The Library Annex

For we hold that it is more truly human for a human being to be perceived that to perceive, as long as he or she is perceived and perceives as a human being.

Admittedly, I quote this statement out of the general context of Dante’s point. Yet I find that it illustrates my discord with de Vulgari Elogquentia.

True to his form, Dante wields an unyielding logic to articulate his arguments for the vernacular as the more noble written form than the Latin of his day. He defines the vernacular as language natural to humans and shared by incident of history and custom within a community. None had dared contest the lofty esteem of Latin which bolstered a scholar’s elite status. For this alone I would hail Dante as not only a defender of humanity but an immovable adherent to truth and reason.

He did not complete the project as outlined. He completes two of the intended four (at least) books for the project – the second book likely incomplete as well. Within the first book, the reader will find philosophical arguments for the merits of the vernacular language itself – a search for its natural essence. In the second book, Dante lectures the reader on its proper use within written forms of the day. For the student of poetry, these books provide a wealth of direction on executing their form to the highest level – along with a logical defense for the reasons he qualifies these forms as good, better and best.

I am not one of these students. I focused more intently on the form of his arguments and their social implication. Here inlies my discontent: while I find it commendable to defend the nobility of language used by the common human against the elitist idea of scholarly superiority, I cringe at the hierarchical implication of one social group meriting a superiority when compared to another based on their brand of that vernacular. Dante also concerns me in his lectures essentially transforming that vernacular into the rule-based artificial form of which he accuses Latin. I do not pass judgement on Dante the man as a modern-day bigot by any means. But I feel his Aristotilian-inspired logic leads him to these conclusions which modern readers, in particular, might find distasteful.

For those seeking literary criticism, I encourage reading de Vulgari Eloquentia but as a step along an evolutionary path which Dante had the reason and fortitude to take and defend. I find myself wondering what he might say as a thinker during these times; as a poet studying not only Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Statius and Lucan but Tolstoy, Hemingway, Austen, Dumas or Walker. If being perceived bolsters one’s humanity, perhaps we take Dante’s arguments a step further and presume that all human perspectives have merit and the literary forms accurately expressing those perspectives warrant nobility. From this supposition, the vernacular reaches new heights.