Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) is best known for his epic poem la Divina Commedia (The Divine Comedy), written in what became standardized Italian. In Convivio and De Vulgari Eloquentia, Dante
treated tensions between the 'high' medieval language of Latin and the emerging 'lower' vernacular languages. Fortuna (philosophy of language, U. Guglielmo Marconi, Rome, Italy) introduces 15
symposium-based papers by international, multidisciplinary scholars who explore 'pluralingualism' in relation to Dante's innovative use of the vernacular--associated with the modern concepts of
individuality and subjectivity--in his poetical and theoretical writings. Several chapters are in untranslated Italian. This volume is a joint imprint of the Modern Humanities Research
Association and Maney Publishing. Distributed in North America by The David Brown Book Co. Annotation 穢2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
