Italy’s history is wonderfully complex and full of invasions
and domination's by every single other country/reign of the European continent.
In fact up until Italy became a united country, people living
in its very south (i.e., Sardinia, Puglia, Calabria, Campagna and Basilicata) were
very similar to the way the USA are organized today, meaning that every region
(like the ones I
just named) was like a State on its own, each had its own government and
– very differently from the USA – each region had its own language or slang,
all very influenced by the country they are (still today) by the nation/country each region was close
to geographically, i.e. the slang in Piemonte (main town Torino) spoke Italian but with a slang
very much influenced by the French language, my “mother town Verona had as
slang very much influenced by the German, in Sicily the influence was the
Greek, Sardinia island, Spanish and Venice (where
my mother was born and grew up) the influence used to be the
Croatian and the Turkish too.
So everyone can surely figure out that people from Torino
couldn’t really communicate with people who lived in Sicily, therefore well
before the heroism of G. Garibaldi (at least 5 more posts about him and his “1.000 or one thousand”) for Italy to be a real nation –
just like France or England – the must was that all the people who lived in the
“boot” could at least speak the same language, therefore be able to
understand each other…..Well here’s where Dante A. comes I place with his
Divine Comedy that not only provided the reason for every individual living in
the same geographical territory (the boot) to clearly communicate among each other AND
gave to Christianity the mold to adapt the entire religion exactly to what’s written in Dante’s Comedy (UNBELIAVABLE!!!), but –
in addition – gave to the Italian language “a veil of internationality”, of
course a fraction of what Latin – the language it most directly comes from –
was, BUT it’s sufficient to go to few South American countries (Argentina mainly) or very small “neighborhoods” in
larger US cities (i.e. NYC, L.A., Boston and SF O) to be able to hear few
people either speak Italian straight or speak English with the same accent I
still have (which still drives me nuts today!).
Then don’t even get me started with the influence of the Latin
language used by the Roman Empire, Spanish, English and German are among the
most notable examples….but that goes with the cultural/artistic and engineering/political
immense influence of that empire on the entire “occidental/western world of
today, so here – again – let’s just move on since the topic here is Dante and his
Comedy with their infinite influence to the world we live in today.
What I did to make this post interesting for those of you who
can’t speak nor understand Italian, I google searched all I could find either
in straight English or what can be found in Italian BUT with a translation in
English in some form.
Therefore enjoy my new post that given that’s based on Dante
A. hasn’t forced to research too much at all.
- https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-motivated-dante-write-divine-comedy-53413
- https://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item100467.html
- http://renaissanceprojectgrct.weebly.com/dante-alighieri.html
And this is my former companion in life's trip
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