Western Civilization I / Unit 13 WC1 1218 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Dante's Comedy and the Making of Italian
Captions available
The idea
Dante, twelve sixty-five to thirteen twenty-one, anticipated the Renaissance, the anchor says. The Divine Comedy, in Tuscan with Virgil as guide through hell, purgatory and heaven, peopled the afterlife with ancients and contemporary Italians, and made Tuscan the basis of Italian.
In practice
Indifferent to the Middle Ages, full of Romans.
Where people slip
Vernacular, not Latin. The choice mattered as much as the poem.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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