From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Vernacular literature is literature written in the vernacular - the speech of the "common people".

In the European tradition, this effectively means literature not written in Latin. In this context, vernacular literature appeared during the Middle Ages; among the earliest European vernacular literature include Irish literature, Welsh literature, Anglo-Saxon literature and Gothic literature.

The Italian poet Dante Alighieri, in his De vulgari eloquentia, was possibly the first European writer to argue cogently for the promotion of literature in the vernacular. Important early vernacular works include Dante's Divine Comedy, Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron (both written in Italian) and Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (written in English). Indeed Dante's work actually created in part the Italian language.

By extension, the term is also used to describe, for example, Chinese literature not written in classical Chinese and Indian literature after Sanskrit.

Similarly, in Hindu culture, traditionally religious or scholarly works were written in Sanskrit long after its use as a spoken language. With the rise of the bhakti movement from the 1100s onwards, religious works started being created in Tamil, Hindi, Kannada, Telugu and many other Indian languages thorought the different regions of India. For example, the Ramayana, one of Hinduism's sacred epics in Sanskrit had vernacular versions such as Ramacharitamanasa, a Hindi version of the Ramayana by the 16th century poet Tulsidas and Kambaramayanam by the poet, Kamban in Tamil.

The term is applied to works not written in the standard and/or prestige language of their time and place. For example, many authors in Scotland, such as James Kelman and Edwin Morgan have used Scots, even though English is now the prestige language of publishing in Scotland. Ngugi wa Thiongo writes in his native Gikuyu language though he previously wrote in English.

• Medieval literature