De vulgari eloquentia

De vulgari eloquentia (On Eloquence in the vernacular) is the title of an essay by Dante Alighieri, written in Latin and initially meant to consist of four books, but abandoned in the middle of the second. It was probably composed shortly after Dante went into exile; internal evidence points to a date between 1302 and 1305. The first book deals with the relationship between Latin and vernacular, and the search for an illustrious vernacular in the Italian area, while the second is an analysis of the structure of the "canto" or song (also spelled "canzone" in Italian), a literary genre. Latin essays were very popular in the Middle Ages, but Dante made some innovations in his work: firstly the topic, which is the vernacular, was an...