Retrospective reflections on Manzoni’s early linguistic ideas addressed to the purist Antonio Cesari

Abstract

This presentation will analyze Manzoni’s dialogue with the “recognized leader of Italian purists, Antonio Cesari from Verona” (Vitale 2013: 120) in Due Minute of a Letter Never Sent (12 June 1827), with the aim of highlighting the novelty and uniqueness of Manzoni’s linguistic theory in the 19th-century context. Today, it is natural for us to understand that in a bilingual (multilingual) context, written and spoken language and dialects compete in linguistic codification and learning, influencing each other (De Marco 2002, Diadori-Palermo-Troncarelli 2016); just as we are aware that Italian is the result of a compromise between regional idioms and a literary variant that is mutilated in many of its parts (Bruni 1984, Cortelazzo 1986, D’Achille 1990, De Mauro 1994, Berruto 2010). However, it is not sufficiently well known that these conclusions were first described by Manzoni in his early comments on Cesari, and we still do not consider him one of the most important figures in the history of Italian linguistics. Tradition held that there was a common Italian language preserved in the canonical writings of the fourteenth (and/or sixteenth) century, that its acquisition depended on the passive study of these texts, and little attention was paid to current, oral and popular usage. Alessandro Manzoni, the first to give true value to usage (orality), could not believe that reading past writings was the most reasonable solution, both because this would have meant providing a model of dead rather than a living language, and because it would not have taken into account the concrete way in which Italians were trying to conquer their language and achieve the ideal of a single language. In fact, he began to discuss the traditional dichotomy between written and spoken language (Lingua - dialetto), recognizing and promoting the true essence of language: socially based oral tradition. In truth, thanks to an attitude that was not purist-censorial but descriptive-explanatory (Sgroi 1995: XVII), he presented ahead of his time the binding position of dialect(s) in the formation and history of Italian, explaining how the two characteristics should never be separated and, evaluating the natural results of this relationship, he tried to convince others to exploit them in favour of a truly common language.