Can native Italian speakers read The Divine Comedy?

Question

I'm interested to know how hard it is for native Italian speakers to read The Divine Comedy in Dante's original language. The work was composed in the 14th century, so I imagine that there would be some difficulties. But I have no idea how well Italian was preserved between the 14th century and current times. Is the grammar mostly the same? The vocabulary? Would someone fluent in Italian be able to make out most of it?

Answer 1

Any italian can read the Divina Commedia as italian is 100% phonetic, the question should have been: do all Italians would understand the meaning of the Divina Commedia and the answer is no, if fact it is studied during the middle school years.