"Sermo de capris". Comedy, eclogue, active genre

Starting from a proposal concerning the comicomus nebulo to which Giovanni del Virgilio provocatively compares the choice of Commedia (seen as a word game between comicus and comus), this contribution explores the eclogue as a terrain in which Dante reclaims the Virgilian heritage, going far beyond a stylistic distinction, favouring a tradition of the "active" or the "dramatic" genre. Establishing connections with other attestations - with particular reference to a passage in De vulgari eloquentia - this study attempts to reconstruct a theory of the "active" degree of poetic enunciation, since Dante is, at the same time, the person or the individual who takes on the narration and the first amongst the characters whom he "introduces" to speak and act.