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Dante's Inferno

Posted by Nha on January 26, 2004

In Reply to: Dante's Inferno posted by Smokey Stover on January 12, 2004

: In discussing the phrase "killing floor" someone, I believe Anders, posted a synopsis of the Inferno that I thought was an extremely well-done job, clear, succinct yet pretty comprehensive, in unexceptionable English. It appears to have been used in Bill Stephany's English 122 class in 2002. Can Anders confirm that, and possibly even tell me if Stephany himself was the author of the symopsis? I would additionally comment only that Dante's Commedia is a large part of the reason that serious Italian authors adopted the Tuscan dialect from the 14th century on. The fact that Petrarch, the next great Italian author in the vernacular (14th c.) also used the Tuscan dialect just hammered home the new norm. After World War II, RAI, the Italian state radio, broadcast to every part of Italy using the Tuscan dialect, thus reinforcing the notion of one Italy, unified by the Italian language. Even in the Italian Tirol, where they speak a sort of German, everyone knows Tuscan Italian, from school and the TV.

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