How Dante's Divine Comedy Shaped the Italian Language

In the early 14th century, Dante Alighieri's decision to compose the Divine Comedy in the Tuscan vernacular had a profound impact on the Italian language. His work, De vulgari eloquentia (1304-1305), aimed to create a unified literary language but failed to identify one among 14 dialects. The Divine Comedy demonstrated the vernacular's adaptability, introducing expressions such as 'senza infamia e senza lode.' Following Dante's passing in 1321, Giovanni Boccaccio advanced the Tuscan dialect through his work, the Decameron (1349-1353). In 1525, Cardinal Pietro Bembo's Prose della volgar lingua set the 14th-century Florentine as the literary benchmark. The Accademia della Crusca, established in 1583, released its dictionary in 1612. By 1861, only 2.5% of Italians spoke standard Italian, with unification realized by the mid-20th century.