Crusca Academy

▪ institution, Florence, Italy

Italian  Accademia della Crusca (“Academy of the Chaff”) 

      Italian literary academy founded in Florence in 1582 for the purpose of purifying Tuscan, the literary language of the Italian Renaissance. Partially through the efforts of its members, the Tuscan dialect, particularly as it had been employed by Petrarch and Boccaccio, became the model for Italian literature in the 16th and 17th centuries.

      Founded by five members of the Florentine Academy, with the purpose of sifting the impure language (crusca, literally, “bran” or “chaff”) from the pure, the Crusca Academy set itself up immediately as the arbiter of the literature of its time. Cruscans wrote many commentaries on Petrarch and Boccaccio, their models for linguistic usage; compiled dictionaries and lists of acceptable phrases and images from these authors; and translated many works into what they judged to be pure Tuscan. Members of the academy became known as linguistic conservatives, and in 1612 they began publication of their official dictionary, Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca, which continues to be published.

      Though the academy was suppressed in the late 18th century, Napoleon reestablished it in 1808, and it gained autonomy in 1811. In the early 20th century legislation by the Italian government limited the academy to the publication of classical authors and linguistic documents and periodicals.

      The term della-cruscan is also used to refer to a school of English writers of pretentious, affected, rhetorically ornate poetry in the late 18th century. The school was centred on Robert Merry, who belonged to the Italian academy, and was satirized by William Gifford (Gifford, William) in The Baviad (1791) and The Maeviad (1795). Della-cruscan may also refer to an affectedly pedantic writing or literary style.

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