Francesco Petrarch and the Evolution of the Italian Language and Analysis of Selected Tracks

Italian language is linguistically categorized as a Romance classical Language. It falls under the italic subgroup of the Indo-European family languages. Italian language is principally spoken in the Italian Peninsular, Corsica, Sicily, San Marino, Northern shores of Adriatic Sea, the South and North America, northern Sardinia, and southern Switzerland. Italian is now considered a language with many dialects. Just like most Romance languages, Italian is a direct off spring of the Latin language that was imposed by people who were under the dominance of Rome and spoken by the Romans. Italian language has a close resemblance to Latin more than other Roman languages. In Italy, there was struggle between Latin languages, which is a dead yet written language with other different living speech forms that were adopted from the Vulgar Latin language.

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The modern day Italian language has gone through various changes within a long time.  These changes have resulted to the development of a wide range of Italian dialects. Individuals speaking these multiple dialects all claim that they are the native speakers of the pure Italian language. This conflict comes as a result of the unclear and peculiar difficulty in generation and accepted form and theory of the Italian language evolution. This difference leads to cultural disunity in the whole of the Italian peninsula. Documents produced as early as the 1Oth century written in the Italian language depicts the different dialects of this language.  By the 13th century, Italian authors and writers wrote in their native dialects. This difference led to a number of schools of literature that were regionally competing with one another. In the 14th century, the Tuscan Italian dialect showed signs of being the most prominent one, due to its central location of Tuscany, Italy (Haar, 1987).

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Also, the prominence of this dialect was as a result of Florence being a prominent city for aggressive commerce. Furthermore, among all the dialects of the Italian language, the Tuscan dialect departs in a minimal level from classic Latin in terms of its phonology and morphology. Therefore, this dialect best harmonizes the traditions of the Italian language to the Latin culture. The culture in Florence, also known as the Florentine culture developed three commonly known literacy artists who best summarized the feelings and thoughts of the Italian culture. These were the writers of the early Renaissance and middle Ages period. They are Boccaccio, Dante, and Petrarch (Gardner, 1972).

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Francesco Petrarch also known Petrarch (1304-74) was born in Arezzo. His father was from Florence but lived in exile. Petrarch highly admired the Ancient Roman civilization, and he came to be known as the father of humanity in the early Renaissance period through his public of letters. Many people respected his philosophical works.  His works were translated from the Latin language to Vulgate. Petrarch mainly loved poetry, and he wrote poetry in the vulgar tongue that has made him be known to the present day. The poetry of the 16th and 15th century was mainly influenced by Petrarch’s Canzoniere (Bernardo, & Anthony 1983).

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Many of the writers in the 15th and 16th century were mainly engrossed with the question of language. This is seen in their effort to codify and establish linguistic norms of the Italian language. They wrote various persuasions to justify the standard Italian languages. They made an effort   of conferring with one another on vocabulary, syntax, and pronunciation based on the Tuscan dialect of the 14th century. This means that most agreed that the Tuscan Italian language is the classical and central Italian speech.  This classicism eventually made Italian to embrace the wider organic changes that were inevitable to the tongue of the speakers, thus making the language not to be considered as a dead language.

In 1583, the publications and dictionaries of Academia Della Crusca were founded. These materials were accepted as the authoritative language by official in presenting linguistic matters of the Italian language that comprises the living Tuscan usage and the classical purism. Pietro Bembo (1470-1547) a Venetian presented his proposals known as the prose Della vulgar lingua for a standardized style and language. Boccaccio and Petrarch were his main models. Therefore, considered as the modern classics. The Italian language literature was, therefore, modeled by the language spoken in Florence during the 15th century (O’Grady, 1986).

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It was up to the 19th century that the dialect spoken by the educated Tuscans spread to all people for it to be known as the language of a nation in 1861. There was the unification of Italy had a considerable impact on the nation’s political scene and resulted to a significant transformation in terms of cultural, economical, and social aspects. The nation of Italy proposed mandatory schooling. This increased the abandonment of the native language among learners in favor of the Tuscan dialect as a national language (Looney, 1996).

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Petrarch worked towards confront the conflict between worldly pleasures mainly in the enjoyment of fame and love and the stance of the Medieval religion. He is known as the precursor of humanism during the renaissance as shown in his works and deeds. Just like Dante, Petrarch used the Latin language to write his work. However, in some of his two substantial works; the II Canzoniere and the Triumphs, he wrote them in the vernacular language. Petrarch main aim in his work was to restore the glory of Rome. Since the Ancient times, Petrarch became the first poet to be crowned as poet laureate in the capital of the ancient Empire. Petrarch in his poetry writing often switched between the vernacular and humanist approaches of expression for much more creative and deeper purposes (Holmes, 2000).

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The literature and poetry of Italian vernacular developed from the remains of Latin language. Petrarch’s Conzoniere such as Rhymes 1976 and manuscript 1374 were works of significance   in the thirteen century. Patriarch alongside Boccaccio and Dante contributed to a vital linguistic success that has today been seen as extraordinary wonder and almost impossible literary phenomena (Norbrook and Woudhuysen, 1993).

Petrarch political ideas as well as other poems that he wrote in the 13th century became well known in terms of politics Petrarch is not categorized within the universal empire conception. His main interest is mainly within Italy as an ethnically and geographically different country   from the rest in the world. Petrarch culturally adopts the worldview of the medieval times within a new interest, and this makes him be seen as a precursor of humanism. Based on a psychological view point, Petrarch does not depict the self assurance style as seen in the work of Dante. Instead, he is more introspective, and he tends towards self-analysis to show his unhappiness and uncertainty. These are the main elements that present meaning and form the essence of his works especially poetry (Rebay, 1991).

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Petrarch’s poetic glory is mainly seen in his lyrics that he wrote in the vulgar tongue the Canzoniere or Rerum vulgarium fragmenta. These works comprise of 366 poems mostly the sonnets that provide a melancholic story concerning Laura his love. The main essence of Conzoniere is from the passion he had for Laura, considered being bringing an intense conflict between the spiritual love values and the worldly seductions.  One aspect that separated Petrarch from other earlier writers was on his approach of time and history. He saw that the ancient past had contributed to nothing at his time. He perceived time as being measurable and divisible into different sections.

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The aim of Petrarch was to capture the accomplishment of the ancient past. He named his effort the revival of and rebirth of the ancient philosophy and learning. Through his intense study of Latin language and the ancient Greek language, he became a renowned language scholar (Gary 1994). He managed to grasp the Latin vocabulary and grammar and worked towards understanding and improving language through his in-depth linguistic research.  He urged other poets to write only in Latin because the vernacular languages, such as English, Italian, and French were changing at a rapid pace. He though that for one to be considered as a good writer it is beneficial for him to use a timeless language. This is a language that is known by the educated members of the society and should be a dead language that undergoes no more changes. This makes the language be considered a privileged and respected language (Stortoni, and Lillie, 1997).

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Apart from love poetry that he wrote in the Italian language, Petrarch distinguished himself his odes.  These odes include Cola di Rienzi to Giacomo Colonna.  Through these works, he exhibited   his oratorical fervor and the perfect lustrous seen in his pleader’s eloquence.  This is an aspect that Petrarch had with minimal measured compared to the subjective passion.  The current literature nothing more noble and harmonious compared to the declamatory style   seen in the three patriotic figures. Their spirit defines the European history (Alistair 1997). The main works of Petrarch are divided into Letters without a Title, Correspondence in Old Age, Familiar Correspondence, and Divers Letters. All these works make up his autobiography known as the Epistle to Posterity that is already fragmented.

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