De vulgari eloquentia in the context of "Troubadour"

Dante Alighieri (Italian: [ˈdante aliˈɡjɛːri]; most likely baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri; c. May 1265 – September 14, 1321), widely known mononymously as Dante, was an Italian poet, writer, and philosopher. His Divine Comedy, originally called Comedìa (modern Italian: Commedia) and later christened Divina by Giovanni Boccaccio, is widely considered one of the most important poems of the Middle Ages and the greatest literary work in the Italian language.

At a time when Latin was still the dominant language for scholarly and literary writing—and when many Italian poets drew inspiration from French or Provençal traditions—Dante broke with both by writing in the vernacular, specifically his native Tuscan dialect. His De vulgari eloquentia (On Eloquence in the Vernacular) was one of the first scholarly defenses of the vernacular. His use of the Florentine dialect for works such as The New Life (1295) and Divine Comedy helped establish the modern-day standardized Italian language. His work set a precedent that important Italian writers such as Petrarch and Boccaccio would later follow.

Lombardy (Lombard: Lombardia), also called Historical Lombardy (Lombardia storega) or Greater Lombardy (Granda Lombardia), is a name referring to the territory, larger than the modern administrative region of Italy, which culturally, linguistically and politically has been historically considered Lombard.

Originally synonymous with Northern Italy, the definition of Lombardy shrank over time: Dante Alighieri, in his De vulgari eloquentia, recognised the autonomy of Romagna and Genoa from Lombardy. Since the 1400s Piedmont became more and more culturally autonomous from the rest of Lombardy, and by the 1600s there was a substantial partition between Lombardy and Piedmont, the latter being ruled by the House of Savoy.