APPENDIX I
On the History, Date, and Title of
The De Vulgari Eloquentia
For about 200 years after Dante's death this book seems to have attracted little attention. It is mentioned by Boccaccio (Vita di Dante, ed. Milanesi, p. 67) and G. Villani (ix. 136). Filippo Villani makes no allusion to it in his Life of Dante. Lionardo Bruni, in his Life of Dante (1436), after mentioning the De Monarchia which he describes as entirely without elegance of style, baldly states that 'he (Dante) wrote yet another book entitled De Vulgari Eloquentia'; which looks as if Lionardo had been acquainted with the former treatise, but not with the latter. Manetti, who died in 1459, and wrote his Life of Dante after Lionardo Bruni's had appeared, does not mention the book, while Giovanni Maria Filelfo (d. 1480) states indeed that the poet wrote a work De Vulgari Eloquentia but follows this up in characteristic fashion by a fictitious quotation of its first sentence.
It was reserved for Gian Giorgio Trissino (1478-1550) to bring Dante's fragmentary work into prominent notice. Trissino made a considerable figure in the literary world of the early sixteenth century. He was keenly interested in the language and literature of his native
