Benedetto Croce and the Italian question: an argument with Alessandro Manzoni around the issue of national language of Italians expressed in the treatise «Alessandro Manzoni e la questione della lingua» (1911) and its translation into Polish

Abstract

The aim of this article is to outline Benedetto Croce’s views on the issue of the Italian language as well as the philosopher’s contribution to the debate on the form of the national language of Italians. The discussion, held in the second half of the 19th century, resurfaced with new intensity and complexity in the early 20th century as successive governments of the Kingdom of Italy had taken necessary actions to promote education, popularization and dissemination of the Italian language according to the Tuscan model. The starting point for these considerations is Benedetto Croce’s treatise titled Alessandro Manzoni e la questione della lingua (1911), in which the author became involved in a debate with Alessandro Manzoni’s theses, one of the founding fathers of the contemporary Italian language and a proponent of the Florentine vernacular speech, accusing his postulates of various inconsistencies and contradictions regarding the theories contained in the treatise titled On the Unity of Language and Ways to Disseminate It (1868) and other program writings concerning the shape of the future national language of all Italians. The article is complemented by the author’s translation of the analyzed text into Polish, which constitutes its integral part.