Erminia: Not that it matters, but my teachers said that Manzoni influenced
"the
acceptance of the Florentine dialect as normative," not that his style was
the model.
But there's something truly disturbing here. Florentine dialect in Dante's,
or Manzoni's, or our own time was not inherently superior to all of Italy's
other dialects, as you seem to feel, nor was it uniquely useful for
expression, it was merely more fortunate. I can certainly understand loving
one's own dialect. That doesn't make it better.
I remember that Dante toyed with writing the Commedia in Provencal. Had he
done so Florentine might have become the normative dialect of Italian or
not. Some dialect or other would have, but not until the movement for
unification required that there be one.
Mark
At 12:38 AM 5/24/2001 +0100, you wrote:
>I was taught your version of the history of the language (with the
>>difference that at the University of Toronto they told me that the
>>acceptance of the Florentine dialect as normative for Italian was due to
>>the influence of I Promessi Sposi), but I'm curious what evidence there is
>>for the stability of the pronunciation of vowels, given that we have no
>>voice recordings from Dante's time.
>
>
>
>....Toronto is a wonderful university but literary informations and/or
>notions sometimes travel in an odd way:
>the authentic story is this: When Alessandro Manzoni wrote his I Promessi
>Sposi, being "Lombardo" (from the region Lombardia where Milan is), and
>therefore talking a language affected by Austro-Hungaric influences, before
>publication, he more or less stated (exactly) this: "I shall go to clean my
>work in the waters of the Arno river...” , a quite striking statement that
>became legendary because Manzoni was such an intellectual and a master of
>style that this modest submissive attitude towards the classics has always
>been used by teachers in school to stimulate the students to do the same….
>
>Manzoni meant to say that he felt the need to refine his style on the model
>of the classics provided by the Florentine writers....
>
>Therefore, it is not I Promessi Sposi a model for Italian, but vice-versa
>it was the Florentine and Florentine writers the model for Manzoni's I
>Promessi Sposi.
>
>Now, I wonder who taught you this twisted information....
>
>: )
>
>
> (Ah, I have such a sore-throat tonight...I went for the third time to
>watch "Capitan Corelli's Mandolin " here in Oxford and I really fell in
>love with Nicolas Cage, cried and wanted to heal his wounds...)
>
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