Note 602 — Chapter XXVI · THE BEGINNINGS OF THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE

The date of the composition of the De Vulgari Eloquentia is unknown, but there are reasons for assigning the work to the same period in the author's life as the Convito. Like the Convito, it was left incomplete; four books were planned, but only the first and a portion of the second were written. In it an effort was made to establish the dominance of a perfect and imperial Italian language over all the dialects. The work itself was written in Latin, probably to command the attention of scholars whom Dante hoped to convert to the use of the vernacular.