Storie e linguaggi

The paper focuses on the manuscript Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale “Vittorio Emanuele III”, Fondo Nazionale, ms. XIII C 34. Through an analysis of the artifact and of a number of vernacular poems added by previous owners it is possible to connect most of these rhymes to the court of Alberto III Pio.

The paper focuses on the analysis of 'conversare' and 'conversazione' in Medieval texts (in particular Dante’s and Petrarca’s works written in Latin and Vernacular) and in the major Renaissance treatises of the “behavioral conduct” (Cortegiano, Galateo, La civil conversazione, etc.). The second part examines the semantic evolution the two lexical units and the modern meaning that they acquired permanently in the grand siècle French into the set of texts from the so-called “civilization of the conversation”.

The aim of this article is to retrace “la questione della lingua” in the 16th century in order to suggest a different approach to, as well as another perspective on, this crucial period of the history of Italian literature and language.
Particular attention is given to those factors, which are usually considered marginal (book market, economic situation, religious influence, popular texts / works, and so on) in order to show how they interacted with the question of language during the 16th c. The main idea is that these very factors had a profound impact on Italian society and determined the socio-linguistic situation that ensued in the Italian peninsula.