In Dante's Paradiso, the first garden dweller, Adam, speaks of the language he 'used and shaped' (Par. XXVI, 114) and affirms the rather unstable, yet malleable, character of the vernacular tongue, which is tied both to natural variation and to pleasure. Examining the ways in which the garden and language are intertwined in the works of Dante and Petrarch, this book considers the kind of language these authors used and shaped, especially in their...