De Vulgari Eloquentia - Models

Models

Dante takes inspiration from rhetorical essays in Latin, Occitan, and Italian, and from philosophical readings. The main classical rhetorical texts from which he drew information were the Ars Poetica by Horace, the Rhetorica ad Herennium by an anonymous author, and De Inventione by Cicero. About the philosophical works, it is important to know that Dante read not only first hand texts, but also summaries that sometimes were not of the original work, but of an intermediary one.

The major Occitan work that influenced Dante was probably Razos de trobar by the Catalan troubadour Raimon Vidal de Bezaudun and the Vers e regles de trobar, an amplification of Vidal's manual, by Jofre de Foixà. Both of these works were Occitan manuals of grammar for troubadour poetry. They implicitly and explicitly defended Occitan as the best vernacular for song and verse, prompting Dante to come to the defence of his beloved Tuscan tongue. The popularity of both singing and composing in Occitan by Italians prompted Dante to write: A perpetuale infamia e depressione delli malvagi uomini d'Italia, che commendano lo volgare altrui, e lo loro proprio dispregiano, dico..., meaning "To the perpetual shame and lowness of the wicked men of Italy, that praise somebody else 's vernacular and despise their own, I say..." ( Convivio, treatise I, XI )

Directly or indirectly, Dante came to read Saint Augustine's works, the De Consolatione Philosophiae by Boëthius, Saint Thomas Aquinas's works and some encyclopedic dictionaries like the Etymologiae by Isidore of Seville and the Livre du Tresor by Brunetto Latini. He takes also inspiration from Aristotelian philosophy, and in Dante's work are traceable some references to texts by representatives of what is sometimes referred to as Radical Aristotelianism.