Dante’s Italy: national sentiment and world government.

In much extant scholarship, Dante is either misused as the prophet of the modern Italian nation-state or dismissed as a naive imperialist. This paper steers clear of both these characterizations and gives serious consideration to Dante’s own understanding of nationhood. I examine the construction of language and national community in <italic>De vulgari eloquentia</italic> and then place Dante’s idea of the nation in the context of his argument for world government in <italic>Monarchia</italic>. Grappling with the received view that for Dante, as for Aristotle, language is inherently political, the paper suggests that Dante’s nation is first and foremost a kind of psychological bond arising from the experience and use of common language; it is not embodied in political-juridical institutions, nor is it a suitable sphere for human self-realization through civic discourse and participation. The recovery of Dante’s ‘non-political’ understanding of the nation cautions against a blanket dismissal of premodern ideas of the nation and offers a more nuanced perspective on language, national identity, and the future of nation-states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]