Il Vocabolario dell’Accademia della Crusca e i primi grandi vocabolari delle lingue europee

The Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca was published in 1612 as the result of three decades of work by the members of the Accademia della Crusca (learned men, laywers, poets, and artists). Founded in 1582 as an association of friends, mostly noble and well-off Florentine men interested in amicable cultural discussions, soon after the entry of Leonardo Salviati the Accademia's aim changed completely: all its activities became devoted to the preservation of the Florentine vernacular modelled on the authors of the Trecento and to the description of it as “the” language for literature. In the pursuit of this end, the Vocabolario constituted an essential instrument. It was not planned as an historical dictionary, in the sense of one that provides evidence of the development of the Italian language, but as a dictionary in which Italian writers could find only those words which were “permitted” according to the Cruscan model of language, shaped by Bembo's theories as developed and modified by Leonardo Salviati. Four additional editions followed the princeps (1623; 1691; 1729-1738; 1863-1923), all of which can now be read on the web and also searched as a database. Each edition has an lengthy preface stating the most controversial principles of the lexicographic work which has been under discussion during the long years of preparation: the selection of authors to be included, the possible inclusion of foreign or obsolete words, the choice of examples taken from non-literary texts, especially from the technical languages,and so on. The fifth and last edition was interrupted at the word ozono as the project was cancelled by the Government. In the Fifties the Accademia planned a new dictionary, explicitly based on “historical principles”. Between 1983 and 1985 the lexicographic work for the dictionary was taken up by a research unit of the Italian National Research Council, then called Opera del Vocabolario Italiano (OVI). The Tesoro della Lingua Italiana (TLIO), covering the period from the first Italian texts up to 1375, constitutes the first chronological section of the complete historical dictionary of Italian (the ultimate goal of the OVI Institute). The dictionary became a benchmark in the early years of European lexicography and served as a model for the first dictionaries of other European national languages: the first French, Portuguese, Spanish, English and German dictionaries all explicitly refer to the Vocabolario, even if they were based on different principles and criteria. Perusal of the prefaces of their first editions, such as the French Dictionnaire de l'Académie (1694), the Vocabulário Portuguez e Latino (1712-1728), the Diccionario de la lengua castellana (1726), the Dictionary of the English language (1752), the Deutsches Wörterbuch (1852- 1961), gives the reader a clear picture of their relationship, and at times of their debt, to the Vocabolario.