Glossary
The spoken local language; Dante's choice of Tuscan over Latin is treated as a democratizing move that makes the Divine Comedy accessible.
Topic brief
A Jiang Lens evidence brief for this topic, built from source tags, transcript matches, and linked source refs.
Vernacular
The spoken local language; Dante's choice of Tuscan over Latin is treated as a democratizing move that makes the Divine Comedy accessible.
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Key Notes
diagnosis
Dante made epic poetry democratic by writing La Commedia in Tuscan rather than Latin so ordinary people could access it.
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model
Creative civilizations require egalitarian knowledge flow: Greece's alphabet and the Renaissance's vernacular shift both democratize learning and expression.
diagnosis
He distinguishes The Commedia from the later title The Divine Comedy and says Dante's choice of comic-low vernacular Tuscan over high Latin turns Tuscan into the Italian peninsula's official literary language.
Timestamped Evidence
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"The Divine Comedy is the greatest literary masterpiece in human history. When Dante wrote it in about 1300, he called it La Commedia. And..."
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"...supported by the fact that they transitioned from latin to the vernacular the spoken language it was dante who allowed this transition to happen..."
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"to write in latin even though latin was the official language of the intellectual class in europe at the time he purposely chose to..."
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"...it deals with ordinary people and written in, in a common vernacular. At this, at this period in European history, this is the year..."
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"And this is the, of course, the local language of Florence, where he is from. And because The Commedia is so wonderfully produced, Tuscan..."
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"...go to church, the priest doesn't speak in your language, the vernacular. It speaks in Latin. And we don't really understand the language, okay?..."
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"was the language of the educated elite but in the vernacular in Tuscan so that ordinary people could access it. And by doing so..."
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"...And so he himself, translated the Bible from Latin into the vernacular, into English so that ordinary people can read it, okay?"
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Relevant Lectures And Readings
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Dante is not offering a church-approved tour of the afterlife.
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The Renaissance is not only money, trade, city-states, books, and paintings.
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Related Topics
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