Chapter 23 documented the manner in which the humanist revolution initiated by Petrarch diverted intellectual energy away from the volgare into the study and writing of Latin. Consequently prose literary criticism in this period is, as we shall see, largely dominated by the increasing sensitivity displayed by Italian humanists towards developing a classical prose style in Latin. Only towards the end of the fifteenth century do critics take the first steps towards an analysis of vernacular prose. This section will thus be mostly concerned with the development of Latin prose criticism, a development which comprises four major phases. First there is Petrarch's discovery of the distance that separated medieval Latin dictamen from Cicero's Latin; then Bruni achieves an almost exact replica of classical prose; subsequently Valla inaugurates a more rigorous and practical guide to acceptable lexis and syntax; and lastly, the second half of the Quattrocento witness the emergence of both a rigid Ciceronianism, championed by Cortese and later Bembo, and an eclectic anti-Ciceronianism, promoted by Poliziano.

If the Petrarchan revolution forced Boccaccio and his successors to question Dante's wisdom in using the volgare, the same upheaval also caused a reappraisal of Dante's Latin works. In the first half of the Trecento the consensus on Dante's greatness had been universal. In the 1340s Giovanni Villani, in the first brief biographical note on Dante, was prepared to criticise his fellow-citizen's mores, but was unable to find fault with his Latin works. In particular he praised the ‘robust and elegant Latin’ of the De vulgari eloquentia, as well as Dante's epistles which were composed ‘in the high style, with excellent sententiae and quotations from ancient authors, and were highly praised by learned connoisseurs’ (Cronica 9.136).