![]() These were a very welcome addition to the Latin texts scholars like Petrarch had found in monastic libraries. ![]() The Classical IdealĪfter the fall of Constantinople in 1453, many Greek scholars fled the collapsing Byzantine Empire and brought classical texts with them to Europe, especially Italy. Renaissance humanism gave great importance to invention, and here, again, Dante with his creation of terza rima (poems formed of stanzas of three rhyming lines) and Boccaccio's innovative promotion in written form of the ottava rima (where stanzas are formed of eight 11-syllable lines) fit that sentiment perfectly. The arrival of the printing press in Europe in 1450 was another boost to the trio of authors mentioned above and the democratisation of knowledge. Humanists, though, continued to favour Latin for scholarly purposes and modelled their Latin on that of Cicero for prose and Virgil for poetry. Mary Harrsch (Photographed at the Capitoline Museum) (CC BY-NC-SA)Īll three of these writers promoted the use of the Tuscan vernacular (at least in poetical works), and this eventually led to the dominance of Latin being challenged.
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