Il latino delle «Egloghe»

Studying the Latin that Dante used in writing his Egloge is a challenging task, for at least two sets of reasons: first, the small amount of his Latin text (just 165 exameters), and second, the peculiarities of this literary genre, deeply linked to a specific model, that is Vergil’s Eclogae. On the other hand, a fruitful choice is to compare Dante’s Latin lines with Giovanni del Virgilio’s ones, 51 lines of his epistle which started the debate between the two poets, and 97 lines of his bucolic poem (with a total of 148 exameters). Dante’s Latin has been influenced by this specific literary genre and by consequence by his metrical and prosodic features. Referring to specific examples, this article aims at showing how a careful study of the Latin language Dante used in his Egloge, his sources and his metrical-stylistic choices may be useful to have a better understanding of the whole of Dante’s bucolic production.