What an attitude!

How dare you, Nicholas Mann!
What vernacular was it that Petrarca wrote his poems in, is it too difficult to mention ITALIAN. Furthermore, since you seem to know about Boccaccio so much, him being a friend of Petrarca and all. In what language did they communicate in their letters, was it LATIN or the Vernacular?

What Nicholas Mann fails to mention

Before i attend to Mann’s article, it is imperative that if you decide to read the poetry in Italian, Please do not read it as if you were Tony Soprano. There are no badabings in here, pure beauty of poetry full of innocence and beauty. For the Spanish majors, I suggest you read it as if they were Neruda’s love poems. As for the French majors, make believe the words were coming out of George Pappadiux’s mouth in Scaramouche. The Italian involved is very early, you will note the use of “et”, “e” is used in the women’s poetry, because they were written later when Italian started to flourish. Italian was not spoken throught Italy till Mussolini made it mandatory, ala Franco with Spanish, both fascists.

As for Mann’s article, I did enjoyed most of it learning that humanism was a continuation of something that started in the 8th century. I disagree with the aspect that Petrarca, aside from being a great student of the classics, was not an innovator and relied on the efforts of earlier generations. This point of view is the same as if Galileo did’nt make an impact in the world of astronomy, he was only following a tradition of Copernicus.The improvement of the spyglass was the same as Petrarca improving the Latin texts.

Mann, also fails to mention the most significant figure of his day, in the 12th century Federico II, Holy Roman emperor, founder of the Sicilan Poetry School.In his court in Palermo, Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Arabic were all studied. It is here that the sonnet had it’s beginnings. Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio all recognized the school as legitimate.

What most French students don’t know

After Italy’s unification, Victor Emanuel, now king of Italy had a huge problem on his hands. Since Italy was priorly divided into City States, there were many languages spoken, from Sicilian, Sardinian, Italian, Catalan, Spanish, Austrian and French.
In the kings court (The House of Savoy), French was spoken. The decision was made that Italian was to become the national language, due to the poetry of Petrarca(the father of humanism)Dante and Tasso. Italian was the Florentine lingua franca. The rich literary tradition continued in Italy with Manzoni, Alfieri etc…

Does the Truth really matter?

A great class as usual, the fastest 3hours at UTA. I’m kind of late with my posting due to computer difficulties which hopefully will get resolved by the purchase of new computer. I’m kind of new to all this, so it will take a while before I can appreciate the new medium.
As a tool of learning, I think it will be great. At least I’ll get to know you better through the logs you post.
To summarize the class last night, I can think of few things which were not mentioned nor connected. As students, citizens, mothers, fathers etc. we owe it to ourselves to discover what the truth is. In this angry media environment we are subjected to 15 second soundbites as the truth to a story, an event … It is vital that we dig up sources and listen to as many diverse viewpoints as possible so we can create our own truth. Our opinion does count, as Dr Conway so eloquently stated, for that is the truth that we have created.
Ciao