ABSTRACT
Eloquentia, Book 9, Chapter 2), stating that Italian, Provenc;al, and French each might be legitimately seen as the best vernacular for different reasons: Italian because it is the closest to (Latin) grammar and therefore the most logical; Provenc;al because it was the language of the foremost love poets, the troubadours; and French because it dom.inates the field of vernacular prose, both didactic and narrative. It is in this context that Dante cites, together with instances of the matiere d'antiquite, Arthurian romance ("Arturi regis ambages pulcerrimae"). This allusion (tangentially suggesting, not surprisingly, that Dante did not know the verse texts of the Arthurian cycle, including the work of Chretien) indicates that Dante thought Arthurian prose literature a very important achievement indeed, establishing French as a major language by revealing, together with other prose works, a narrative capacity in the langue d'oi1 comparable in quality to the rigorous grammaticality of the language of the Italian peninsula.
