Vernacular literature: Encyclopedia - Vernacular literature

Vernacular literature

Vernacular literature is literature written in the vernacular - the speech of the "common people".

In the European tradition, this effectively means literature not written in Latin. In this context, vernacular literature appeared during the Middle Ages; among the earliest European vernacular literature include Irish literature, Anglo-Saxon literature and Gothic literature.

The Italian poet Dante Alighieri, in his De vulgari eloquentia, was possibly the first European writer to argue cogently for the promotion of literature in the vernacular. Important early vernacular works include Dante's Divine Comedy, Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron (both written in Italian) and Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (written in English). Indeed Dante's work actually created in part the Italian language.

By extension, the term is also used to describe, for example, Chinese literature not written in classical Chinese and Indian literature after Sanskrit. It is applied to works not written in the standard and/or prestige language of their time and place. For example, many authors in Scotland, such as James Kelman and Edwin Morgan have written in the Scots language, even though English is now the prestige language of publishing in Scotland. Ngugi wa Thiongo writes in his native Gikuyu language though he previously wrote in English.

See also

• Medieval literature

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Vernacular literature", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki