Published writings on language

Manzoni stated his views publicly on the “language question” in a number of texts. In a letter to the lexicographer Giacinto Carena Sulla lingua italiana (1847), he stated for the first time the principle that only the Florentine dialect was suitable as the national language. The second text containing his views was a report to Education Minister Emilio Broglio, Dell’unità della lingua e dei mezzi di diffonderla. The choice of Florence as the Italian capital in 1865 and Manzoni’s appointment by Broglio to lead a committee to establish and spread the unified language provided Manzoni with the opportunity to put forward publicly and formally his theory concerning spoken Florentine as a national language. Although there were some differences of opinion among committee members, Manzoni’s report was approved and published in the journal Nuova Antologia in 1868. He also published a letter on Dante’s De vulgari eloquentia in Ruggero Borghi’s newspaper La Perseveranza in March 1868. This letter aimed at debunking a widespread prejudice among his opponents, who believed (mistakenly, according to Manzoni) that Dante’s treatise supported their idea of a national language as a super-regional literary language, not coinciding therefore with any particular dialect, and recognized by Italians as a cultivated language in common. In April 1868, again in La Perseveranza, Manzoni published his Lettera intorno al Vocabolario. In this letter he points out the distinction (not entirely clear in his previous writings) between Tuscan and Florentine, claiming that as a mixture of a variety of dialects, Tuscan could not take on the role of national language, and proposing that a dictionary of exclusively Florentine usage be compiled (it was published between 1873 and 1897). In his last text (1871), a letter to the Marquis of Casanova, a Neapolitan man of letters, he defended his ideas once more, highlighting the fact that his own novel had undergone a “rinsing in the Arno”.