In a Europe launched towards unity, the relationship between the languages ​​are intended to change. So it emerges the prestige (even international) that the language of Italy succeeded in achieving even when there wasn't a political unity: the literary Tuscan idiom, bypassing the intricate boundaries of the pre-unification, embodied a moral idea of nation, a republic of letters armed not of armies, but of literature, poetry, stylistic elegance. If it appears rich and complex the political and social history of the literacy of the mass, with the transition from the dialect to the Italian after the unification, it is no less fascinating the cultural history of the Italian as an elite language, the same of refined poets such as Petrarca, Dante and Ariosto, of scientists such as Galileo, of prose writers such as Machiavelli. This book traces the history of Italian from its origins to the present in a rigorous and updated way.
Claudio Marazzini is Professor of History of the Italian language in the University of Piemonte Orientale "Amedeo Avogadro" of Vercelli.