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La piú bella del mondo – The Most Beautiful in the World #10, a Series by Stefano Jossa

10 talks on the Italian language

The Great Beauty of Italian Language

Is Italian truly the language of beauty? If not “the most beautiful language in the world”, Italian has surely been a vehicle to convey discourses on beauty, poetry and aesthetics throughout history. When writing of the creative power of human mind in his Essais sur l’entendement humain (1705), the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, who wrote in French, could only resort to Italian to express the concept of “l’invenzione la piu’ bella” (the most beautiful invention), which could not be said, in his views, but in Italian. To what extent is Italian still the language of “l’invenzione la piu’ bella”? The topic will be addressed to Prof Giuseppe Patota, the author of “The Great Beauty of Italian” (La grande bellezza dell’italiano). In conversation with Stefano Jossa.

Giuseppe Patota is Professor of Italian Linguistics at the University of Siena, aa fellow of the Accademia della Crusca and a member of the Accademia dell’Arcadia. In 2017 he received the Accademia dei Lincei prize for Linguistics and Philology. He is the director of the series “Grammatiche e lessici” and “Le varietà dell’italiano” published by the Accademia della Crusca and a member of the scientific committee of the journals “Studi Linguistici Italiani” and “Bollettino di Italianistica”. From 2004 to 2015 he was scientific director of the Dizionario Italiano Garzanti; he is currently co-director of the Il Nuovo Treccani (2018). He has worked on the historical syntax of Italian, on the history of lexicography, and on Italian grammatography. Several of his books have been translated and published abroad, including France and Japan.

Event in Italian with simultaneous translation in English

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About the series:

12 talks on the Italian language

“The most beautiful in the world” is supposed to be a supermodel and yet in Italy the expression is more often than not used to define Italian language. Is Italian truly the most beautiful language in the world? It is commonplace, due to either italophilia or nationalism, but is it only this?

A series led by Dr Stefano Jossa, author of La più bella del mondo. Perché amare la lingua italiana (Einaudi) and Reader in Italian at Royal Holloway University of London, will explore the relationships between Italian and other languages, the Italian words that have become key to interpret our contemporary world, the various languages of arts, music, technology, economy and politics.