Abstract

This essay offers an overview of vernacular textual cultures in Padova during the reign of the Carrarese family (1318–1405), especially during the second half of the fourteenth century, a period when diverse types of vernacular texts—literary, legal and commercial—emerge from official and semi-official cultural mechanisms of production, from the court and the chancery to scientific studies. This rapidly diversified production in the vernacular is so abundant that it allows us to study closely not only the development of old Paduan dialect but also its noteworthy variety of linguistic registers which utilize essentially two incumbant models: written Latin and a Tuscan-based literary vernacular. These rich textual resources offer us key data in reconstructing both the linguistic and cultural histories of this important northern Italian center of textual production.

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