pronounced [vabˈbɛːne] by a Roman (and by any standard Italian speaker), [vaˈbeːne] by a Milanese (and by any speaker whose native dialect lies to the north of the La Spezia–Rimini Line ); a casa "at home" is [akˈkaːsa] for Roman, [akˈkaːsa] or [akˈkaːza] for standard, [aˈkaːza] for Milanese and generally northern. In contrast to
15207-415: The publication of Agnolo Monosini 's Latin tome Floris italicae linguae libri novem in 1604 followed by the first Italian dictionary in 1612. An important event that helped the diffusion of Italian was the conquest and occupation of Italy by Napoleon in the early 19th century (who was himself of Italian-Corsican descent). This conquest propelled the unification of Italy some decades after and pushed
15344-487: The referendum that allowed France to annex Savoy and Nice, and a group of his followers (among the Italian Savoyards ) took refuge in Italy in the following years. Corsica passed from the Republic of Genoa to France in 1769 after the Treaty of Versailles . Italian was the official language of Corsica until 1859. Giuseppe Garibaldi called for the inclusion of the " Corsican Italians " within Italy when Rome
15481-587: The souls of heretics. They are condemned in the sixth circle of Hell, trapped inside burning tombs. Guido's father, Cavalcante de’ Cavalcanti , is among these heretics, and proceeds to ask Dante about his son. Dante refers to Guido in the past tense, thus leading Cavalcante to believe that Guido is dead. Dante, later feeling guilty, asks Farinata degli Uberti , another heretic, to inform Cavalcante that Guido remains alive. Guido's name arrives once more in Purgatory XI, mentioned by Oderisi da Gubbio to Dante on
15618-451: The subject of desire, demonstrated in Donna me prega with images of wrath and death, have been proposed as inspiration for Dante's contrapasso observed in Inferno V, where the carnal sinners are tossed uncontrollably by the winds of a never-ending storm. The difference between the two literary works, in their contexts, is in their treatment of love, since Guido believed that all love led to
15755-473: The teachings of the Roman Catholic Church began to be understood from new perspectives as humanists —individuals who placed emphasis on the human body and its full potential—began to shift focus from the church to human beings themselves. The continual advancements in technology play a crucial role in the diffusion of languages. After the invention of the printing press in the 15th century,
15892-622: The television show Star Trek: Voyager in the episode " Latent Image " (1999). The Doctor is concerned with a moral situation and Captain Janeway reads this book and leaves the Doctor to discover the poem. The author Allegra Goodman wrote a short story entitled "La Vita Nuova", published in the May 3, 2010 issue of The New Yorker , in which Dante's words (in English) are interspersed throughout
16029-502: The terrace of pride. The former employs the fame of Guido Guinizelli , soon overpowered by that of Guido Cavalcanti, to justify the fleeting nature of fame in their larger discussion of vanity. Through Oderisi's words, Dante further asserts himself, as a poet, to be the next in line, replacing Guido in terms of public interest. It has been suggested that Guido Cavalcanti's presence in Dante's Divine Comedy permeates further than Dante's two mentions of him by name. His cynical beliefs towards
16166-409: The text displays the influence of Christianity in promulgating "the distinctly feminine virtues in place of the sterner ideals of antiquity." The Henry Holiday painting Dante and Beatrice (1883) is inspired by La Vita Nuova , as was Dante Gabriel Rossetti 's The Salutation of Beatrice (1859). Rossetti translated the work into English in 1848 and used the character name Monna Vanna from it as
16303-460: The thing that gives an individual his or her identity was not the intellect, but the sensitive faculty, the appetites and desires of the body. Hence, the goal for Averroës and Cavalcanti was the perfection of the sensitive capacity through reason in order to achieve a balance between the body's physical desires and the intellect. This balance was considered the buon perfetto , the "good perfection." Guido thought this balance could not be achieved, which
16440-469: The title Divina , were read throughout the peninsula and his written dialect became the "canonical standard" that all educated Italians could understand. Dante is still credited with standardizing the Italian language. In addition to the widespread exposure gained through literature, the Florentine dialect also gained prestige due to the political and cultural significance of Florence at the time and
16577-455: The title The Sonnets and Ballate of Guido Cavalcanti and in 1932, he published the Italian poet's works as Rime . A reworked translation of Donna me prega formed the bulk of Canto XXXVI in Pound's long poem The Cantos . Pound's main focus was on Cavalcanti's philosophy of love and light, which he viewed as a continuing expression of a pagan , neo-platonic tradition stretching back through
16714-542: The total population of the country. In Australia, Italian is the second most spoken foreign language after Chinese, with 1.4% of the population speaking it as their home language. The main Italian-language newspapers published outside Italy are the L'Osservatore Romano ( Vatican City ), the L'Informazione di San Marino ( San Marino ), the Corriere del Ticino and the laRegione Ticino ( Switzerland ),
16851-493: The tradition of love poetry. As such, Guido's doctrine draws on the greatest medieval poets or scholars, such as Chrétien de Troyes and Brunetto Latini . There are several hints to the Roman de la Rose , then considered the "Bible" of courtly love. For example, in the famous line "a man who does not experience it [love] cannot picture it", a common axiom variously quoted from the troubadours to Dante's Vita Nuova . "Donna me prega",
16988-489: The way it came from, I saw Lady Joan and Lady Bice coming towards the spot I was, one wonder past another wonder. And as my mind keeps telling me, Love said to me: "She is Spring who springs first, and that bears the name Love, who resembles me." Dante does not name himself in La Vita Nuova . He refers to Guido Cavalcanti as "the first of my friends", to his own sister as "a young and noble lady... who
17125-535: The woman, who loses the abstract aura of Guinizzelli and Guido's verse" (Giudice-Bruni), and Guido Cavalcanti interprets love as a source of torment and despair in the surrendering of self to the beloved. An example in kind, and one of Guido's most widely read lyrics is a sonnet entitled Voi che per gli occhi mi passaste il core (Transl. You, Whose Look Pierced through My Heart ), dedicated, to his beloved Monna (lady) Vanna : Voi che per gli occhi mi passaste 'l core e destaste la mente che dormìa, guardate
17262-561: Was also introduced to Somalia through colonialism and was the sole official language of administration and education during the colonial period but fell out of use after government, educational and economic infrastructure were destroyed in the Somali Civil War . Italian is also spoken by large immigrant and expatriate communities in the Americas and Australia. Although over 17 million Americans are of Italian descent , only
17399-525: Was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy , but King Victor Emmanuel II did not agree to it. Italian is generally understood in Corsica by the population resident therein who speak Corsican , which is an Italo-Romance idiom similar to Tuscan. Francization occurred in Nice case, and caused a near-disappearance of the Italian language as many of the Italian speakers in these areas migrated to Italy. In Corsica, on
17536-505: Was born in Florence at a time when the comune was beginning its economic, political, intellectual and artistic ascendancy as one of the leading cities of the Renaissance . The disunited Italian peninsula was dominated by a political particularism that pitted city-states against one another, often with this factionalism contributing to the fractious and sometimes violent political environments of each comune . The domination of medieval religious interpretations of reality, morality and society
17673-521: Was challenged by the rise of a new urban culture across Europe that gradually supplanted rural, local, ecclesiastical and feudal ways of thinking. There was an accompanying return to study, and to interpretation and emulation of the classics, known as a revival of antiquity. New secular and humanistic views laid the foundations for modern life in Western Civilization . As Jacob Burckhardt , Swiss historian and author of The Civilization of
17810-522: Was commented upon by authors including Dino del Garbo , pseudo-Giles, Giles of Rome , Marsilio Ficino , Pico della Mirandola , Iacopo Mini , and Fracesco de Vieri (see Enrico Fenzi, La canzone d'amore di Guido Cavalcanti e i suoi antichi commenti , Melangolo, 1999). While this has very little to do with modern psychology , Guido's philosophy of spiritelli was part of the guiding principles of Arabic medicine , considered very advanced in Dante's time. The merit of such philosophy in Cavalcanti's verse
17947-405: Was dead. Although there are many poems that exemplify Cavalcanti's poetic maturity, Certe mie rime a te mandar vogliendo is unparalleled in its originality, for here Guido adapts his medium of love to speak of his inner psychological state and the uncertainty of Dante's reaction in this example of occasional poetry . This is creativity at its highest, for Cavalcanti transforms the medium into
18084-720: Was divided into the Black Guelphs and the White Guelphs. The Blacks continued to support the Papacy, while the Whites were opposed to Papal influence. In June 1300, the Florentines had become tired of brawling between the Ghibellines and the Guelphs. A council of judges, Dante Alighieri amongst them, exiled the leaders of both factions and their accomplices, including Cavalcanti. He was sent to Sarzana, where, after only
18221-443: Was mirrored by a decline in the use of the dialects. An increase in literacy was one of the main driving factors (one can assume that only literates were capable of learning Standard Italian, whereas those who were illiterate had access only to their native dialect). The percentage of literates rose from 25% in 1861 to 60% in 1911, and then on to 78.1% in 1951. Tullio De Mauro , an Italian linguist, has asserted that in 1861 only 2.5% of
18358-675: Was politically torn by the struggle between the Guelphs and Ghibellines , factions supporting, respectively, the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor in central and northern Italy during the 12th and 13th centuries. Although the struggle for power between the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire had originally arisen with the Investiture Conflict of the 11th century, it was subsequently fed by a desire of either
18495-416: Was related to me by the closest consanguinity", to Beatrice's brother similarly as one who "was so linked in consanguinity to the glorious lady that no-one was closer to her". The reader is invited into the very emotional turmoil and lyrical struggle of the unnamed author's own mind and all the surrounding people in his story are seen in their relations to that mind's quest of encountering Love. La Vita Nuova
18632-658: Was replaced by the French. This was due to the annexation of the surrounding County of Nice to France following the Treaty of Turin (1860) . It formerly had official status in Montenegro (because of the Venetian Albania ), parts of Slovenia and Croatia (because of the Venetian Istria and Venetian Dalmatia ), parts of Greece (because of the Venetian rule in the Ionian Islands and by
18769-496: Was the poetry of the troubadour and trobairitz , who began the tradition of courtly love , known by its then contemporary term, as fin'amor in the ducal and princely courts of Aquitaine , Provence , Champagne and ducal Burgundy , at the end of the eleventh century. Based on the Occitan language of south France, this courtly poetry, which was a part of Occitan literature , spread throughout all European cultivated circles in
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