Hi, I'm an Italian amateurish lover of history and languages and often I find myself reading comments on /r/italy claiming that the concept of Italy as a country and the shared culture started way before unification in the 19th century, up to the Middle Ages, citing Dante's work as one mentioning unified Italy, usually to denigrate autonomy movements or minority languages in the region.
As I mentioned I'm interested in languages and Italy hosts the most important isogloss of the romance languages, which would suggest, in my amateurish opinion, that culture too would have some form of discontinuity.
So, did Italians consider themselves Italian after the fall of Rome? In the 14th century? In the renaissance? In modern times?
Answer to any of the above would go a long way for me, thanks!
I wrote on a related question at length here: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/dtyk0d/prominent_italian_writers_of_the_earlymodern_era/f75mpr4/. Short answer: not really, and I am skeptical of any reading of medieval Italians arguing for a united “Italy.” If you are interested in language, I’d suggest checking out Dante’s De vulgari eloquentia. In it, the author talks about the spread of languages and the way new languages evolve. But he never places his dialect as the ideal or true form of some language called “Italian.”
Let me know if you have any questions about the original post or if you would like me to elaborate on anything to respond to your interests.