Chapter 2 moves from Dante Alighieri’s contribution to the establishment of the vernacular as a language of knowledge and his critique of contemporary vernacular translation, which offer yet another perspective on the multifaceted process through which vernacular culture appropriated and, in a sense, tamed Aristotle’s authority. The chapter situates Dante’s portrayal of Aristotle within the poet’s broader reflection on language. Taking the appearance of Aristotle in the Divine Comedy as a starting point, I show that Dante’s notion of language cannot be understood without looking at his discussion of the relations between Latin and the vernacular, particularly in the Convivio. From this point of view, Dante’s harsh criticism of Taddeo Alderotti’s Italian translation of the Summa Alexandrinorum invites us to reconsider the failure of the Convivio itself, a project which did not foster the cultural revolution that Dante sought. By exploring the textual transmission of Taddeo’s translation between 1300 and 1500, the final section of the chapter enlightens its relevance to the vernacular reading communities that found forms of cultural and social legitimation in works of this kind.

The case studies analysed in this book show that the ‘vernacular readings’ of Aristotle between the age of Dante and the late fifteenth century are better understood when looked at through the interplay of translation, reception and concurrent debates about language. In the conclusion I discuss the Dialogo delle lingue (‘Dialogue on Languages’, 1542) by Paduan philosopher Sperone Speroni, which bears witness to the early canonisation of the questions examined in the previous chapters of the book. In particular, I look at Speroni’s fictional account of a dispute between the Aristotelian philosopher Pietro Pomponazzi and the Greek humanist Janus Lascaris about the use of the vernacular in the academic study of Aristotle. By contrasting the two interlocutors’ views on the matter, Speroni unveils the cultural issues at stake in the debate, namely the seminal role of translation in the dissemination of knowledge and the very notion of ‘vernacular language’ as a communicative tool able to perform such dissemination.

Chapter 1 proposes to read the anecdote of Aristotle mounted by the courtesan Phyllis as relevant to the interaction of Latin academic practices and vernacular culture. By building on the idea that the taming of the philosopher stages the conflict between the ‘artificial’ culture of academic learning and concurrent ideas about Nature, I argue that some versions of the story (e.g, the Lai d’Aristote) relate to the medieval reflection on the ethical worth of the mother tongue. To this end, I compare the iconography of the mounted Aristotle to the depiction of Grammar, whose ‘bilingual’ status mirrors the ambiguous place that the vernacular holds vis-à-vis Latin in the age of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. The chapter then looks at other spaces (both textual and visual) for the translation of the philosophical ideals embodied by Aristotle. In different ways, both the novella tradition (e.g., Novellino and Decameron) and the visual display of civic values (e.g., the painted cycles of San Gimignano, Siena and Asciano) shed light on the ways in which the appropriation of Aristotle shaped the new vernacular societies while also being part of wider discussions about linguistic difference.