Franco-Italian, also known as Franco-Venetian or Franco-Lombard, was a

literary language A literary language is the form (register) of a language used in written literature, which can be either a nonstandard dialect or a standardized variety of the language. Literary language sometimes is noticeably different from the spoken langu ...

used in parts of northern Italy, from the mid-13th century to the end of the 14th century. It was employed by writers including

Brunetto Latini Brunetto Latini (who signed his name ''Burnectus Latinus'' in Latin and ''Burnecto Latino'' in Italian; –1294) was an Italian philosopher, scholar, notary, politician and statesman. Life Brunetto Latini was born in Florence in 1220 to a Tusc ...

and

Rustichello da Pisa Rustichello da Pisa, also known as Rusticiano (fl. late 13th century), was an Italian romance writer in Franco-Italian language. He is best known for co-writing Marco Polo's autobiography, ''The Travels of Marco Polo'', while they were in prison ...

and was presumably only a written language, and not a spoken one. Absent a standard form for literary works of the

Gallo-Italic languages The Gallo-Italic, Gallo-Italian, Gallo-Cisalpine or simply Cisalpine languages constitute the majority of the Romance languages of northern Italy. They are Piedmontese, Lombard, Emilian, Ligurian, and Romagnol. Although most publications def ...

at the time, writers in genres including the romance employed a hybrid language strongly influenced by the

French language French ( or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages. French evolved from Gallo-Romance, the Latin spoken in Gaul, and more specifically in ...

(at this period, the group called langues d'oïl). They sometimes described this type of literary Franco-Italian simply as French. Franco-Italian literature began to appear in northern Italy in the first half of the 13th century, with the Livre d'Enanchet. Its vitality was exhausted around the 15th century with the Turin copy of the Huon d'Auvergne (1441). Prominent masterpieces include two versions of the ''

Chanson de Roland ''The Song of Roland'' (french: La Chanson de Roland) is an 11th-century '' chanson de geste'' based on the Frankish military leader Roland at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass in 778 AD, during the reign of the Carolingian king Charlemagne. It i ...

'', the very first version of

The Travels of Marco Polo ''Book of the Marvels of the World'' ( Italian: , lit. 'The Million', deriving from Polo's nickname "Emilione"), in English commonly called ''The Travels of Marco Polo'', is a 13th-century travelogue written down by Rustichello da Pisa from s ...

and the Entrée d'Espagne. The last original text of the Franco-Italian tradition is probably Aquilon de Bavière by Raffaele da Verona, who wrote it between 1379 and 1407.

Notes

{{Romance languages Romance languages