Training the Reader: Dante and the Rise of Vernacular Literacy

Filippo Gianferrari
Literature
UC Santa Cruz

“Training the Reader: Dante and the Rise of Vernacular Literacy” examines the conflictual relationship between the rise of innovative vernacular cultures and literacy instruction at a time when literacy began to spread more widely in the West. In particular, the book shows how medieval Latin education influenced Dante Alighieri’s formulation of his innovative cultural project, which proved to be pivotal for the establishment of lay literature in the vernacular. Although Dante consistently engages in the education of lay, vernacular readers in his works, the poet’s role as a critic and reformer of contemporary education has never received sustained critical attention. “Training the Reader” argues that Dante engaged extensively with contemporary school texts throughout his career in order to revise popular understandings of poetry and its significance for nurturing ethical communities, as well as of the role of classical antiquity in Christian culture. The book, therefore, provides the first account of Dante’s contribution to the history of Western education. By focusing on the conflictual relationship between Latin literacy and vernacular cultures in late-medieval Europe, “Training the Reader” seeks to enrich and complicate current understandings of literacy and its role in nourishing individual and collective identities.