Historical Foundation

Historical Foundation

Vernacular, an expression in the middle Ages and in Western Europe, indicated the language of the people greatly being diverted from classical Latin. This decrease in communications was caused by the fall of the ' Roman Empire. It must be premised that, in Roman times, as in medieval times, there has always been a slight distance between written and spoken language, which has given rise, in conjunction with the cultural differences between the various social classes (O'Mara & Williams, 1999).

From ' eighth century we have the first evidence of a language that differs markedly from the Latin: the first Italian vernacular writings have come down to us are the ' Riddle of Verona , written around the year 800 (which some scholars consider, however, still an example of vulgar Latin) and Placiti Cassino , the 960 or so. Dell ' 842 is instead the Oath of Strasbourg, in the vernacular French and German. In ' eleventh century the Italian vernacular (with significant differences in different regions) is in current use in documents of a legal, ecclesiastical and mercantile (Anthony, Mantello & Rigg, 2006).

As regards the conscious presence of a literary language with the ambition to be "Italian", and can produce mature texts we have to wait until the thirteenth century. Stephen Protonotaro in Messina and Vincent d'Alcamo in Palermo, who also produce outcomes strongly influenced by local dialects are the people who first encountered these people (Lockett, 2011).

In the first XV, however, there is a crisis of the vernacular, because of a negative judgment on the part of? Intellectual elite on the rhetorical and stylistic qualities of this language, you also see a rebirth of interest in the classics, that very few were still able to easily understand (O'Mara & Williams, 1999). Even lay people dedicated to research ...