The Leonardo da Vinci Society
In Collaboration with the Istituto Italiano di Cultura

Cordially invites you to a concert

What is a Vernacular?
How Dante invented Italian

At the Istituto Italiano di Cultura 601 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco

October 29 – 2015 6:30 PM

Professor Ascoli will discuss passages from Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’ as well as from his treatises ‘The Banquet’ and ‘On Eloquence in the Vernacular

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Albert Russell Ascoli, Terrill Dis-tinguished Professor, teaches in the Department of Italian Studies, UC Berkeley. His principal field of research and teaching is Medieval and Early Modern Italian culture from the 13th to the 16th centuries. He is the author of Dante and the Making of a Modern Author (Cambridge University Press, 2008).

He also has written extensively on Petrarch, Boccaccio, Machiavelli, and Ariosto, and on the formation of Italian cultural and national identity. He is currently serving as President of the Dante Society of America (founded 1881).

This lecture is a companion to
the Humanities West Program, “Dawn of the Renaissance”, October 23-24, 2015.