Italian «erudite comedy» in the sociocultural and linguistic context of the 16th century

The Italian «erudite comedy» was an important stage in the development of the Western European theater, a kind of mediator between ancient dramaturgy and the dramaturgy of the New Age, and although its artistic merits are ambiguously assessed, its appearance and flourishing in the era of the formation of the literary Italian language give to the modern researcher a happy opportunity to get acquainted with different registers of the Italian language during this period. Thus, the subject of this article is the development and the peculiarities of the genre of «erudite comedy» in the Central regions, in the North and in the South of Italy in the XVI century. The purpose is to identify the main trends of its formation. The main research methods are the comparative method, the method of linguistic and cultural interpretation and sociolinguistic methods. Earlier comedies often became subject of literary analysis, but were not used as a source useful for sociolinguistic research. The results of the work consist in generalizing existing and obtaining new information about the development of «erudite comedy» in different regions of Italy and can be applied in further sociolinguistic research because to present the linguistic situation of the XVI century in its entirety it is necessary to take into account both its participants and data about them – territorial features, regional characteristics, level of education.

Italian comic theatre, erudite comedy, 16th century theatre, evolution of the comedy genre, Italian language, parlato-recitato, dialect literature, speech characteristics, sociolinguistic analysis, sociolinguistic situation