By a curious coincidence, the Accademia della Crusca celebrates its birthday on March 25, just the same day as On Tuesday, the national day dedicated to Dante Alighieri and established in 2020. Regarding Dante, this date is recognized as the beginning of the literary journey of the Supreme Poet in the Afterlife. For the Crusca, remember the official constitution of the Academy on 25 March 1585. It must be said that a first meeting of the founders had already taken place two years earlier to talk about laws and statutes. With the intention of institutionalizing those playful convivial meetings between friends - poets, writers, men of law - jokingly called dashed, which were already held between 1570 and 1580 and from which disputes and readings of a certain cultural commitment were not absent.
Language and literature were spoken in a "light" tone compared to similar associations of the time, so light that the founders themselves, the brigade of the crusconi, they had all given themselves a nickname. Giovan Battista Deti was the Sollo, Anton Francesco Greazzini the LascaBernardo Canigiani the GramolatoBernardo Zanchini the Macerato, Bastiano de'Rossi Hell, Lionardo Salviati (who joined the dashboards in October 1582) the floured.
From dashed, To brigade of the crusconi, at the Accademia della Crusca
The sign ofAccademia della Crusca, located in the Medici Villa of Castello a Florence, is the blender (or sifter), an instrument used to separate the fine flour, the good tongue, from the bran. And Lionardo Salviati, who had been the first to push for the institutionalization of the Academy, foresaw the primacy of the Florentine vernacular, on the model of the authors of the fourteenth century. All the objects and furniture of the Academy, as well as the personal coats of arms of the academics, must have had some connection with wheat and bread.
And it was a flowering of wooden shovels " in which a symbolic image was painted accompanied by the academic name and the chosen motto". A verse from Petrarch was the motto of the Academy itself, "the most beautiful flower captures". In this commitment to the purity of the language, it is born in 1612 the first vocabulary, the main work of the Accademia della Crusca. It was expanded and republished several times for three centuries, until 1923.
Main point of reference for the study and promotion of Italian
Today the Accademia della Crusca is considered the oldest linguistic academy in the world. Represents one of the main points of reference for research on the Italian language but also for its identification and diffusion in the world. It set an example for the lexicons of large languages such as French and Spanish, German and English. Its mission and commitment, in these over four centuries, have been based on the search for the "pure" linguistic form. Over time, however, it has become an open and critical method for “acquiring and spreading… the historical knowledge of our language. And the critical awareness of its current evolution, in the context of the interlingual exchanges of the contemporary world ”. The various activities of the Academy go in this sense.
The Accademia della Crusca and the Italians in the world
THEObservatory of Italianisms in the world is a database dedicated to all Italian words and words of Italian origin that have entered the use of other languages. L'Italian in the kitchen is a singular project for a historical vocabulary of the language of Italian cuisine.
Of significant interestcommitment of the Accademia della Crusca to Italians in the world. The Florentine Academy collaborates with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the Week of the Italian language in the world. And he promoted VIVIT: LIVE ITALIAN. An integrated digital archive of didactic materials, texts and iconographic and multimedia documentation for knowledge abroad of the Italian linguistic and historical-cultural heritage. With particular regard and destination to second and third generation Italians abroad.
A word from Dante a day for the 700th anniversary of the death of the Supreme Poet
La Crusca participates in television programs such as Buongiorno Regione of Tgr Rai. He has promoted projects dedicated to the vocabulary of television Italian and that of radio Italian. To stay on topical issues, the Academy has taken on the task of reflecting on the health emergency from a linguistic point of view with #LaCruscaAcasa: the words of the pandemic.
And the relationship with Dante, the father of the Italian language? The Accademia della Crusca could not miss on the occasion of the seven hundredth anniversary of the poet's death. So here it is Dante's word fresh from the day. The Academy publishes a word of Dante a day, throughout 2021. Three hundred and sixty-five entries dedicated to his work. It is, in the words of the Accademia della Crusca, "of essential views on the poet's lexicon and style, with short accompanying notes ... An opportunity to remember, reread, but also discover and deepen the great linguistic heritage left by Dante".
