Dante Alighieri, known today simply as Dante, is unanimously considered the father of Italian language. But what does that mean? In Dante’s time, the Italian vernacular, in its regional varieties, had actually already existed for a while. However, every text that aimed at being defined as high literature was still written in Latin, considered to be a more refined language.

Dante (circa 1265 to 1321) is the first intellectual to advocate for the need to hone the Italian language, and for its universal use in literature. The Latin language, as used in classical literature, had ceased to exist centuries ago, and it didn’t make any sense anymore, Dante insisted, to adopt a dead language as the literary standard.