Idealizado e composto nos primeiros anos do exílio, escrito em latim, o De vulgari eloquentia é concebido por Dante como um tratado de retórica e de poética que fixe as normas para o uso da língua vulgar, consagrando dessa forma sua legitimidade e seu valor como instrumento de expressão literária; nascido da necessidade de uma redefinição e uma reavaliação do próprio papel e significado de intelectual no âmbito da cultura italiana e européia, representa uma teorização retórico-literária baseada na sua própria experiência poética. A obra trata da origem da linguagem, da diferenciação dos vários idiomas conseqüente à confusão bíblica de Babel até a análise das línguas européias e dos vários dialetos italianos; uma vez identificada uma linguagem que atenda às exigências de uma língua literária verdadeiramente italiana, que supere os restritos limites municipais e regionais, isto é, um vulgar ilustre, cardinal, áulico e curial, Dante pretende estabelecer as regras dos gêneros e dos estilos com as quais esse vulgar possa ser explicitado, partindo da expressão mais alta, a canção: esse vasto projeto, porém, é interrompido repentinamente no décimo quarto capítulo do segundo livro. A leitura desse pequeno tratado torna possível, por um lado, uma melhor compreensão de muitos aspectos da pessoalidade e da obra dantesca, por outro, nos revela um precioso e original documento, extremamente interessante e importante para a história da lingüística românica e em particular da língua italiana. / Conceived and composed during the first years of his exile, written in Latin, De vulgari eloquentia was intended by Dante as a treatise on poetry and rhetoric that would set the rules for the use of the vulgar (i.e. commonly spoken by the people) language, establishing once and for all its value as a legitimate instrument of literary expression. The project was born out of the authors need to better define his own role and significance as an intellectual against the background of Italian and European culture, and its structure, although theoretical, is based on his own experience as a poet. The work deals with the origin of language, relating how many different idioms originated from Babels biblical confusion, then goes on to analyse the European languages and the various Italian dialects. Having identified what he considers to be an idiom which meets the requirements of a genuinely Italian literary language, free from any local or regional influence, a vulgar tongue, yet at the same time illustrious, cardinal, courtly and curial, Dante endeavours to define the rules that should apply to the various genres and styles, starting with the highest, the canzone (lyric poem); but this vast project comes to an abrupt end with the fourteenth chapter of the second book. This short treatise not only gives us a deeper understanding of Dantes work and personality, but is also a valuable and original document in its own right, of the utmost importance for the development and history of Romance linguistics and particularly of the Italian language.

Idealizado e composto nos primeiros anos do exílio, escrito em latim, o De vulgari eloquentia é concebido por Dante como um tratado de retórica e de poética que fixe as normas para o uso da língua vulgar, consagrando dessa forma sua legitimidade e seu valor como instrumento de expressão literária; nascido da necessidade de uma redefinição e uma reavaliação do próprio papel e significado de intelectual no âmbito da cultura italiana e européia, representa uma teorização retórico-literária baseada na sua própria experiência poética. A obra trata da origem da linguagem, da diferenciação dos vários idiomas conseqüente à confusão bíblica de Babel até a análise das línguas européias e dos vários dialetos italianos; uma vez identificada uma linguagem que atenda às exigências de uma língua literária verdadeiramente italiana, que supere os restritos limites municipais e regionais, isto é, um vulgar ilustre, cardinal, áulico e curial, Dante pretende estabelecer as regras dos gêneros e dos estilos com as quais esse vulgar possa ser explicitado, partindo da expressão mais alta, a canção: esse vasto projeto, porém, é interrompido repentinamente no décimo quarto capítulo do segundo livro. A leitura desse pequeno tratado torna possível, por um lado, uma melhor compreensão de muitos aspectos da pessoalidade e da obra dantesca, por outro, nos revela um precioso e original documento, extremamente interessante e importante para a história da lingüística românica e em particular da língua italiana. / Conceived and composed during the first years of his exile, written in Latin, De vulgari eloquentia was intended by Dante as a treatise on poetry and rhetoric that would set the rules for the use of the vulgar (i.e. commonly spoken by the people) language, establishing once and for all its value as a legitimate instrument of literary expression. The project was born out of the authors need to better define his own role and significance as an intellectual against the background of Italian and European culture, and its structure, although theoretical, is based on his own experience as a poet. The work deals with the origin of language, relating how many different idioms originated from Babels biblical confusion, then goes on to analyse the European languages and the various Italian dialects. Having identified what he considers to be an idiom which meets the requirements of a genuinely Italian literary language, free from any local or regional influence, a vulgar tongue, yet at the same time illustrious, cardinal, courtly and curial, Dante endeavours to define the rules that should apply to the various genres and styles, starting with the highest, the canzone (lyric poem); but this vast project comes to an abrupt end with the fourteenth chapter of the second book. This short treatise not only gives us a deeper understanding of Dantes work and personality, but is also a valuable and original document in its own right, of the utmost importance for the development and history of Romance linguistics and particularly of the Italian language.

More than any other period in the history of Western Europe, the Middle Ages were informed by translation. Practices of translation pervaded and underlay every aspect of medieval culture and politics. Yet, our understanding of how medieval writers thought about translation remains profoundly lacking. Most contemporary histories of translation theory choose to neglect the Middle Ages entirely, or to turn them into a footnote to Jerome’s distinction between “sense-for-sense” and “word-for-word” translation. Consuming the Word offers a new approach to medieval translation theory by considering texts, genres, and forms that have been largely neglected by scholars. While most research in this field has concentrated on texts that are regarded as explicitly “theoretical,” such as prefaces, commentaries, and treatises, Consuming the Word extends this investigation to the figurative language of “literary” works: poetical texts written primarily for moral and intellectual edification, aesthetic pleasure, and entertainment. By analyzing an archive of four 14th-century devotional poems composed in Spanish, Italian, and Middle English, this dissertation demonstrates that the writers of the Middle Ages articulated arguments on language, interpretation, and translation whose complexity and originality greatly surpassed the arid and derivative thinking about translation that is generally attributed to this period. Consuming the Word further demonstrates that, by the late 14th century, Christian devotional writers tended to deploy a particular figure to construct arguments on translation, interpretation, and vernacularity: the figure of gluttony. In the first chapter of this dissertation I examine the theories of language and translation conceived by Dante Alighieri in the first decades of the 14th century. I argue that the figures of consumption and gluttony that appear in the last section of Purgatorio are meant to convey a theoretical justification for his use of the vernacular, bringing to fruition several contradictory arguments that are only outlined in his two previous works on the subject: Convivio and De Vulgari Eloquentia. In the second chapter I concentrate on Cleanness, an anonymous and generally overlooked Middle English poem in which the poet ostensibly eulogizes the virtue of purity. By examining its figurative depictions of cooking and feasting, I contend that, rather than as a casual assortment of disparate scriptural episodes, Cleanness should be interpreted as a coherent argument in favor of vernacular translation. On the contrary, in the third chapter I show how a contemporary Middle English poem, the more famous Piers Plowman, relies on the personification of gluttony to disclose an almost antithetical argument. In Piers Plowman, vernacular translation is described as a losing bargain, morally and intellectually detrimental. In my fourth and final chapter, I turn to the celebrated Libro de Buen Amor, to analyze how its figures of eating and overeating convey an argument on the endlessness of all interpretation and on the importance of choice in the act of translating.