Description: The ItalNet publication of the Opera del Vocabolario Italiano (OVI) textual database. The database contains 1581 vernacular texts (19.1+ million words, 447,675 unique forms, 165 MB of textual data) the majority of which are dated prior to 1375, the year of Boccaccio's death. The verse and prose works include early masters of Italian literature like Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, as well as lesser-known and obscure texts by poets, merchants, and medieval chroniclers. The OVI database was created to aid in the compilation of an historical dictionary of the Italian language, the Tesoro della lingua italiana delle origini, (portions of which are now available online).