/lit/ - Literature

>>20003907
Divine comedy would be too easy

The Aeneid is the one and only Italian National Epic, to claim that The Divine Comedy deserves to be awarded with that title is a monumental blunder that several academics make when taking into account the various candidates for national epics.
>B-But it was written in Latin!!
So fucking what? Beowulf was written in Old English, a completely different language from Middle or Modern English in terms of grammar, phonology, syntax, morphology and phonetics. Does that prevent Beowulf from being the English national epic?
>B-But Dante lived in modern Italy!
Dante lived in an age where the Italian peninsula was split in several principalities, republics and duchies. Vergil lived under a more unified Italy than Italians could ever dream in 1500 years
>Italy is a catholic country, therefore the Divine Comedy is the most suitable candidate!
Italy has been a secular country ever since the Risorgimento. Now that all your arguments have been invalidated, we can all agree that The Aeneid is the one true and irreplaceable National Epic of Italy.