Abstract

This paper discusses the didactic practice of Benvenuto da Imola, the first teacher to comment on both the Latin classics and the ‘Commedia’ in the vernacular to the students themselves. A comparison of his exegetical works discloses the use of the same stylistic features, the same glossographic materials and the same intertextual awareness. Indeed, after his lectures at Bologna and Ferrara, Benvenuto employs Dantean images to elucidate ‘Bucolics’ and ‘Georgics’. Similarly, after the course on Virgil, he identifies his model on numerous occasions throughout the ‘Commedia’. It can therefore be observed that there is a clear exegetical evolution from the “recollecteµ to the ‘Comentum’: Dante is equal to Virgil and the ‘Commedia’, as a new classic, to the ‘Aeneid’.