Introduction

With this section we propose to provide information on new bibliographies, conferences, graduation and doctorate dissertations, completed studies and those still in progress, relating to Italian literary language and vernaculars in the Middle Ages.

We believe that the dichotomy referred to - literary texts and non-literary texts - even though based on a single category, literacy, the subject of critical debate in the quite recent past, can nevertheless represent a valid organisation of the subject. However, there is no reason why further sub-divisions cannot eventually be introduced.

As regards the time scale, we believe that it would be useless to set rigid chronological limits, especially for non-literary texts which, even when they fall into the Cinquecento, can provide valuable information on the medieval period of vernaculars, by virtue of the fact that they were less receptive to the increasing influence of Tuscan than literary texts.

It is obvious that this type of information increases with the contributions of all those wishing to take part; the more there are, the more updated, rich and varied the information will be. We therefore invite you to write to this section of SPOLIA and, in particular, to send news on current research, which we will compile here in a national and international information archive.

Leonardo Rossi