Italian literature
Encyclopedia
Italian literature is literature
written in the Italian language
, particularly within Italy
. It may also refer to literature written by Italians
or in Italy in other languages spoken in Italy, often languages that are closely related to modern Italian.
As the Western Roman Empire
declined, the Latin tradition was kept alive by writers such as Cassiodorus
, Boethius
, and Symmachus
. The liberal arts flourished at Ravenna
under Theodoric
, and the Gothic kings surrounded themselves with masters of rhetoric
and of grammar
. Some lay schools remained in Italy, and noted scholars included Magnus Felix Ennodius
(a pagan poet), Arator
, Venantius Fortunatus
, Felix the Grammarian, Peter of Pisa
, Paulinus of Aquileia, and many others.
Italians who were interested in theology
gravitated towards Paris
. Those who remained were typically attracted by the study of Roman law
. This furthered the later establishment of the medieval universities of Bologna
, Padua
, Vicenza
, Naples
, Salerno
, Modena
and Parma
. These helped to spread culture, and prepared the ground in which the new vernacular literature
developed. Classical traditions did not disappear, and affection for the memory of Rome, a preoccupation with politics, and a preference for practice over theory combined to influence the development of Italian literature.
arose in Poitou
in the early twelfth century and spread south and east, eventually reaching Italy by the end of the century. The first troubadours (trovatori in Italian), as these Occitan lyric poets were called, to practise in Italy were from elsewhere, but the high aristocracy of Lombardy
was ready to patronise them. It was not long before native Italians adopted Occitan as a vehicle for poetic expression, though the term Occitan did not really appear until the year 1300, "langue d'oc" or "provenzale" being the preferred expressions.
Among the early patrons of foreign troubadours were especially the House of Este, the Da Romano, House of Savoy
, and the Malaspina. Azzo VI of Este
entertained the troubadours Aimeric de Belenoi
, Aimeric de Peguilhan
, Albertet de Sestaro
, and Peire Raimon de Tolosa
from Occitania
and Rambertino Buvalelli
from Bologna
, one of the earliest Italian troubadours. The influence of these poets on the native Italians got the attention of Aimeric de Peguilhan in 1220. Then at the Malaspina court, he penned a poem attacking a quintet of Occitan poets at the court of Manfred III of Saluzzo
: Peire Guilhem de Luserna
, Perceval Doria
, Nicoletto da Torino
, Chantarel, and Trufarel. Aimeric apparently feared the rise of native competitors.
The margraves of Montferrat—Boniface I, William VI, and Boniface II—were patrons of Occitan poetry. Peire de la Mula
stayed at the Montferrat court around 1200 and Raimbaut de Vaqueiras
spent most of his career as court poet and close friend of Boniface I. Raimbaut, along with several other troubadours, including Elias Cairel, followed Boniface on the Fourth Crusade
and established, however briefly, Italo-Occitan literature in Thessalonica.
Azzo VI's daughter, Beatrice
, was an object of the early poets "courtly love
". Azzo's son, Azzo VII, hosted Elias Cairel
and Arnaut Catalan
. Rambertino was named podestà
of Genoa
between in 1218 and it was probably during his three-year tenure there that he introduced Occitan lyric poetry to the city, which later developed a flourishing Occitan literary culture.
Among the Genoese troubadours were Lanfranc Cigala
, a judge; Calega Panzan
, a merchant; Jacme Grils
, also a judge; and Bonifaci Calvo
, a knight. Genoa was also the place of genesis of the podestà-troubadour phenomenon: men who served in several cities as podestàs on behalf of either the Guelph or Ghibelline
party and who wrote political poetry in Occitan. Rambertino Buvalelli was the first podestà-troubadour and in Genoa there were the Guelphs Luca Grimaldi
and Luchetto Gattilusio
and the Ghibellines Perceval
and Simon Doria
.
The Occitan tradition in Italy was more broad than simply Genoa or even Lombardy. Bertolome Zorzi
was from Venice
. Girardo Cavallazzi was a Ghibelline from Novara
. Nicoletto da Torino
was probably from Turin
. In Ferrara
the Duecento was represented by Ferrari Trogni. Terramagnino da Pisa
, from Pisa
, wrote the Doctrina de cort as a manual of courtly love. He was one of the late 13th-century figures who wrote in both Occitan and Italian. Paolo Lanfranchi da Pistoia
, from Pistoia
, was another. Both wrote sonnet
s, but while Terramagnino was a critic of the Tuscan school, Paolo has been alleged as a member. On the other hand, he has much in common with the Sicilians
and the Dolce Stil Novo
.
Perhaps the most important aspect of the Italian troubadour phenomenon was the production of chansonnier
s and the composition of vidas
and razo
s. Uc de Saint Circ
, who was associated with the Da Romano and Malaspina families, spent the last forty years of his life in Italy. He undertook to author the entire razo corpus and a great many of the vidas. The most famous and influential Italian troubadour, however, was from the small town of Goito
near Mantua
. Sordello
(1220s–1230s) has been praised by such later poets as Dante Alighieri
, Robert Browning
, Oscar Wilde
, and Ezra Pound
. He was the inventor of the hybrid genre of the sirventes-
planh
in 1237.
The troubadours had a connexion with the rise of a school of poetry in the Kingdom of Sicily
. In 1220 Obs de Biguli
was present as a "singer" at the coronation of the Emperor Frederick II, already King of Sicily. Guillem Augier Novella
before 1230 and Guilhem Figueira
thereafter were important Occitan poets at Frederick's court. Both had fled the Albigensian Crusade
, like Aimeric de Peguilhan. The Crusade had devastated Languedoc
and forced many troubadours of the area, whose poetry had not always been kind to the Church hierarchy, to flee to Italy, where an Italian tradition of papal criticism was begun. Protected by the emperor and the Ghibelline faction criticism of the Church establishment flourished.
, claimed to be an eyewitness account of the Trojan war. It provided inspiration for writers in other countries such as Benoît de Sainte-Maure
, Herbort von Fritzlar, and Konrad von Würzburg
. While Benoît wrote in French, he took his material from a Latin history. Herbort and Konrad used a French source to make an almost original work in their own language. Guido delle Colonne
of Messina, one of the vernacular
poets of the Sicilian school, composed the Historia destructionis Troiae
. In his poetry Guido was an imitator of the Provençal
s, but in this book he converted Benoît's French romance into what sounded like serious Latin history.
Much the same thing occurred with other great legends. Qualichino of Arezzo wrote couplet
s about the legend of Alexander the Great. Europe was full of the legend of King Arthur
, but the Italians contented themselves with translating and abridging French romances. Jacobus de Voragine
, while collecting his Golden Legend
(1260), remained a historian. He seemed doubtful of the truthfulness of the stories he told. The intellectual life of Italy showed itself in an altogether special, positive, almost scientific form in the study of Roman law. Farfa
, Marsicano, and other scholars translated Aristotle
, the precepts of the school of Salerno
, and the travels of Marco Polo
, linking the classics and the Renaissance.
At the same time, epic poetry was written in a mixed language, a dialect of Italian based on French: hybrid words exhibited a treatment of sounds according to the rules of both languages, had French roots with Italian endings, and were pronounced according to Italian or Latin rules. In short, the language of the epic poetry belonged to both tongues. Examples include the chansons de geste
, Macaire
, the Entre en Espagne written by Niccola of Padua, the Prise de Pampelune, and others. All this preceded the appearance of a purely Italian literature.
is clearly felt, although the language is influenced by French forms. These writings, which Graziadio Isaia Ascoli
has called miste (mixed), immediately preceded the appearance of purely Italian works.
There is evidence that a kind of literature already existed before the 13th century: The Ritmo cassinese
, Ritmo di Sant'Alessio
, Laudes creaturarum, Ritmo lucchese
, Ritmo laurenziano, Ritmo bellunese
are classified by Cesare Segre
, et al. as "Archaic Works" (Componimenti Arcaici): "such are labeled the first literary works in the Italian vernacular, their dates ranging from the last decades of the 12th century to the early decades of the 13th" (Segre: 1997). However, as he points out, such early literature does not yet present any uniform stylistic or linguistic traits.
This early development, however, was simultaneous in the whole peninsula, varying only in the subject matter of the art. In the north, the poems of Giacomino da Verona and Bonvicino da Riva were specially religious, and were intended to be recited to the people. They were written in a dialect of Milanese
and Venetian; their style bore the influence of French narrative poetry. They may be considered as belonging to the "popular" kind of poetry, taking the word, however, in a broad sense. This sort of composition may have been encouraged by the old custom in the north of Italy of listening in the piazza
s and on the highways to the songs of the jongleur
s. The crowds were delighted with the stories of romances, the wickedness of Macaire
, and the misfortunes of Blanziflor
, the terrors of the Babilonia Infernale and the blessedness of the Gerusalemme celeste, and the singers of religious poetry
vied with those of the chansons de geste.
and of a literature showing more uniform traits. Its importance lies more in the language (the creation of the first standard Italian) than its subject, a love-song partly modeled on the Provençal poetry imported to the south by the Normans
and the Svevs
under Frederick II
. This poetry differs from the French equivalent in its treatment of the woman, less erotic and more platonic
, a vein further developed by Dolce Stil Novo
in later 13th century Bologna and Florence
. The customary repertoire of chivalry
terms is adapted to Italian phonotactics
, creating new Italian vocabulary. The French suffixes -ière and -ce generated hundreds of new Italian words in -iera and -za (for example, riv-iera and costan-za). These were adopted by Dante
and his contemporaries, and handed on to future generations of Italian writers.
To the Sicilian school belonged Enzio
, king of Sardinia
, Pietro della Vigna
, Inghilfredi, Guido
and Odo delle Colonne, Jacopo d'Aquino, Ruggieri Apugliese, Giacomo da Lentini
, Arrigo Testa, and others. Most famous is No m'aggio posto in core, by Giacomo da Lentini, the head of the movement, but there is also poetry written by Frederick himself. Giacomo da Lentini is also credited with inventing the sonnet
, a form later perfected by Dante and Petrarch
. The censorship
imposed by Frederick meant that no political matter entered literary debate. In this respect, the poetry of the north, still divided into commune
s or city-state
s with relatively democratic governments, provided new ideas. These new ideas are shown in the Sirventese genre, and later, Dante's Commedia
: his lines are full of invectives against contemporary political leaders and popes.
Though the conventional love-song prevailed at Frederick's (and later Manfred
's) court, more spontaneous poetry existed in the Contrasto attributed to Cielo d'Alcamo
. This contrasto (dispute) between two lovers in the Sicilian dialect
is not the most ancient or the only southern poem of a popular kind. It belongs without doubt to the time of the emperor Frederick II (no later than 1250), and is important as proof that there existed a popular, independent of literary, poetry. The Contrasto is probably a scholarly re-elaboration of a lost popular rhyme and is the closest to a kind of poetry that perished or was smothered by the ancient Sicilian literature. Its distinguishing point was its possession of all qualities opposite to the poetry of the rhymers of the "Sicilian School", though its style may betray a knowledge of Frederick's poetry, and there is probably a satiric
intent in the mind of the anonymous
poet. It is vigorous in the expression of feelings. The conceit
s, sometimes bold and very coarse, show that its subject matter is popular. Everything about the Contrasto is original.
The poems of the Sicilian school were written in the first known standard Italian. This was elaborated by these poets under the direction of Frederick II and combines many traits typical of the Sicilian, and to a lesser, but not negligible extent, Apulia
n dialects and other southern dialects, with many words of Latin and French origin. Dante's styles illustre, cardinale, aulico, curiale were developed from his linguistic study of the Sicilian School, which had been re-founded by Guittone d'Arezzo
in Tuscany
. The standard changed slightly in Tuscany, because Tuscan scrivener
s perceived the five-vowel system used by southern Italian as a seven-vowel one. As a consequence, the texts that Italian students read in their anthology contain lines that do not rhyme with each other (sometimes Sic. -i > -e, -u > -o), and that may account for its decrease in popularity through the 19th and early 20th century.
and Franciscan
Orders. The earliest preserved sermons in an Italian language are from Jordan of Pisa
, a Dominican. Francis of Assisi
, mystic and reformer in the Catholic Church
, the founder of the Franciscans, also wrote poetry. Though he was educated, Francis's poetry was beneath the refined poetry at the center of Frederick's court. According to legend, Francis dictated the hymn
Cantico del Sole in the eighteenth year of his penance, almost rapt in ecstasy; doubts remain about its authenticity. It was the first great poetical work of Northern Italy, written in a kind of verse marked by assonance
, a poetic device more widespread in Northern Europe. Other poems previously attributed to Francis are now generally recognized as lacking in authenticity.
Jacopone da Todi
was a poet who represented the religious feeling that had made special progress in Umbria
. Jacopone was possessed by St. Francis's mysticism, but was also a satirist who mocked the corruption
and hypocrisy
of the Church personified by Pope Boniface VIII
, persecutor of Jacopone and Dante. Jacopone's wife died after the stands at a public tournament collapsed, and the sorrow at her sudden death caused Jacopone to sell all he possessed and give it to the poor. Jacopone covered himself with rags, joined St. Francis's Third Order
, took pleasure in being laughed at, and was followed by a crowd of people who mocked him and called after him Jacopone, Jacopone. He went on raving for years, subjecting himself to the severest sufferings, and giving vent to his religious intoxication in his poems. Jacopone was a mystic
, who from his hermit
's cell looked out into the world and specially watched the papacy, scourging with his words Pope Celestine V
and Pope Boniface VIII, for which he was imprisoned.
The religious movement in Umbria was followed by another literary phenomenon, the religious drama. In 1258 a hermit, Raniero Fasani, left the cavern where he had lived for many years and suddenly appeared at Perugia
. Fasani represented himself as sent by God to disclose mysterious visions, and to announce to the world terrible visitations. This was a turbulent period of political faction (the Guelphs and Ghibellines
), interdict
s and excommunication
s issued by the popes, and reprisals of the imperial party. In this environment, Fasani's pronouncements stimulated the formation of the Compagnie di Disciplinanti, who, for a penance, scourged themselves till they drew blood, and sang Laudi in dialogue in their confraternities
. These laudi, closely connected with the liturgy
, were the first example of the drama in the vernacular tongue of Italy. They were written in the Umbrian dialect, in verses of eight syllables, and, according to the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
, "have not any artistic value." Their development, however, was rapid. As early as the end of the 13th century the Devozioni del Giovedi e Venerdi Santo appeared, mixing liturgy and drama. Later, di un Monaco che ando al servizio di Dio ("of a monk who entered the service of God") approached the definite form the religious drama would assume in the following centuries.
at the Battle of Benevento
in 1266, it was the first province of Italy. From 1266, Florence began a political reform movement that led, in 1282, to the appointment of the Priori delle Arti, and establishment of the Arti Minori. This was later copied by Siena
(with the Magistrato dei Nove), by Lucca
, by Pistoia
, and by other Guelph cities in Tuscany with similar popular institutions. The guild
s took the government into their hands, and it was a time of social and political prosperity.
In Tuscany, too, popular love poetry existed. A school of imitators of the Sicilians was led by Dante da Majano, but its literary originality took another line — that of humorous and satirical poetry. The entirely democratic form of government created a style of poetry that stood strongly against the medieval mystic and chivalrous style. Devout invocation of God or of a lady came from the cloister
and the castle
; in the streets of the cities everything that had gone before was treated with ridicule or biting sarcasm
. Folgore da San Gimignano
laughs when in his sonnets he tells a party of Sienese youths the occupations of every month in the year, or when he teaches a party of Florentine lads the pleasures of every day in the week. Cenne della Chitarra laughs when he parodies Folgore's sonnets. The sonnets of Rustico di Filippo are half-fun and half-satire, as is the work of Cecco Angiolieri
of Siena, the oldest humorist we know, a far-off precursor of Rabelais
and Montaigne
.
Another kind of poetry also began in Tuscany. Guittone d'Arezzo made art quit chivalry and Provençal forms for national motives and Latin forms. He attempted political poetry, and, although his work is often obscure, he prepared the way for the Bolognese school. Bologna was the city of science, and philosophical
poetry appeared there. Guido Guinizelli
was the poet after the new fashion of the art. In his work the ideas of chivalry are changed and enlarged. Only those whose heart is pure can be blessed with true love, regardless of class. He refuted the traditional credo of courtly love, for which love is a subtle philosophy only a few chosen knights and princesses could grasp. Love is blind to blasons but not to a good heart when it finds one: when it succeeds it is the result of the spiritual, not physical affinity between teo souls. Guinizzelli's democratic view can be better understood in the light of the greater equality and freedom enjoyed by the city-states of the center-north and the rise of a middle class eager to legitimise itself in the eyes of the old nobility, still regarded with respect and admiration but in fact dispossessed of its political power. Guinizelli's Canzoni
make up the bible of Dolce Stil Novo, and one in particular, "Al cor gentil" ("To a Kind Heart") is considered the manifesto of the new movement that bloomed in Florence under Cavalcanti, Dante, and their followers. His poetry has some of the faults of the school of d'Arezzo. Nevertheless, he marks a great development in the history of Italian art, especially because of his close connection with Dante's lyric poetry
.
In the 13th century, there were several major allegorical poems
. One of these is by Brunetto Latini
, who was a close friend of Dante. His Tesoretto is a short poem, in seven-syllable verses, rhyming in couplets, in which the author is lost in a wilderness and meets a lady, who represents Nature and gives him much instruction. We see here vision, allegory, and instruction with a moral object—three elements we find again in the Divine Comedy. Francesco da Barberino, a learned lawyer who was secretary to bishop
s, a judge
, and a notary
, wrote two little allegorical poems, the Documenti d'amore and Del reggimento e dei costumi delle donne. The poems today are generally studied not as literature, but for historical context. A fourth allegorical work was the Intelligenza, which is sometimes attributed to Compagni, but is probably only a translation
of French poems.
In the 15th century, humanist and publisher Aldus Manutius
published Tuscan poets Petrarch
and Dante Alighieri
(The Divine Comedy), creating the model for what became a standard for modern Italian.
. Halfway through the century, a certain Aldobrando or Aldobrandino, from either Florence or Siena, wrote a book for Beatrice of Savoy
, countess of Provence, called Le Régime du corps. In 1267 Martino da Canale wrote a history of Venice in the same Old French (langue d'oïl). Rusticiano of Pisa, who was for a long while at the court of Edward I of England
, composed many chivalrous romances, derived from the Arthurian cycle, and subsequently wrote the Travels of Marco Polo, which may have been dictated by Polo himself. And finally Brunetto Latini
wrote his Tesoro in French. Latini also wrote some works in Italian prose such as La rettorica, an adaptation from Cicero
's De inventione
, and translated three orations from Cicero: Pro Ligario
, Pro Marcello
and Pro rege Deiotaro. Another important writer was the Florentine judge Bono Giamboni, who translated Orosius's Historiae adversus paganos, Vegetius
's Epitoma rei militaris, made a translation/adaptation of Cicero's De inventione mixed with the Rethorica ad Erennium
, and a translation/adaptation of Innocent III's De miseria humane conditionis. He also wrote an allegorical novel called Libro de' Vizi e delle Virtudi whose earlier version (Trattato delle virtù e dei vizi) is also preserved. Andrea of Grosseto, in 1268, translated three Treaties of Albertanus of Brescia
, from Latin to Tuscan dialect
.
After the original compositions in the langue d'oïl came translations or adaptations from the same. There are some moral narratives taken from religious legends, a romance of Julius Caesar
, some short histories of ancient knights, the Tavola rotonda
, translations of the Viaggi of Marco Polo
, and of Latini's Tesoro. At the same time, translations from Latin of moral and ascetic works, histories, and treatises on rhetoric
and oratory
appeared. Some of the works previously regarded as the oldest in the Italian language have been shown to be forgeries of a much later time. The oldest prose writing is a scientific book, Composizione del mondo by Ristoro d'Arezzo, who lived about the middle of the 13th century. This work is a copious treatise on astronomy
and geography
. Ristoro was a careful observer of natural phenomena; many of the things he relates were the result of his personal investigations, and consequently his works are more reliable than those of other writers of the time on similar subjects.
Another short treatise exists: De regimine rectoris, by Fra Paolino, a Minorite friar
of Venice, who was probably bishop of Pozzuoli, and who also wrote a Latin chronicle. His treatise stands in close relation to that of Egidio Colonna, De regimine principum. It is written in the Venetian language
.
The 13th century was very rich in tales. A collection called the Cento Novelle antiche contains stories drawn from many sources, including Asian, Greek and Trojan traditions, ancient and medieval history, the legends of Brittany
, Provence
and Italy, the Bible
, local Italian traditions, and histories of animals and old mythology
. This book has a distant resemblance to the Spanish collection known as El Conde Lucanor. The peculiarity of the Italian book is that the stories are very short, and seem to be mere outlines to be filled in by the narrator as he goes along. Other prose novels were inserted by Francesco Barberino in his work Del reggimento e dei costumi delle donne, but they are of much less importance.
On the whole the Italian novels of the 13th century have little originality, and are a faint reflection of the very rich legendary literature of France
. Some attention should be paid to the Lettere of Fra Guittone d'Arezzo, who wrote many poems and also some letters in prose, the subjects of which are moral and religious. Guittone's love of antiquity and the traditions of Rome and its language was so strong that he tried to write Italian in a Latin style. The letters are obscure, involved and altogether barbarous. Guittone took as his special model Seneca the Younger
, and hence his prose became bombastic. Guittone viewed his style as very artistic, but later scholars view it as extravagant and grotesque.
, Guido Cavalcanti
, Cino da Pistoia
and Dante Alighieri
, lyric poetry became exclusively Tuscan. The whole novelty and poetic power of this school, consisted in, according to Dante, Quando Amore spira, noto, ed a quel niodo Ch'ei detta dentro, vo significando: that is, in a power of expressing the feelings of the soul in the way in which love inspires them, in an appropriate and graceful manner, fitting form to matter, and by art fusing one with the other. Love is a divine gift that redeems man in the eyes of God, and the poet's mistress is the angel sent from heaven to show the way to salvation. This a neo-platonic approach widely endorsed by Dolce Stil Novo, and although in Cavalcanti's case it can be upsetting and even destructive, it is nonetheless a metaphysical experience able to lift man onto a higher, spiritual dimension. Gianni's new style was still influenced by the Siculo-Provençal school.
Cavalcanti's poems fall into two classes: those that portray the philosopher, (il sottilissimo dialettico, as Lorenzo the Magnificent called him) and those more directly the product of his poetic nature imbued with mysticism
and metaphysics
. To the first set belongs the famous poem Sulla natura d'amore, which in fact is a treatise on amorous metaphysics
, and was annotated later in a learned way by renowned Platonic philosophers of the 15th century, such as Marsilius Ficinus and others. In other poems, Cavalcanti tends to stifle poetic imagery under a dead weight of philosophy. On the other hand, in his Ballate, he pours himself out ingenuously, but with a consciousness of his art. The greatest of these is considered to be the ballata composed by Cavalcanti when he was banished from Florence with the party of the Bianchi in 1300, and took refuge at Sarzana
.
The third poet among the followers of the new school was Cino da Pistoia, of the family of the Sinibuldi. His love poems are sweet, mellow and musical.
Dante, the greatest of Italian poets, also shows these lyrical tendencies. In 1293 he wrote La Vita Nuova
("new life" in English, so called to indicate that his first meeting with Beatrice
was the beginning of a new life), in which he idealizes love. It is a collection of poems to which Dante added narration and explication. Everything is supersensual, aerial, heavenly, and the real Beatrice is supplanted by an idealized vision of her, losing her human nature and becoming a representation of the divine.
Dante is the main character of the work, and the narration purports to be autobiographical, though historical information about Dante's life proves this to be poetic license.
Several of the lyrics of the La Vita Nuova deal with the theme of the new life. Not all the love poems refer to Beatrice, however—other pieces are philosophical and bridge over to the Convivio
.
made Dante immortal, and raised him above all other men of genius in Italy. It tells of the poet's travels through the three realms of the dead—Hell
, Purgatory
, and Paradise
—accompanied by the Latin poet Virgil
. An allegorical meaning hides under the literal one of this great epic. Dante, travelling through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, symbolizes mankind aiming at the double object of temporal and eternal happiness. The forest where the poet loses himself symbolizes the civil and religious confusion of society, deprived of its two guides, the emperor and the pope. The mountain illuminated by the sun is universal monarchy.
The three beasts are the three vices and the three powers that offered the greatest obstacles to Dante's designs. Envy is Florence, light, fickle and divided by the Black Guelphs and the White Guelphs
. Pride is the house of France. Avarice is the papal court. Virgil represents reason and the empire. Beatrice is the symbol of the supernatural aid mankind must have to attain the supreme end, which is God.
The merit of the poem does not lie in the allegory, which still connects it with medieval literature
. What is new is the individual art of the poet, the classic art transfused for the first time into a Romance form. Whether he describes nature, analyses passions, curses the vices or sings hymns to the virtues, Dante is notable for the grandeur and delicacy of his art. He took the materials for his poem from theology
, philosophy, history, and mythology, but especially from his own passions, from hatred and love. Under the pen of the poet, the dead come to life again; they become men again, and speak the language of their time, of their passions. Farinata degli Uberti
, Boniface VIII, Count Ugolino, Manfred
, Sordello
, Hugh Capet, St. Thomas Aquinas
, Cacciaguida
, St. Benedict, and St. Peter, are all so many objective creations; they stand before us in all the life of their characters, their feelings, and their habits.
The real chastizer of the sins and rewarder of virtues is Dante himself. The personal interest he brings to bear on the historical representation of the three worlds is what most interests us and stirs us. Dante remakes history after his own passions. Thus the Divina Commedia is not only a life-like drama of contemporary thoughts and feelings, but also a clear and spontaneous reflection of the individual feelings of the poet, from the indignation of the citizen and the exile to the faith of the believer and the ardour of the philosopher. The Divina Commedia defined the destiny of Italian literature, giving artistic lustre to all forms of literature the Middle Ages
had produced.
Two facts characterize the literary life of Petrarch
: classical research and the new human feeling introduced into his lyric poetry. The facts are not separate; rather, the former caused the latter. The Petrarch who unearthed the works of the great Latin writers helps us understand the Petrarch who loved a real woman, named Laura, and celebrated her in her life and after her death in poems full of studied elegance. Petrarch was the first humanist
, and he was at the same time the first modern lyric poet. His career was long and tempestuous. He lived for many years at Avignon
, cursing the corruption of the papal court; he travelled through nearly the whole of Europe; he corresponded with emperors and popes, and he was considered the most important writer of his time.
His Canzoniere is divided into three parts: the first containing the poems written during Laura's lifetime, the second the poems written after her death, the third the Trionfi. The one and only subject of these poems is love; but the treatment is full of variety in conception, in imagery and in sentiment, derived from the most varied impressions of nature. Petrarch's lyric verse is quite different, not only from that of the Provençal troubadour
s and the Italian poets before him, but also from the lyrics of Dante. Petrarch is a psychological poet, who examines all his feelings and renders them with an art of exquisite sweetness. The lyrics of Petrarch are no longer transcendental like Dante's, but keep entirely within human limits. The second part of the Canzoniere is the more passionate. The Trionfi are inferior; in them Petrarch tried to imitate the Divina Commedia, but failed. The Canzoniere includes also a few political poems, one supposed to be addressed to Cola di Rienzi and several sonnets against the court of Avignon. These are remarkable for their vigour of feeling, and also for showing that, compared to Dante, Petrarch had a sense of a broader Italian consciousness. He wooed an Italy that was different from any conceived by the people of the Middle Ages. In this, he was a precursor of modern times and modern aspirations. Petrarch had no decided political idea. He exalted Cola di Rienzi, invoked the emperor Charles IV
, and praised the Visconti
; in fact, his politics were affected more by impressions than by principles. Above all this was his love of Italy, which in his mind was reunited with Rome, the great city of his heroes, Cicero
and Scipio
. Petrarca, some say, began the Renaissance humanism.
Boccaccio had the same enthusiastic love of antiquity and the same worship for the new Italian literature as Petrarch. He was the first to put together a Latin translation of the Iliad
and, in 1375, the Odyssey
. His classical learning was shown in the work De genealogia deorum, in which he enumerates the gods according to genealogical trees from the various authors who wrote about the pagan divinities. The Genealogia deorum is, as A. H. Heeren said, an encyclopaedia of mythological knowledge; and it was the precursor of the humanist
movement of the 15th century. Boccaccio was also the first historian of women in his De mulieribus claris
, and the first to tell the story of the great unfortunates in his De casibus virorum illustrium. He continued and perfected former geographical investigations in his interesting book De montibus, silvis, fontibus, lacubus, fluminibus, stagnis, et paludibus, et de nominibus maris, for which he made use of Vibius Sequester
. Of his Italian works, his lyrics do not come anywhere near to the perfection of Petrarch's. His narrative poetry is better. He did not invent the octave stanza, but was the first to use it in a work of length and artistic merit, his Teseide, the oldest Italian romantic poem. The Filostrato relates the loves of Troiolo and Griseida (Troilus and Cressida
). It may be that Boccaccio knew the French poem of the Trojan war by Benoit de Sainte-More; but the interest of his poem lies in the analysis of the passion of love. The Ninfale fiesolano tells the love story of the nymph Mesola and the shepherd Africo. The Amorosa Visione, a poem in triplets, doubtless owed its origin to the Divina Commedia. The Ameto is a mixture of prose and poetry, and is the first Italian pastoral romance.
The Filocopo takes the earliest place among prose romance
s. In it Boccaccio tells the loves of Florio and Biancafiore. Probably for this work he drew materials from a popular source or from a Byzantine
romance, which Leonzio Pilato may have mentioned to him. In the Filocopo, there is a remarkable exuberance in the mythological part, which damages the romance as an artistic work, but contributes to the history of Boccaccio's mind. The Fiammetta is another romance, about the loves of Boccaccio and Maria d'Aquino, a supposed natural daughter of King Robert, whom he always called by this name of Fiammetta.
Boccaccio became famous principally for the Italian work, Decamerone, a collection of a hundred novels, related by a party of men and women who retired to a villa near Florence to escape the plague
in 1348. Novel-writing, so abundant in the preceding centuries, especially in France, now for the first time assumed an artistic shape. The style of Boccaccio tends to the imitation of Latin, but in him prose first took the form of elaborated art. The rudeness of the old fabliau
x gives place to the careful and conscientious work of a mind that has a feeling for what is beautiful, that has studied the classic authors, and that strives to imitate them as much as possible. Over and above this, in the Decamerone, Boccaccio is a delineator of character and an observer of passions. In this lies his novelty. Much has been written about the sources of the novels of the Decamerone. Probably Boccaccio made use both of written and of oral sources. Popular tradition must have furnished him with the materials of many stories, as, for example, that of Griselda.
Unlike Petrarch, who was always discontented, preoccupied, wearied with life, disturbed by disappointments, we find Boccaccio calm, serene, satisfied with himself and with his surroundings. Notwithstanding these fundamental differences in their characters, the two great authors were old and warm friends. But their affection for Dante was not equal. Petrarch, who says that he saw him once in his childhood, did not preserve a pleasant recollection of him, and it would be useless to deny that he was jealous of his renown. The Divina Commedia was sent him by Boccaccio, when he was an old man, and he confessed that he never read it. On the other hand, Boccaccio felt for Dante something more than love—enthusiasm. He wrote a biography of him (which some critics deprecate the accuracy of) and gave public critical lectures on the poem in Santa Maria del Fiore
at Florence.
were imitators of the Divina Commedia, but only in its external form. The former wrote the Dittamondo, a long poem, in which the author supposes that he was taken by the geographer Solinus into different parts of the world, and that his Commedia guide related the history of them. The legends of the rise of the different Italian cities have some importance historically. Frezzi, bishop of his native town Foligno
, wrote the Quadriregio, a poem of the four kingdoms Love, Satan, the Vices, and the Virtues. This poem has many points of resemblance with the Divina Commedia. Frezzi pictures the condition of man who rises from a state of vice to one of virtue, and describes hell, limbo, purgatory and heaven. The poet has Pallas
for a companion.
Ser Giovanni Fiorentino wrote, under the title of Pecorone, a collection of tales, which are supposed to have been related by a monk and a nun in the parlour of the monastery Novelists of Forli. He closely imitated Boccaccio, and drew on Villani's chronicle for his historical stories. Franco Sacchetti
wrote tales too, for the most part on subjects taken from Florentine history. His book gives a life-like picture of Florentine society at the end of the 14th century. The subjects are almost always improper, but it is evident that Sacchetti collected these anecdotes so he could draw his own conclusions and moral reflections, which he puts at the end of each story. From this point of view, Sacchetti's work comes near to the Monalisaliones of the Middle Ages. A third novelist was Giovanni Sercambi
of Lucca, who after 1374 wrote a book, in imitation of Boccaccio, about a party of people who were supposed to fly from a plague and to go travelling about in different Italian cities, stopping here and there telling stories. Later, but important, names are those of Masuccio Salernitano
(Tommaso Guardato), who wrote the Novellino, and Antonio Cornazzano
whose Proverbii became extremely popular.
, probably authentic.
Giovanni Villani
, born in 1300, was more of a chronicler than an historian. He relates the events up to 1347. The journeys that he made in Italy and France, and the information thus acquired, mean that his chronicle, the Historie Fiorentine, covers events all over Europe. He speaks at length, not only of events in politics and war, but of the stipends of public officials, the sums of money used to pay for soldiers and public festivals, and many other things of which knowledge is valuable. Villani's narrative is often encumbered with fables and errors, particularly when he speaks of things that happened before his time.
Matteo was the brother of Giovanni Villani, and continued the chronicle up to 1363. It was again continued by Filippo Villani.
's mysticism was political. This extraordinary woman aspired to bring back the Church of Rome to evangelical virtue, and left a collection of letters written in a high and lofty tone to all kinds of people, including popes. Hers is the clearest religious utterance to have made itself heard in 14th century Italy. Although precise ideas of reformation did not enter her head, the want of a great moral reform was felt in her heart. She must take her place among those who prepared the way for the religious movement of the 16th century.
Another Sienese, Giovanni Colombini
, founder of the order of Jesuati
, preached poverty by precept and example, going back to the religious idea of St Francis of Assisi. His letters are among the most remarkable in the category of ascetic works in the 14th century. Jacopo Passavanti, in his Specchio della vera penitenza, attached instruction to narrative. Domenico Cavalca translated from the Latin the Vite de' Santi Padri. Rivalta left behind him many sermons, and Franco Sacchetti
(the famous novelist) many discourses. On the whole, there is no doubt that one of the most important productions of the Italian spirit of the 14th century was religious literature.
Pucci was superior to all of them for the variety of his production. He put into triplets the chronicle of Giovanni Villani (Centiloquio), and wrote many historical poems called Serventesi, many comic poems, and not a few epico-popular compositions on various subjects. A little poem of his in seven cantos treats of the war between the Florentines and the Pisa
ns from 1362 to 1365.
Other poems drawn from a legendary source celebrate the Reina d'Oriente, Apollonio di Tiro, the Bel Gherardino, etc. These poems, meant to be recited, are the ancestors of the romantic epic.
From this period also dates that literary phenomenon known under the name of Petrarchism. The Petrarchists, or those who sang of love, imitating Petrarch's manner, were found already in the 14th century. But others treated the same subject with more originality, in a manner that might be called semi-popular. Such were the Ballate of Ser Giovanni Fiorentino, of Franco Sacchetti, of Niccolo Soldanieri, and of Guido and Bindo Donati. Ballate were poems sung to dancing, and we have very many songs for music of the 14th century. We have already stated that Antonio Pucci versified Villani's Chronicle. It is enough to notice a chronicle of Arezzo
in terza rima
by Gorello de Sinigardi, and the history, also in terza rima, of the journey of Pope Alexander III to Venice, by Pier de Natali. Besides this, every kind of subject, whether history, tragedy or husbandry, was treated in verse. Neri di Landocio wrote a life of St Catherine; Jacopo Gradenigo put the Gospels into triplets.
focused on preparing men to be doctors, lawyers or professional theologians, and was taught from approved textbooks in logic, natural philosophy, medicine, law and theology. The main centers of humanism were Florence
and Naples
.
Rather than train professionals in jargon and strict practice, humanists sought to create a citizenry (including, sometimes, women) able to speak and write with eloquence and clarity. Thus, they would be capable of better engaging the civic life of their communities and persuading others to virtuous and prudent actions. This was to be accomplished through the study of the studia humanitatis
, today known as the humanities
: grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry and moral philosophy.
Early humanists, such as Petrarch
, Coluccio Salutati
and Leonardo Bruni
, were great collectors of antique manuscripts. Many worked for the organized Church and were in holy orders (like Petrarch), while others were lawyers and chancellors of Italian cities, like Petrarch's disciple, Salutati, the Chancellor of Florence, and thus had access to book copying workshops.
In Italy, the humanist educational program won rapid acceptance and, by the mid-fifteenth century, many of the upper classes had received humanist educations. Some of the highest officials of the Church were humanists with the resources to amass important libraries. Such was Cardinal Basilios Bessarion, a convert to the Latin Church from Greek Orthodoxy, who was considered for the papacy and was one of the most learned scholars of his time. There were five fifteenth-century Humanist Popes, one of whom, Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (Pius II), was a prolific author and wrote a treatise on "The Education of Boys".
, the learned Greek and Latin scholar, wrote in the vernacular, and Vespasiano da Bisticci
, while he was constantly absorbed in Greek and Latin manuscripts, wrote the Vite di uomini illustri, valuable for their historical contents, and rivalling the best works of the 14th century in their candour and simplicity. Andrea da Barberino
wrote the beautiful prose of the Reali di Francia, giving a coloring of romanità to the chivalrous romances. Belcari and Girolamo Benivieni
returned to the mystic idealism of earlier times.
But it is in Lorenzo de Medici that the influence of Florence on the Renaissance is particularly seen. His mind was formed by the ancients: he attended the class of the Greek John Argyropulos, sat at Platonic banquets, took pains to collect codices, sculptures, vases, pictures, gems and drawings to ornament the gardens of San Marco and to form the library later named after him. In the saloons of his Florentine palace, in his villas at Careggi, Fiesole
and Anibra, stood the wonderful chests painted by Dello di Niccolò Delli
with stories from Ovid
, the Hercules
of Pollaiuolo
, the Pallas of Botticelli
, the works of Filippino and Verrocchio. De Medici lived entirely in the classical world; and yet if we read his poems we only see the man of his time, the admirer of Dante and of the old Tuscan poets, who takes inspiration from the popular muse, and who succeeds in giving to his poetry the colors of the most pronounced realism as well as of the loftiest idealism, who passes from the Platonic sonnet
to the impassioned triplets of the Amori di Venere, from the grandiosity of the Salve to Nencia and to Beoni, from the Canto carnascialesco to the lauda. The feeling of nature is strong in him; at one time sweet and melancholy, at another vigorous and deep, as if an echo of the feelings, the sorrows, the ambitions of that deeply agitated life. He liked to look into his own heart with a severe eye, but he was also able to pour himself out with tumultuous fulness. He described with the art of a sculptor; he satirized, laughed, prayed, sighed, always elegant, always a Florentine, but a Florentine who read Anacreon
, Ovid and Tibullus
, who wished to enjoy life, but also to taste of the refinements of art.
Next to Lorenzo comes Poliziano
, who also united, and with greater art, the ancient and the modern, the popular and the classical style. In his Rispetti and in his Ballate the freshness of imagery and the plasticity of form are inimitable. A great Greek scholar, Piliziano wrote Italian verses with dazzling colors; the purest elegance of the Greek sources pervaded his art in all its varieties, in the Orfeo as well as the Stanze per la giostra.
A completely new style of poetry arose, the Canto carnascialesco. These were a kind of choral songs, which were accompanied with symbolic masquerades, common in Florence at the carnival. They were written in a metre like that of the ballate; and for the most part they were put into the mouth of a party of workmen and tradesmen, who, with not very chaste allusions, sang the praises of their art. These triumphs and masquerades were directed by Lorenzo himself. In the evening, there set out into the city large companies on horseback, playing and singing these songs. There are some by Lorenzo himself, which surpass all the others in their mastery of art. That entitled Bacco ed Arianna is the most famous.
; but had, however, many poems called cantari, because they contained stories that were sung to the people; and besides there were romantic poems, such as the Buovo d'Antona, the Regina Ancroja and others. But the first to introduce life into this style was Luigi Pulci
, who grew up in the house of the Medici, and who wrote the Morgante Maggiore at the request of Lucrezia Tornabuoni
, mother of Lorenzo the Magnificent. The material of the Morgante is almost completely taken from an obscure chivalrous poem of the 15th century, rediscovered by Pio Rajna. Pulci erected a structure of his own, often turning the subject into ridicule, burlesquing the characters, introducing many digressions, now capricious, now scientific, now theological. Pulci raised the romantic epic into a work of art, and united the serious and the comic.
With a more serious intention Matteo Boiardo, count of Scandiano
, wrote his Orlando innamorato
, in which he seems to have aspired to embrace the whole range of Carolingian
legends; but he did not complete his task. We find here too a large vein of humour and burlesque. Still Boiardo was drawn to the world of romance by a profound sympathy for chivalrous manners and feelings; that is to say, for love, courtesy, valour and generosity. A third romantic poem of the 15th century was the Mambriano by Francesco Bello (Cieco of Ferrara). He drew from the Carolingian cycle, from the romances of the Round Table
, and from classical antiquity. He was a poet of no common genius, and of ready imagination. He showed the influence of Boiardo, especially in the use of fantasy.
of Arezzo wrote the history of Florence, Gioviano Pontano that of Naples, in Latin. Bernardino Corio wrote the history of Milan
in Italian, but in a rude way.
Leonardo da Vinci
wrote a treatise on painting, Leone Battista Alberti
one on sculpture and architecture. But the names of these two men are important, not so much as authors of these treatises, but as being embodiments of another characteristic of the age of the Renaissance; versatility of genius, power of application along many and varied lines, and of being excellent in all. Leonardo was an architect, a poet, a painter, an hydraulic engineer and a distinguished mathematician. Alberti was a musician, studied jurisprudence, was an architect and a draughtsman, and had great fame in literature. He had a deep feeling for nature, and an almost unique faculty of assimilating all that he saw and heard. Leonardo and Alberti are representatives and almost a compendium in themselves of all that intellectual vigour of the Renaissance age, which in the 16th century took to developing itself in its individual parts, making way for what has by some been called the golden age of Italian literature.
Piero Capponi
, author of the Commentari deli acquisto di Pisa and of the narration of the Tumulto dei Ciompi, belonged to both the 14th and the 15th centuries.
Albertino Mussato
of Padua
wrote in Latin a history of Emperor Henry VII. He then produced a Latin tragedy on Ezzelino da Romano
, Henry's imperial vicar in northern Italy, the Eccerinus, which was probably not represented on the stage. This remained an isolated work.
The development of the drama in the 15th century was very great. This kind of semi-popular literature was born in Florence, and attached itself to certain popular festivities that were usually held in honor of St John the Baptist
, patron saint of the city. The Sacra Rappresentazione is the development of the medieval Mistero (mystery play
). Although it belonged to popular poetry, some of its authors were literary men of much renown: Lorenzo de Medici, for example, wrote San Giovanni e Paolo, and Feo Belcari wrote San Panunzio, Abramo ed Isaac, and more. From the 15th century, some element of the comic-profane found its way into the Sacra Rappresentazione. From its Biblical and legendary conventionalism Poliziano emancipated himself in his Orfeo, which, although in its exterior form belonging to the sacred representations, yet substantially detaches itself from them in its contents and in the artistic element introduced.
The famous men of the first half of the 16th century had been educated in the preceding century. Pietro Pomponazzi
was born in 1462, Marcello Adriani Virgilio in 1464, Baldassare Castiglione
in 1468, Niccolò Machiavelli
in 1469, Pietro Bembo
in 1470, Michelangelo Buonarroti and Ariosto in 1474, Jacopo Nardi
in 1476, Gian Giorgio Trissino
in 1478, and Francesco Guicciardini
in 1482. Literary activity that appeared from the end of the 15th century to the middle of the 16th century was the product of the political and social conditions of an earlier age.
Machiavelli's principal works are the Istorie fiorentine, the Discorsi sulla prima deca di Tito Livio, the Arte della guerra and the Principe. His merit consists in having emphasized the experimental side of the study of political action in having observed facts, studied histories and drawn principles from them. His history is sometimes inexact in facts; it is rather a political than an historical work. The peculiarity of Machiavelli's genius lay, as has been said, in his artistic feeling for the treatment and discussion of politics in and for themselves, without regard to an immediate end in his power of abstracting himself from the partial appearances of the transitory present, in order more thoroughly to possess himself of the eternal and inborn kingdom, and to bring it into subjection to himself.
Next to Machiavelli both as an historian and a statesman comes Guicciardini. Guicciardini was very observant, and endeavoured to reduce his observations to a science. His Storia d'Italia, which extends from the death of Lorenzo de Medici to 1534, is full of political wisdom, is skillfully arranged in its parts, gives a lively picture of the character of the persons it treats of, and is written in a grand style. He shows a profound knowledge of the human heart, and depicts with truth the temperaments, the capabilities and habits of the different European nations. Going back to the causes of events, he looked for the explanation of the divergent interests of princes and of their reciprocal jealousies. The fact of his having witnessed many of the events he related, and having taken part in them, adds authority to his words. The political reflections are always deep; in the Pensieri, as Gino Capponi
says, he seems to aim at extracting through self-examination a quintessence, as it were, of the things observed and done by him; thus endeavouring to form a political doctrine as adequate as possible in all its parts. Machiavelli and Guicciardini may be considered as distinguished historians as well as originators of the science of history founded on observation.
Inferior to them, but still always worthy of note, were Jacopo Nardi
(a just and faithful historian and a virtuous man, who defended the rights of Florence against the Medici before Charles V), Benedetto Varchi
, Giambattista Adriani, Bernardo Segni, and, outside Tuscany, Camillo Porzio
, who related the Congiura de baroni and the history of Italy from 1547 to 1552; Angelo di Costanza, Pietro Bembo
, Paolo Paruta
, and others.
Ariosto's Orlando furioso
was a continuation of Boiardo's Innamorato. His characteristic is that he assimilated the romance of chivalry to the style and models of classicism. Romantic Ariosto was an artist only for the love of his art; his epic.
His sole aim was to make a romance that would please himself and his generation. His Orlando has no grave and serious purpose. On the contrary, it creates a fantastic world in which the poet rambles, indulges his caprice, and sometimes smiles at his own work. His great desire is to depict everything with the greatest possible perfection; the cultivation of style is what occupies him most. In his hands the style becomes wonderfully plastic to every conception, whether high or low, serious or sportive. With him, the octave stanza reached a high level of grace, variety, and harmony.
was an influential figure in the development of the Italian language
, specifically Tuscan, as a literary medium, and his writings assisted in the 16th-century revival of interest in the works of Petrarch
. As a writer, Bembo attempted to restore some of the legendary "affect" that ancient Greek
had on its hearers, but in Tuscan Italian instead. He held as his model, and as the highest example of poetic expression ever achieved in Italian, the work of Petrarch and Boccaccio, two 14th century writers he assisted in bringing back into fashion.
In the Prose della volgar lingua, he set Petrarch up as the perfect model, and discussed verse composition in detail, including rhyme, stress, the sounds of words, balance and variety. In Bembo's theory, the specific placement of words in a poem, with strict attention to their consonants and vowels, their rhythm, their position within lines long and short, could produce emotions ranging from sweetness and grace to gravity and grief in a listener. This work was of decisive importance in the development of the Italian madrigal, the most famous secular musical form of the 16th century, as it was these poems, carefully constructed (or, in the case of Petrarch, analyzed) according to Bembo's ideas, that were to be the primary texts for the music.
The historians of Italian literature are in doubt whether Tasso
should be placed in the period of the highest development of the Renaissance, or whether he should form a period by himself, intermediate between that and the one following. Certainly he was profoundly out of harmony with his own century. His religious faith, the seriousness of his character, the deep melancholy settled in his heart, his continued aspiration after an ideal perfection—all place him outside the literary epoch represented by Machiavelli, Ariosto, and Berni. As Carducci
said, Tasso is the legitimate heir of Dante: he believes, and reasons on his faith by philosophy; he loves, and comments on his love in a learned style; he is an artist, and writes dialogues of scholastic
speculation that would be considered Platonic. He was only eighteen years old when, in 1562, he tried his hand at epic poetry, and wrote Rinaldo, in which be said that he had tried to reconcile the Aristotelian rules with the variety of Ariosto. He later wrote the Aminta, a pastoral drama of exquisite grace, but the work to which he had long turned his thoughts was an heroic poem, and that absorbed all his powers. He explains his intentions in the three Discorsi, written while he composed the Gerusalemme: he would choose a great and wonderful subject, not so ancient as to have lost all interest, nor so recent as to prevent the poet from embellishing it with invented circumstances. He would treat it rigorously according to the rules of the unity of action observed in Greek and Latin poems, but with a far greater variety and splendour of episodes, so that in this point it should not fall short of the romantic poem; and finally, he would write it in a lofty and ornate style. This is what Tasso has done in the Gerusalemme liberata, the subject of which is the liberation of the sepulchre
of Jesus Christ in the 11th century by Godfrey of Bouillon
. The poet does not follow faithfully all the historical facts, but sets before us the principal causes of them, bringing in the supernatural agency of God and Satan. The Gerusalemme is the best heroic poem that Italy can show. It approaches to classical perfection. Its episodes above all are most beautiful. There is profound feeling in it, and everything reflects the melancholy soul of the poet. As regards the style, however, although Tasso studiously endeavoured to keep close to the classical models, one cannot help noticing that he makes excessive use of metaphor
, of antithesis
, of far-fetched conceits; and it is specially from this point of view that some historians have placed Tasso in the literary period generally known under the name of Secentismo, and that others, more moderate in their criticism, have said that he prepared the way for it.
of Vicenza
composed a poem called Italia liberata dai Goti. Full of learning and of the rules of the ancients, he formed himself on the latter, in order to sing of the campaigns of Belisarius
; he said that he had forced himself to observe all the rules of Aristotle
, and that he had imitated Homer
. In this again, we see one of the products of the Renaissance
; and, although Trissino's work is poor in invention and without any original poetical coloring, yet it helps one to understand better what were the conditions of mind in the 16th century.
Lyric poetry was certainly not one of the kinds that rose to any great height in the 16th century. Originality was entirely wanting, since it seemed in that century as if nothing better could be done than to copy Petrarch. Still, even in this style there were some vigorous poets. Monsignore Giovanni Guidiccioni
of Lucca
(1500–1541) showed that he had a generous heart. In fine sonnets he expressed his grief for the sad state of his country. Francesco Molza of Modena
(1489–1544), learned in Greek, Latin and Hebrew, wrote in a graceful style and with spirit. Giovanni della Casa
(1503–1556) and Pietro Bembo
(1470–1547), although Petrarchists, were elegant. Even Michelangelo was at times a Petrarchist, but his poems bear the stamp of his extraordinary and original genius. And a good many ladies are to be placed near these poets, such as Vittoria Colonna
(loved by Michelangelo), Veronica Gambara
, Tullia d'Aragona
, and Giulia Gonzaga
, poets of great delicacy, and superior in genius to many literary men of their time.
Many tragedies were written in the 16th century, but they are all weak. The cause of this was the moral and religious indifference of the Italians, the lack of strong passions and vigorous characters. The first to occupy the tragic stage was Trissino with his Sofonisba, following the rules of the art most scrupulously, but written in sickly verses, and without warmth of feeling. The Oreste and the Rosmunda of Giovanni Rucellai
were no better, nor Luigi Alamanni
's Antigone
. Sperone Speroni
in his Canace
and Giraldi Cintio in his Orbecche
tried to become innovators in tragic literature, but provoked criticisms of grotesquerie and debate over the role of decorum. They were often seen as inferior to the Torrismondo of Torquato Tasso
, specially remarkable for the choruses, which sometimes remind one of the chorus of the Greek tragedies.
The Italian comedy of the 16th century was almost entirely modelled on the Latin comedy. They were almost always alike in the plot, in the characters of the old man, of the servant, of the waiting-maid; and the argument was often the same. Thus the Lucidi of Agnolo Firenzuola
, and the Vecchio amoroso of Donato Giannotti
were modelled on comedies by Plautus
, as were the Sporta by Giambattista Gelli
, the Marito by Lodovico Dolce
, and others. There appear to be only three writers who should be distinguished among the many who wrote comedies: Machiavelli, Ariosto, and Giovan Maria Cecchi. In his Mandragola Machiavelli, unlike the others, composed a comedy of character, creating personalities that seem living even now because he copied them from reality with a finely observant eye. Ariosto, on the other hand, was distinguished for his picture of the habits of his time, and especially of those of the Ferrarese nobles, rather than for the objective delineation of character. Lastly, Cecchi left in his comedies a treasure of spoken language, which lets us, in a wonderful way, acquaint ourselves with that age. The notorious Pietro Aretino
might also be included in the list of the best writers of comedy.
The 15th century included humorous poetry. Antonio Cammelli, surnamed the Pistoian, is specially deserving of notice, because of his pungent bonhomie, as Sainte-Beuve called it. But it was Francesco Berni
who and satire, carried this kind of literature to perfection in the 16th century. From him the style has been called bernesque poetry. In the Berneschi we find nearly the same phenomenon that we already noticed with regard to Orlando furioso. It was art for arts sake that inspired and moved Berni to write, as well as Antonio Francesco Grazzini
, called Il Lasca, and other lesser writers. It may be said that there is nothing in their poetry; and it is true that they specially delight in praising low and disgusting things and in jeering at what is noble and serious. Bernesque poetry is the clearest reflection of that religious and moral scepticism that was a characteristic of Italian social life in the 16th century, and that showed itself in most of the works of that period—a scepticism that stopped the religious Reformation in Italy
, and which in its turn was an effect of historical conditions. The Berneschi, and especially Berni himself, sometimes assumed a satirical tone. But theirs could not be called true satire. Pure satirists, on the other hand, were Antonio Vinciguerra, a Venetian, Lodovico Alamanni and Ariosto, the last superior to the others for the Attic elegance of his style, and for a certain frankness, passing into malice, which is particularly interesting when the poet talks of himself.
In the 16th century there were not a few didactic works. In his poem Api Giovanni Rucellai
approaches to the perfection of Virgil
. His style is clear and light, and he adds interest to his book by frequent allusions to the events of the time. The most important didactic work, however, is Castiglione's Cortigiano, in which he imagines a discussion in the palace of the dukes of Urbino
between knights and ladies as to what gifts a perfect courtier
requires. This book is valuable as an illustration of the intellectual and moral state of the highest Italian society in the first half of the 16th century.
Of the novelists of the 16th century, the two most important were Grazzini, and Matteo Bandello
; the former as playful and bizarre as the latter is grave and solemn. Bandello was a Dominican
friar
and a bishop, but that notwithstanding his novels were very loose in subject, and that he often holds up the ecclesiastics of his time to ridicule.
At a time when admiration for qualities of style, the desire for classical elegance, was so strong as in the 16th century, much attention was naturally paid to translating Latin and Greek authors. Among the very numerous translations of the time those of the Aeneid
and of the Pastorals of Longus
the Sophist by Annibale Caro
are still famous; as are also the translations of Ovid
's Metamorphoses
by Giovanni Andrea dell' Anguillara
, of Apuleius
's The Golden Ass
by Firenzuola, and of Plutarch
's Lives and Moralia by Marcello Adriani.
was tortured by the Inquisition
, and Giordano Bruno
was burned at the stake. Cesare Balbo
says that, if the happiness of the masses consists in peace without industry, if the nobility's consists in titles without power, if princes are satisfied by acquiescence in their rule without real independence, without sovereignty, if literary men and artists are content to write, paint and build with the approbation of their contemporaries, but to the contempt of posterity, if a whole nation is happy in ease without dignity and the tranquil progress of corruption, then no period ever was so happy for Italy as the 140 years from the Peace of Cateau Cambrésis to the War of the Spanish Succession
. This period is known in the history of Italian literature as the Secentismo. Its writers resorted to exaggeration; they tried to produce effect with what in art is called mannerism
or barocchism. Writers vied with one another in their use of metaphors, affectations, hyperbole
and other oddities and draw it off from the substantial element of thought.
of Bologna followed in Marino's footsteps, but his peculiarities were even more extravagant. Almost all the poets of the 17th century were more or less infected with Marinism. Alessandro Guidi, although he does not attain to the exaggeration of his master, is bombastic and turgid, while Fulvio Testi
is artificial and affected. Yet Guidi as well as Testi felt the influence of another poet, Gabriello Chiabrera
, born at Savona
in 1552. Enamoured of the Greeks, he made new metres, especially in imitation of Pindar
, treating of religious, moral, historical, and amatory subjects. Chiabrera, though elegant in form, attempts to disguise a lack of substance with poetical ornaments of every kind. Nevertheless, Chiabrera's school marks an improvement; and sometimes he shows lyrical capacities, wasted on his literary environment.
was instituted. Its founders were Giovan Maria Crescimbeni and Gian Vincenzo Gravina. The Arcadia was so called because its chief aim was to imitate the simplicity of the ancient shepherds who were supposed to have lived in Arcadia
in the golden age. As the Secentisti erred by an overweening desire for novelty, so the Arcadians proposed to return to the fields of truth, always singing of subjects of pastoral simplicity. This was merely the substitution of a new artifice for the old one; and they fell from bombast into effeminacy, from the hyperbolical into the petty, from the turgid into the over-refined. The Arcadia was a reaction against Secentismo, but a reaction that only succeeded in impoverishing still further and completely withering Italian literature. The poems of the Arcadians fill many volumes, and are made up of sonnet
s, madrigals
, canzonette and blank verse
. The one who most distinguished himself among the sonneteers was Felice Zappi. Among the authors of songs, Paolo Rolli was illustrious. Innocenzo Frugoni was more famous than all the others, a man of fruitful imagination but of shallow intellect.
Vincenzo da Filicaja, a Florentine, had a lyric talent, particularly in the songs about Vienna
besieged by the Turks
, which raised him above the vices of the time; but even in him we see clearly the rhetorical artifice and false conceits. In general all the lyric poetry of the 17th century had the same defects, but in different degrees. These defects may be summed up as absence of feeling and exaggeration of form.
, Lucilio Vanini
, Bruno and Campanella turned philosophical inquiry into fresh channels, and opened the way for the scientific conquests of Galileo Galilei
, the great contemporary of René Descartes
in France and of Francis Bacon
in England. Galileo was not only a great man of science, but also occupied a conspicuous place in the history of letters. A devoted student of Ariosto, he seemed to transfuse into his prose the qualities of that great poet: clear and frank freedom of expression, precision and ease, and at the same time elegance. Galileo's prose is in perfect antithesis to the poetry of his time and is regarded by some as the best prose that Italy has ever had.
Another symptom of revival, a sign of rebellion against the vileness of Italian social life, is given us in satire
, particularly that of Salvator Rosa
and Alessandro Tassoni
. Rosa, born in 1615 near Naples, was a painter, a musician and a poet. As a poet he mourned the sad condition of his country, and gave vent to his feeling (as another satire-writer, Giuseppe Giusti
, said) in generosi rabbuffi. He was a precursor of the patriotic literature that inaugurated the revival of the 18th century. Tassoni showed independent judgment in the midst of universal servility, and his Secchia Rapita proved that he was an eminent writer. This is an heroic comic poem, which is at the same time an epic and a personal satire. He was bold enough to attack the Spaniards in his Filippiche, in which he urged Duke Carlo Emanuele of Savoy to persist in the war against them.
in his Coltivazione, by Girolamo Baruffaldi in the Canapajo, by Rucellai in Le api, by Bartolomeo Lorenzi in the Coltivazione de' monti, and by Giambattista Spolverini in the Coltivazione del riso.
, and his successors. These princes were influenced by philosophers, who in their turn felt the influence of a general movement of ideas at large in many parts of Europe, sometimes called The Enlightenment.
showed the awakening of historical consciousness in Italy. In his Scienza nuova, he investigated the laws governing the progress of the human race, and according to which events develop. From the psychological study of man he tried to infer the comune natura delle nazioni, i.e., the universal laws of history, by which civilizations rise, flourish and fall. From the same scientific spirit that inspired Vico came a different kind of investigation, that of the sources of Italian civil and literary history.
Lodovico Antonio Muratori, after having collected in his Rerum Italicarum scriptores the chronicle
s, biographies, letters and diaries of Italian history from 500 to 1500, and having discussed the most obscure historical questions in the Antiquitates Italicae medii aevi, wrote the Annali d'Italia, minutely narrating facts derived from authentic sources. Muratori's associates in his historical research were Scipione Maffei of Verona and Apostolo Zeno
of Venice. In his Verona illustrata Maffei left a treasure of learning that was also an excellent historical monograph. Zeno added much to the erudition of literary history, both in his Dissertazioni Vossiane and in his notes to the Biblioteca dell'eloquenza italiana of Monsignore Giusto Fontanini. Girolamo Tiraboschi
and Count Giovanni Maria Mazzuchelli of Brescia devoted themselves to literary history.
While the new spirit of the times led to the investigation of historical sources, it also encouraged inquiry into the mechanism of economic and social laws. Francesco Galiani wrote on currency; Gaetano Filangieri
wrote a Scienza della legislazione. Cesare Beccaria, in his Trattato dei delitti e delle pene, made a contribution to the reform of the penal system and promoted the abolition of torture
.
and Metastasio
(the Arcadian name for Pietro Trapassi, a native of Rome) had endeavoured to make melodrama
and reason compatible. Metastasio gave fresh expression to the affections, a natural turn to the dialogue and some interest to the plot; if he had not fallen into constant unnatural overrefinement and mawkishness, and into frequent anachronism
s, he might have been considered the first dramatic reformer of the 18th century.
, a Venetian, overcame resistance from the old popular form of comedy, with the masks of pantalone
, of the doctor, harlequin
, Brighella
, etc., and created the comedy of character, following Molière
's example. Goldoni's characters are often superficial, but he wrote lively dialogue. He produced over 150 comedies, and had no time to polish and perfect his works; but for a comedy of character we must go straight from Machiavelli's Mandragola to him. Goldoni's dramatic aptitude is illustrated by the fact that he took nearly all his types from Venetian society, yet managed to give them an inexhaustible variety. Many of his comedies were written in Venetian dialect
.
. Born in a Lombard
village in 1729, he was educated at Milan, and as a youth was known among the Arcadian poets by the name of Darisbo Elidonio. Even as an Arcadian, Parini showed originality. In a collection of poems he published at twenty-three years of age, under the name of Ripano Eupilino, the poet shows his faculty of taking his scenes from real life, and in his satirical pieces he exhibits a spirit of outspoken opposition to his own times. These poems, though derivative, indicate a resolute determination to challenge the literary conventionalities. Improving on the poems of his youth, he showed himself an innovator in his lyrics, rejecting at once Petrarchism, Secentismo and Arcadia, the three maladies that he thought had weakened Italian art in the preceding centuries. In the Odi the satirical note is already heard, but it comes out more strongly in Del giorno, in which he imagines himself to be teaching a young Milanese patrician all the habits and ways of gallant life; he shows up all its ridiculous frivolities, and with delicate irony unmasks the futilities of aristocratic habits. Dividing the day into four parts, the Mattino, the Mezzogiorno, the Vespero, and the Notte, he describes the trifles of which they were made up, and the book thus assumes major social and historical value. As an artist, going straight back to classical forms, aspiring to imitate Virgil and Dante, he opened the way to the school of Vittorio Alfieri
, Ugo Foscolo
and Vincenzo Monti
. As a work of art, the Giorno is wonderful for its delicate irony. The verse has new harmonies; sometimes it is a little hard and broken, as a protest against the Arcadian monotony.
. In the second half of the 18th century the Italian language was specially full of French expressions. There was great indifference about fitness, still more about elegance of style. Prose needed to be restored for the sake of national dignity, and it was believed that this could not be done except by going back to the writers of the 14th century, to the aurei trecentisti, as they were called, or else to the classics of Italian literature. One of the promoters of the new school was Antonio Cesari of Verona, who republished ancient authors, and brought out a new edition, with additions, of the Vocabolario della Crusca. He wrote a dissertation Sopra lo stato presente della lingua italiana, and endeavoured to establish the supremacy of Tuscan and of the three great writers, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. In accordance with that principle he wrote several books, taking pains to copy the trecentisti as closely as possible. But patriotism in Italy has always had something municipal in it; so to this Tuscan supremacy, proclaimed and upheld by Cesari, there was opposed a Lombard school, which would know nothing of Tuscan, and with Dante's De vulgari eloquentia
returned to the idea of the lingua illustre.
This was an old question, largely and bitterly argued in the Cinquecento (16th century) by Varchi, Muzio, Lodovico Castelvetro
, Speroni
, and others. Now the question was raised afresh. At the head of the Lombard school were Monti and his son-in-law Count Giulio Perticari. This caused Monti to write Pro pasta di alcune correzioni ed aggiunte al vocabolario della Crusca, in which he attacked the Tuscanism of the Crusca, but in a graceful and easy style, so as to form a prose that is one of the most beautiful in Italian literature. Perticari, whose intellect was inferior, narrowed and exasperated the question in two treatises, Degli scrittori del Trecento and Dell'amor patrio di Dante. The dispute about language took its place beside literary and political disputes, and all Italy took part in it: Basilio Puoti at Naples, Paolo Costa
in the Romagna
, Marc Antonio Parenti at Modena
, Salvatore Betti at Rome, Giovanni Gherardini in Lombardy, Luigi Fornaciari at Lucca, and Vincenzo Nannucci at Florence.
A patriot, a classicist and a purist all at once was Pietro Giordani
, born in 1774; he was almost a compendium of the literary movement of the time. His whole life was a battle for liberty. Learned in Greek and Latin authors, and in the Italian trecentisti, he left only a few writings, but they were carefully elaborated in point of style, and his prose was greatly admired in its time. Giordani closes the literary epoch of the classicists.
's satire was less elevated, but directed towards the same end as Parini's. In his Osservatore, something like Joseph Addison
's Spectator, in his Gazzetta veneta, and in the Mondo morale, by means of allegories and novelties he hit the vices with a delicate touch, introducing a practical moral. Gozzi's satire has some slight resemblance in style to Lucian
's. Gozzi's prose is graceful and lively, but imitates the writers of the 14th century. Another satirical writer of the first half of the 18th century was Giuseppe Baretti of Turin. In a journal called the Frusta letteraria he mercilessly criticized the works then being published in Italy. He had learnt much by travelling; his long stay in Britain had contributed to the independent character of his mind. The Frusta was the first book of independent criticism directed particularly against the Arcadians and the pedants.
In 1782 was born Giambattista Niccolini. In literature he was a classicist; in politics he was a Ghibelline, a rare exception in Guelph
Florence, his birthplace. In imitating Aeschylus
, as well as in writing the Discorsi sulla tragedia greca, and on the Sublime Michelangelo, Niccolini displayed his passionate devotion to ancient literature. In his tragedies he set himself free from the excessive rigidity of Alfieri, and partly approached the English and German tragic authors. He nearly always chose political subjects, striving to keep alive in his compatriots the love of liberty. Such are Nabucco
, Antonio Foscarini, Giovanni da Procida
, Lodovico il Moro and others. He assailed papal Rome in Arnaldo da Brescia, a long tragic piece, not suited for acting, and epic rather than dramatic. Niccolini's tragedies show a rich lyric vein rather than dramatic genius. He has the merit of having vindicated liberal ideas, and of having opened a new path to Italian tragedy.
Carlo Botta
, born in 1766, was a spectator of French spoliation in Italy and of the overbearing rule of Napoleon. He wrote a History of Italy from 1789 to 1814; and later continued Guicciardini's History up to 1789. He wrote after the manner of the Latin authors, trying to imitate Livy, putting together long and sonorous periods in a style that aimed at being like Boccaccio's, caring little about what constitutes the critical material of history, only intent on declaiming his academic prose for his country's benefit. Botta wanted to be classical in a style that could no longer be so, and hence he failed completely to attain his literary goal. His fame is only that of a man of a noble and patriotic heart. Not so bad as the two histories of Italy is that of the Guerra dell'indipendenza americana.
Close to Botta comes Pietro Colletta
, a Neapolitan born nine years after him. He also in his Storia del reame di Napoli dal 1734 al 1825 had the idea of defending the independence and liberty of Italy in a style borrowed from Tacitus
; and he succeeded rather better than Botta. He has a rapid, brief, nervous style, which makes his book attractive reading. But it is said that Pietro Giordani
and Gino Capponi
corrected it for him. Lazzaro Papi of Lucca, author of the Commentari della rivoluzione francese dal 1789 al 1814, was not altogether unlike Botta and Colletta. He also was an historian in the classical style, and treats his subject with patriotic feeling; but as an artist he perhaps excels the other two.
of 1789 gave a special direction to Italian literature in the second half of the 18th century. Love of liberty and desire for equality created a literature aimed at national objects, seeking to improve the condition of the country by freeing it from the double yoke of political and religious despotism. The Italians who aspired to political redemption believed it inseparable from an intellectual revival, and thought that this could only be effected by a reunion with ancient classicism. This was a repetition of what had occurred in the first half of the 15th century.
. He worshipped the Greek and Roman idea of popular liberty in arms against tyranny. He took the subjects of his tragedies from the history of these nations and made his ancient characters talk like revolutionists of his time. The Arcadian school, with its verbosity and triviality, was rejected. His aim was to be brief, concise, strong and bitter, to aim at the sublime as opposed to the lowly and pastoral. He saved literature from Arcadian vacuities, leading it towards a national end, and armed himself with patriotism and classicism.
was a patriot too, but in his own way. He had no one deep feeling that ruled him, or rather the mobility of his feelings is his characteristic; but each of these was a new form of patriotism that took the place of an old one. He saw danger to his country in the French Revolution, and wrote the Pellegrino apostolico, the Bassvilliana and the Feroniade; Napoleon's victories caused him to write the Pronreteo and the Musagonia; in his Fanatismo and his Superstizione he attacked the papacy; afterwards he sang the praises of the Austria
ns. Thus every great event made him change his mind, with a readiness that might seem incredible, but is easily explained. Monti was, above everything, an artist. Everything else in him was liable to change. Knowing little Greek, he succeeded in translating the Iliad in a way remarkable for its Homeric feeling, and in his Bassvilliana he is on a level with Dante. In him classical poetry seemed to revive in all its florid grandeur.
Ugo Foscolo
was an eager patriot, inspired by classical models. The Lettere di Jacopo Ortis, inspired by Goethe
's Werther
, are a love story with a mixture of patriotism; they contain a violent protest against the Treaty of Campo Formio
, and an outburst from Foscolo's own heart about an unhappy love-affair of his. His passions were sudden and violent. To one of these passions Ortis owed its origin, and it is perhaps the best and most sincere of all his writings. He is still sometimes pompous and rhetorical, but less so than, for example, in the lectures Dell'origine e dell'ufficio della letteratura. On the whole, Foscolo's prose is turgid and affected, and reflects the character of a man who always tried to pose in dramatic attitudes. This was indeed the defect of the Napoleonic epoch; there was a horror of anything common, simple, natural; everything must assume some heroic shape. In Foscolo this tendency was excessive. The Sepolcri, which is his best poem, was prompted by high feeling, and the mastery of versification shows wonderful art. There are most obscure passages in it, where it seems even the author did not form a clear idea. He left incomplete three hymns to the Graces
, in which he sang of beauty as the source of courtesy, of all high qualities and of happiness. Among his prose works a high place belongs to his translation of the Sentimental Journey
of Laurence Sterne
, a writer by whom Foscolo was deeply affected. He went as an exile to England, and died there. He wrote for English readers some Essays on Petrarch and on the texts of the Decamerone and of Dante, which are remarkable for when they were written, and which may have initiated a new kind of literary criticism in Italy. Foscolo is still greatly admired, and not without reason. The men who made the revolution of 1848 were brought up on his work.
The romantic school had as its organ the Conciliatore established in 1818 at Milan, on the staff of which were Silvio Pellico
, Lodovico di Breme
, Giovile Scalvini, Tommaso Grossi
, Giovanni Berchet
, Samuele Biava, and Alessandro Manzoni
. All were influenced by the ideas that, especially in Germany, constituted the movement called Romanticism
. In Italy the course of literary reform took another direction.
came to him from Sir Walter Scott
, but Manzoni succeeded in something more than an historical novel in the narrow meaning of that word; he created an eminently realistic work of art. The reader's attention is entirely fixed on the powerful objective creation of the characters. From the greatest to the least they have a wonderful verisimilitude. Manzoni is able to unfold a character in all particulars and to follow it through its different phases. Don Abbondio and Renzo are as perfect as Azzeccagarbugli and Il Sarto. Manzoni dives down into the innermost recesses of the human heart, and draws from it the most subtle psychological reality. In this his greatness lies, which was recognized first by his companion in genius, Goethe. As a poet too he had gleams of genius, especially in the Napoleonic ode, Il Cinque Maggio, and where he describes human affections, as in some stanzas of the Inni and in the chorus of the Adelchi.
The great poet of the age was Giacomo Leopardi
, born thirteen years after Manzoni at Recanati
, of a patrician family. He became so familiar with Greek authors that he used afterwards to say that the Greek mode of thought was more clear and living to his mind than the Latin or even the Italian. Solitude, sickness, and domestic tyranny prepared him for profound melancholy. He passed into complete religious scepticism, from which he sought rest in art. Everything is terrible and grand in his poems, which are the most agonizing cry in modern literature, uttered with a solemn quietness that at once elevates and terrifies us. He was also an admirable prose writer. In his Operette Morali—dialogues and discourses marked by a cold and bitter smile at human destinies that freezes the reader—the clearness of style, the simplicity of language and the depth of conception are such that perhaps he is not only the greatest lyrical poet since Dante, but also one of the most perfect writers of prose that Italian literature has had.
, a remarkable treatise by Manzoni himself, Sopra alcuni punti della storia longobardica in Italia, and the very fine history of the Vespri siciliani
by Michele Amari
. Alongside the great artists Leopardi and Manzoni, alongside the learned scholars, there was also in the first half of the 19th century a patriotic literature. Vieusseux had a distinct political object when in 1820 he established the monthly review Antologia. His Archivio storico italiano (1842) was, under a different form, a continuation of the Antologia, which was suppressed in 1833 owing to the action of the Russian government. Florence was in those days the asylum of all the Italian exiles, and these exiles met and shook hands in Vieusseux's rooms, where there was more literary than political talk, but where one thought and one only animated all minds, the thought of Italy.
The literary movement that preceded and was contemporary with the political revolution of 1848 may be said to be represented by four writers - Giuseppe Giusti
, Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi
, Vincenzo Gioberti
and Cesare Balbo
. Giusti wrote epigram
matic satires in popular language. In incisive phrases he scourged the enemies of Italy. He was a telling political writer, but a mediocre poet. Guerrazzi had a great reputation and great influence, but his historical novels, though avidly read before 1848, were soon forgotten. Gioberti, a powerful polemic
al writer, had a noble heart and a great mind; his philosophical works are now as good as dead, but the Primato morale e civile degli Italiani will last as an important document of the times, and the Gesuita moderno is the most tremendous indictment of the Jesuits ever written. Balbo was an earnest student of history, and made history useful for politics. Like Gioberti in his first period, Balbo was zealous for the civil papacy, and for a federation of the Italian states presided over by it. His Sommario della storia d'Italia is an excellent epitome.
After the Risorgimento the political literature becomes less important. The first part of this period is characterized by two divergent trends of literature that both opposed Romanticism.
The first trend is the Scapigliatura
, that attempted to rejuvenate Italian culture through foreign influences, notably from the poetry of Charles Baudelaire
and the works of American writer Edgar Allan Poe
. The second trend is represented by Giosuè Carducci
, a dominant figure of this period, fiery opponent of the Romantics and restorer of the ancient metres and spirit who, great as a poet, was scarcely less distinguished as a literary critic and historian.
The influence of Emile Zola
is evident in the Verismo
. Luigi Capuana
but most notably Giovanni Verga
and were its main exponents and the authors of a verismo manifesto. Capuana published the novel Giacinta, generally regarded as the "manifesto" of Italian verismo. Unlike French naturalism, which was based on positivistic
ideals, Verga and Capuana rejected claims of the scientific nature and social usefulness of the movement.
Instead Decadentism was based mainly on the Decadent
style of some artists and authors of France
and England
about the end of the 19th century. The main authors of the Italian version were Antonio Fogazzaro
, Giovanni Pascoli
, best known by his Myricae and Poemetti, and Gabriele D'Annunzio
. Although differing stylistically, they championed idiosyncrasy and irrationality against scientific rationalism. Gabriele d'Annunzio produced original work in poetry, drama and fiction, of extraordinary quality. He began with some lyrics distinguished no less by their exquisite beauty of form than by their licence, and these characteristics reappeared in a long series of poems, plays and novels.
Edmondo de Amicis
is better known for his moral works and travels than for his fiction. Of the women novelists, Matilde Serao
and Grazia Deledda
became popular.
and Aleardo Aleardi
continue romantic traditions. Other classical poets are Giuseppe Chiarini, Arturo Graf
, Guido Mazzoni
and Giovanni Marradi
, of whom the two last named may perhaps be regarded as special disciples of Carducci. Enrico Panzacchi was at heart still a romantic. Olindo Guerrini
(who wrote under the pseudonym of Lorenzo Stecchetti) is the chief representative of verismo in poetry, and, though his early works obtained a succès de scandale, he is the author of many lyrics of intrinsic value. Alfredo Baccelli and Mario Rapisardi
are epic poets of distinction. Felice Cavallotti
is the author of the stirring Marcia de Leonida.
Among dialect writers, the great Roman poet Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli
found numerous successors, such as Renato Fucini (Pisa) and Cesare Pascarella
(Rome). Among the women poets, Ada Negri
, with her socialistic Fatalità and Tempeste, achieved a great reputation; and others, such as Annie Vivanti, were highly esteemed in Italy.
Among the dramatists, Pietro Cossa
in tragedy, Ferdinando Martini
, and Paolo Ferrari
in comedy, represent the older schools. More modern methods were adopted by Giuseppe Giacosa
.
In fiction, the historical romance fell into disfavour, though Emilio de Marchi
produced some good examples. The novel of intrigue was cultivated by Salvatore Farina
.
Important early 20th century writers include Italo Svevo
, the author of La coscienza di Zeno (1923), and Luigi Pirandello
(winner of the 1934 Nobel Prize in Literature), who explored the shifting nature of reality in his prose fiction and such plays as Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore (Six Characters in Search of an Author
, 1921)
Poetry was represented by the Crepuscolari
and the Futurists
; the foremost member of the latter group was Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
. Leading Modernist
poets from later in the century include Salvatore Quasimodo
(winner of the 1959 Nobel Prize in Literature), Giuseppe Ungaretti
, Umberto Saba
, who won fame for his collection of poems Il canzoniere, and Eugenio Montale
(winner of the 1975 Nobel Prize in Literature
). They were described by critics as "hermeticists
".
Neorealism
was developed by Alberto Moravia
(e.g. Il conformista
, 1951), Primo Levi
, who documented his experiences in Auschwitz in Se questo è un uomo (If This Is a Man
, 1947) and other books, Cesare Pavese
(e.g. The Moon and the Bonfires (1949), Corrado Alvaro
and Elio Vittorini
.
Dino Buzzati
wrote fantastic and allegorical fiction that critics have compared to Kafka
and Beckett
. Italo Calvino
also ventured into fantasy in the trilogy I nostri antenati (Our Ancestors
, 1952–1959) and post-modernism in the novel Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore... (If on a Winter's Night a Traveller
, 1979).
Carlo Emilio Gadda
was the author of the experimental Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana (1957). Pier Paolo Pasolini
was a controversial poet and novelist.
Giuseppe di Lampedusa wrote only one novel, Il Gattopardo
(The Leopard, 1958), but it is one of the most famous in Italian literature; it deals with the life of a Sicilian
nobleman in the 19th century. Leonardo Sciascia
came to public attention with his novel Il giorno della civetta
(The Day of the Owl, 1961), exposing the extent of Mafia
corruption in modern Sicilian society. More recently, Umberto Eco
became internationally successful with the Medieval detective story Il nome della rosa (The Name of the Rose
, 1980).
English students are referred to John Addington Symonds
's Renaissance in Italy (especially, but not exclusively, vols. iv. and v.; new ed., London, 1902), and to Richard Garnett
's History of Italian Literature (London, 1898).
A Short History of Italian Literature, by J. H. Whitfield (1969, Pelican Books)
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
written in the Italian language
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, particularly within Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
. It may also refer to literature written by Italians
Italian people
The Italian people are an ethnic group that share a common Italian culture, ancestry and speak the Italian language as a mother tongue. Within Italy, Italians are defined by citizenship, regardless of ancestry or country of residence , and are distinguished from people...
or in Italy in other languages spoken in Italy, often languages that are closely related to modern Italian.
Early medieval Latin literature
Western Roman Empire
The Western Roman Empire was the western half of the Roman Empire after its division by Diocletian in 285; the other half of the Roman Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire, commonly referred to today as the Byzantine Empire....
declined, the Latin tradition was kept alive by writers such as Cassiodorus
Cassiodorus
Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator , commonly known as Cassiodorus, was a Roman statesman and writer, serving in the administration of Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths. Senator was part of his surname, not his rank.- Life :Cassiodorus was born at Scylletium, near Catanzaro in...
, Boethius
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boëthius, commonly called Boethius was a philosopher of the early 6th century. He was born in Rome to an ancient and important family which included emperors Petronius Maximus and Olybrius and many consuls. His father, Flavius Manlius Boethius, was consul in 487 after...
, and Symmachus
Quintus Aurelius Symmachus
Quintus Aurelius Symmachus was a Roman statesman, orator, and man of letters. He held the offices of governor of Africa in 373, urban prefect of Rome in 384 and 385, and consul in 391...
. The liberal arts flourished at Ravenna
Ravenna
Ravenna is the capital city of the Province of Ravenna in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy and the second largest comune in Italy by land area, although, at , it is little more than half the size of the largest comune, Rome...
under Theodoric
Theodoric the Great
Theodoric the Great was king of the Ostrogoths , ruler of Italy , regent of the Visigoths , and a viceroy of the Eastern Roman Empire...
, and the Gothic kings surrounded themselves with masters of rhetoric
Rhetoric
Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...
and of grammar
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
. Some lay schools remained in Italy, and noted scholars included Magnus Felix Ennodius
Magnus Felix Ennodius
Magnus Felix Ennodius was Bishop of Pavia in 514, and a Latin rhetorician and poet.He was one of four fifth to sixth-century Gallo-Roman aristocrats whose letters survive in quantity: the others are Sidonius Apollinaris, prefect of Rome in 468 and bishop of Clermont , Ruricius bishop of Limoges ...
(a pagan poet), Arator
Arator
Arator was a sixth century Christian poet from Liguria in northwestern Italy. His best known work, De Actibus Apostolorum, is a verse history of the Apostles.-Biography:...
, Venantius Fortunatus
Venantius Fortunatus
Venantius Honorius Clementianus Fortunatus was a Latin poet and hymnodist in the Merovingian Court, and a Bishop of the early Catholic Church. He was never canonised but was venerated as Saint Venantius Fortunatus during the Middle Ages.-Life:Venantius Fortunatus was born between 530 and 540 A.D....
, Felix the Grammarian, Peter of Pisa
Peter of Pisa
Peter of Pisa was a grammarian of the Early middle ages. He originally taught at Pavia. In 776, after the conquest of the Lombard Kingdom, Charlemagne summoned him to his court to teach Latin. Peter was a friend of Alcuin. He returned about the year 790 to Italy where he died no later than 799...
, Paulinus of Aquileia, and many others.
Italians who were interested in theology
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
gravitated towards Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. Those who remained were typically attracted by the study of Roman law
Roman law
Roman law is the legal system of ancient Rome, and the legal developments which occurred before the 7th century AD — when the Roman–Byzantine state adopted Greek as the language of government. The development of Roman law comprises more than a thousand years of jurisprudence — from the Twelve...
. This furthered the later establishment of the medieval universities of Bologna
Bologna
Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...
, Padua
Padua
Padua is a city and comune in the Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Padua and the economic and communications hub of the area. Padua's population is 212,500 . The city is sometimes included, with Venice and Treviso, in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area, having...
, Vicenza
Vicenza
Vicenza , a city in north-eastern Italy, is the capital of the eponymous province in the Veneto region, at the northern base of the Monte Berico, straddling the Bacchiglione...
, Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
, Salerno
Salerno
Salerno is a city and comune in Campania and is the capital of the province of the same name. It is located on the Gulf of Salerno on the Tyrrhenian Sea....
, Modena
Modena
Modena is a city and comune on the south side of the Po Valley, in the Province of Modena in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy....
and Parma
Parma
Parma is a city in the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna famous for its ham, its cheese, its architecture and the fine countryside around it. This is the home of the University of Parma, one of the oldest universities in the world....
. These helped to spread culture, and prepared the ground in which the new vernacular literature
Vernacular literature
Vernacular literature is literature written in the vernacular—the speech of the "common people".In the European tradition, this effectively means literature not written in Latin...
developed. Classical traditions did not disappear, and affection for the memory of Rome, a preoccupation with politics, and a preference for practice over theory combined to influence the development of Italian literature.
Trovatori
The earliest vernacular literary tradition in Italy was in Occitan, a language spoken in parts of northwest Italy. A tradition of vernacular lyric poetryLyric poetry
Lyric poetry is a genre of poetry that expresses personal and emotional feelings. In the ancient world, lyric poems were those which were sung to the lyre. Lyric poems do not have to rhyme, and today do not need to be set to music or a beat...
arose in Poitou
Poitou
Poitou was a province of west-central France whose capital city was Poitiers.The region of Poitou was called Thifalia in the sixth century....
in the early twelfth century and spread south and east, eventually reaching Italy by the end of the century. The first troubadours (trovatori in Italian), as these Occitan lyric poets were called, to practise in Italy were from elsewhere, but the high aristocracy of Lombardy
Lombardy
Lombardy is one of the 20 regions of Italy. The capital is Milan. One-sixth of Italy's population lives in Lombardy and about one fifth of Italy's GDP is produced in this region, making it the most populous and richest region in the country and one of the richest in the whole of Europe...
was ready to patronise them. It was not long before native Italians adopted Occitan as a vehicle for poetic expression, though the term Occitan did not really appear until the year 1300, "langue d'oc" or "provenzale" being the preferred expressions.
Among the early patrons of foreign troubadours were especially the House of Este, the Da Romano, House of Savoy
House of Savoy
The House of Savoy was formed in the early 11th century in the historical Savoy region. Through gradual expansion, it grew from ruling a small county in that region to eventually rule the Kingdom of Italy from 1861 until the end of World War II, king of Croatia and King of Armenia...
, and the Malaspina. Azzo VI of Este
Azzo VI of Este
Azzo VI , known as Azzolino, was the Marquis of Este from the death of his father, Azzo V, in 1190 until his death...
entertained the troubadours Aimeric de Belenoi
Aimeric de Belenoi
Aimeric de Belenoi was a Gascon troubadour. At least fifteen of his songs survive and there are seven more which were attributed to him in some medieval manuscripts....
, Aimeric de Peguilhan
Aimeric de Peguilhan
Aimeric or Aimery de Peguilhan, Peguillan, or Pégulhan was a troubadour , born in Peguilhan the son of a cloth merchant....
, Albertet de Sestaro
Albertet de Sestaro
Albertet de Sestaró, Sestairó, Sestairon, Sestarron, Sisteron, or Terascon was a Provençal jongleur and troubadour from the Gapençais . Of his total oeuvre, twenty three poems survive. "Albertet" or "Albertetz" is the Occitan diminutive of Albert...
, and Peire Raimon de Tolosa
Peire Raimon de Tolosa
Peire Raimon de Tolosa or Toloza was a troubadour from the merchant class of Toulouse. He is variously referred to as lo Viellz and lo Gros , though these are thought by some to refer to two different persons. On the other hand, lo Viellz could refer to his being of an early generation of...
from Occitania
Occitania
Occitania , also sometimes lo País d'Òc, "the Oc Country"), is the region in southern Europe where Occitan was historically the main language spoken, and where it is sometimes still used, for the most part as a second language...
and Rambertino Buvalelli
Rambertino Buvalelli
Rambertino di Guido Buvalelli , a Bolognese judge, statesman, diplomat, and poet, was the earliest of the podestà-troubadours of thirteenth-century Lombardy. He served at one time or other as podestà of Brescia, Milan, Parma, Mantua, Genoa, and Verona. Ten of his Occitan poems survive, but none...
from Bologna
Bologna
Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...
, one of the earliest Italian troubadours. The influence of these poets on the native Italians got the attention of Aimeric de Peguilhan in 1220. Then at the Malaspina court, he penned a poem attacking a quintet of Occitan poets at the court of Manfred III of Saluzzo
Manfred III of Saluzzo
Manfred III was the third marquess of Saluzzo, from 1215 to his death. He was the son of Boniface of Saluzzo and Maria di Torres of Sassari . Since his father died in 1212, he succeeded his grandfather Manfred II as marquess on the latter's death in 1215. His paternal grandmother Azalaïs or...
: Peire Guilhem de Luserna
Peire Guilhem de Luserna
Peire Guilhem de Luserna was a Piedmontese troubadour.Peire's identity as an Italian has been up for debate since the 19th century. "Luserna" more probably refers to Luserna in the Piedmont, rich and populous in Peire’s time, a town on the left bank of the Pellice lying on the road into the...
, Perceval Doria
Perceval Doria
Perceval Doria was a Genoese naval and military leader in the thirteenth century. A Ghibelline, he was a partisan of the Hohenstaufen in Italy and served the Emperor Frederick II and Manfred of Sicily as vicar of Romagna, the March of Ancona, and the Duchy of Spoleto.He was probably a member of...
, Nicoletto da Torino
Nicoletto da Torino
Nicoletto da Torino was a Piedmontese jongleur and troubadour of the first half of the thirteenth century, probably from Turin, though some believe that to be his father's name...
, Chantarel, and Trufarel. Aimeric apparently feared the rise of native competitors.
The margraves of Montferrat—Boniface I, William VI, and Boniface II—were patrons of Occitan poetry. Peire de la Mula
Peire de la Mula
Peire de la Mula was an Italian troubadour. Of his writings a pair of couplets and one sirventes are all that survive. According to his vida, he was a joglars and trobaire who stayed for a long time in Montferrat, Cortemilia, and the Piedmont at the court of Ottone del Carretto...
stayed at the Montferrat court around 1200 and Raimbaut de Vaqueiras
Raimbaut de Vaqueiras
Raimbaut de Vaqueiras was a Provençal troubadour and, later in his life, knight. His life was spent mainly in Italian courts until 1203, when he joined the Fourth Crusade....
spent most of his career as court poet and close friend of Boniface I. Raimbaut, along with several other troubadours, including Elias Cairel, followed Boniface on the Fourth Crusade
Fourth Crusade
The Fourth Crusade was originally intended to conquer Muslim-controlled Jerusalem by means of an invasion through Egypt. Instead, in April 1204, the Crusaders of Western Europe invaded and conquered the Christian city of Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Roman Empire...
and established, however briefly, Italo-Occitan literature in Thessalonica.
Azzo VI's daughter, Beatrice
Beatrice d'Este (died 1226)
Blessed Beatrice d'Este was the daughter of Azzo VI of the Este family by his second wife, Sophia Eleanor, daughter of Humbert III, Count of Savoy. She was the aunt of Saint Beatrice d'Este....
, was an object of the early poets "courtly love
Courtly love
Courtly love was a medieval European conception of nobly and chivalrously expressing love and admiration. Generally, courtly love was secret and between members of the nobility. It was also generally not practiced between husband and wife....
". Azzo's son, Azzo VII, hosted Elias Cairel
Elias Cairel
Elias Cairel was a troubadour of international fame. Born in Sarlat in the Périgord, he first travelled with the Fourth Crusade and settled down in the Kingdom of Thessalonica at the court of Boniface of Montferrat before moving back to Western Europe, where he sojourned in both Spain...
and Arnaut Catalan
Arnaut Catalan
Arnaut Catalan was a troubadour active in the Languedoc, Catalonia, and Castile. He left behind five cansos, three tensos, and one religious song....
. Rambertino was named podestà
Podestà
Podestà is the name given to certain high officials in many Italian cities, since the later Middle Ages, mainly as Chief magistrate of a city state , but also as a local administrator, the representative of the Emperor.The term derives from the Latin word potestas, meaning power...
of Genoa
Genoa
Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....
between in 1218 and it was probably during his three-year tenure there that he introduced Occitan lyric poetry to the city, which later developed a flourishing Occitan literary culture.
Among the Genoese troubadours were Lanfranc Cigala
Lanfranc Cigala
Lanfranc Cigala was a Genoese nobleman, knight, judge, and man of letters of the mid thirteenth century. He remains one of the most famous Occitan troubadours of Lombardy. Thirty-two of his poems survive, dealing with Crusading, heresy, papal power, peace in Christendom, and loyalty in love...
, a judge; Calega Panzan
Calega Panzan
Calega Panzano, Panzan, or Panza was a Genoese merchant, politician and man of letters.Calega probably belonged to the Genoese Panzano family. He had a brother named Corrado...
, a merchant; Jacme Grils
Jacme Grils
Jacme or Iacme Gril was a Genoese troubadour of the mid-thirteenth century. He wrote two tensos which survive, one with Lanfranc Cigala and another one with Simon Doria....
, also a judge; and Bonifaci Calvo
Bonifaci Calvo
Bonifaci, Bonifatz, or Bonifacio Calvo was a Genoese troubadour of the late thirteenth century. The only biographical account of his life is found in the vida of Bertolome Zorzi. He is, however, the most notable Genoese troubadour after Lanfranc Cigala...
, a knight. Genoa was also the place of genesis of the podestà-troubadour phenomenon: men who served in several cities as podestàs on behalf of either the Guelph or Ghibelline
Guelphs and Ghibellines
The Guelphs and Ghibellines were factions supporting the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor, respectively, in central and northern Italy. During the 12th and 13th centuries, the split between these two parties was a particularly important aspect of the internal policy of the Italian city-states...
party and who wrote political poetry in Occitan. Rambertino Buvalelli was the first podestà-troubadour and in Genoa there were the Guelphs Luca Grimaldi
Luca Grimaldi
Luca Grimaldi was a Genoese troubadour and Guelph politician and diplomat. None of his poetic work survives.Jean de Nostredame listed one Luco ou Lucas de Grymaud, natif de Grymauld en Provence as a Provençal troubadour, and speculated that his birthplace may also have been Gennes. However, it is...
and Luchetto Gattilusio
Luchetto Gattilusio
Luchetto Gattilusio was a Genoese statesman, diplomat, and man of letters. As a Guelph he played an important role in wider Lombard politics and as a troubadour in the Occitan language he composed three poems descriptive of his times.-Poetry:...
and the Ghibellines Perceval
Perceval Doria
Perceval Doria was a Genoese naval and military leader in the thirteenth century. A Ghibelline, he was a partisan of the Hohenstaufen in Italy and served the Emperor Frederick II and Manfred of Sicily as vicar of Romagna, the March of Ancona, and the Duchy of Spoleto.He was probably a member of...
and Simon Doria
Simon Doria
Simon Doria was a Genoese statesman and man of letters, of the important Doria family. As a troubadour he wrote six surviving tensos, four with Lanfranc Cigala, one incomplete with Jacme Grils, and another with a certain Alberto...
.
The Occitan tradition in Italy was more broad than simply Genoa or even Lombardy. Bertolome Zorzi
Bertolome Zorzi
Bertolome Zorzi was a Venetian nobleman, merchant, and troubadour. Like all Lombard troubadours, he composed in the Occitan language. Eighteen of his works survive....
was from Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
. Girardo Cavallazzi was a Ghibelline from Novara
Novara
Novara is the capital city of the province of Novara in the Piedmont region in northwest Italy, to the west of Milan. With c. 105,000 inhabitants, it is the second most populous city in Piedmont after Turin. It is an important crossroads for commercial traffic along the routes from Milan to Turin...
. Nicoletto da Torino
Nicoletto da Torino
Nicoletto da Torino was a Piedmontese jongleur and troubadour of the first half of the thirteenth century, probably from Turin, though some believe that to be his father's name...
was probably from Turin
Turin
Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...
. In Ferrara
Ferrara
Ferrara is a city and comune in Emilia-Romagna, northern Italy, capital city of the Province of Ferrara. It is situated 50 km north-northeast of Bologna, on the Po di Volano, a branch channel of the main stream of the Po River, located 5 km north...
the Duecento was represented by Ferrari Trogni. Terramagnino da Pisa
Terramagnino da Pisa
Terramagnino da Pisa was a Pisan author in Italian and Occitan of the second half of the 13th century. In Italian he wrote lyric poetry and in Occitan he penned the famous Doctrina de cort, basically a condensed form of the Razos de trobar of Raimon Vidal...
, from Pisa
Pisa
Pisa is a city in Tuscany, Central Italy, on the right bank of the mouth of the River Arno on the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa...
, wrote the Doctrina de cort as a manual of courtly love. He was one of the late 13th-century figures who wrote in both Occitan and Italian. Paolo Lanfranchi da Pistoia
Paolo Lanfranchi da Pistoia
Paolo Lanfranchi da Pistoia or Pistoja was a noted Italian poet who wrote in both the Italian and Occitan languages. He is thus sometimes described as a troubadour. A native of Pistoia—he was a major cultural figure of the Duecento there—his sonnets have been praised for their...
, from Pistoia
Pistoia
Pistoia is a city and comune in the Tuscany region of Italy, the capital of a province of the same name, located about 30 km west and north of Florence and is crossed by the Ombrone Pistoiese, a tributary of the River Arno.-History:...
, was another. Both wrote sonnet
Sonnet
A sonnet is one of several forms of poetry that originate in Europe, mainly Provence and Italy. A sonnet commonly has 14 lines. The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song" or "little sound"...
s, but while Terramagnino was a critic of the Tuscan school, Paolo has been alleged as a member. On the other hand, he has much in common with the Sicilians
Sicilian School
The Sicilian School was a small community of Sicilian, and to a lesser extent, mainland Italian poets gathered around Frederick II, most of them belonging to his court, the Magna Curia. Headed by Giacomo da Lentini, they produced more than three-hundred poems of courtly love between 1230 and 1266,...
and the Dolce Stil Novo
Dolce Stil Novo
Dolce Stil Novo , or stilnovismo, is the name given to the most important literary movement of 13th century in Italy. Influenced by both Sicilian and Tuscan poetry, its main theme is Love . Gentilezza and Amore are indeed topoi in the major works of the period...
.
Perhaps the most important aspect of the Italian troubadour phenomenon was the production of chansonnier
Chansonnier
A chansonnier is a manuscript or printed book which contains a collection of chansons, or polyphonic and monophonic settings of songs, hence literally "song-books," although some manuscripts are so called even though they preserve the text but not the music A chansonnier is a manuscript or...
s and the composition of vidas
Vida (Occitan literary form)
Vida is the usual term for a brief prose biography, written in Old Occitan, of a troubadour or trobairitz.The word vida means "life" in Occitan languages. In the chansonniers, the manuscript collections of medieval troubadour poetry, the works of a particular author are often accompanied by a...
and razo
Razo
Raso is an islet of 8 square kilometers in the Barlavento archipelago of Cape Verde. Raso is flanked by the smaller Branco islet on the west and by São Nicolau island on its eastern side. Raso is uninhabited and is now the only home of the Raso Lark. The Brown Booby and Red-billed Tropicbird visit...
s. Uc de Saint Circ
Uc de Saint Circ
Uc de Saint Circ or Hugues de Saint Circq was a troubadour from Quercy. Uc is perhaps most significant to modern historians as the probable author of several vidas and razos of other troubadours, though only one of Bernart de Ventadorn exists under his name...
, who was associated with the Da Romano and Malaspina families, spent the last forty years of his life in Italy. He undertook to author the entire razo corpus and a great many of the vidas. The most famous and influential Italian troubadour, however, was from the small town of Goito
Goito
Goito is a comune of Lombardy, Italy, in the Province of Mantua, from which it is some 20 km, on the road to Brescia. It is situated on the right bank of the Mincio River near the bridge.-History:...
near Mantua
Mantua
Mantua is a city and comune in Lombardy, Italy and capital of the province of the same name. Mantua's historic power and influence under the Gonzaga family, made it one of the main artistic, cultural and notably musical hubs of Northern Italy and the country as a whole...
. Sordello
Sordello
Sordello da Goito or Sordel de Goit was a 13th-century Lombard troubadour, born in the municipality of Goito in the province of Mantua...
(1220s–1230s) has been praised by such later poets as Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri
Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...
, Robert Browning
Robert Browning
Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets.-Early years:...
, Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
, and Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
. He was the inventor of the hybrid genre of the sirventes-
Sirventes
The sirventes or serventes is a genre of Occitan lyric poetry used by the troubadours. In early Catalan it became a sirventesch and was imported into that language in the fourteenth century, where it developed into a unique didactic/moralistic type...
planh
Planh
The planh or plaing is a funeral lament used by the troubadours, modeled on the medieval Latin planctus. It differed from the planctus in that it was intended for a secular audience...
in 1237.
The troubadours had a connexion with the rise of a school of poetry in the Kingdom of Sicily
Kingdom of Sicily
The Kingdom of Sicily was a state that existed in the south of Italy from its founding by Roger II in 1130 until 1816. It was a successor state of the County of Sicily, which had been founded in 1071 during the Norman conquest of southern Italy...
. In 1220 Obs de Biguli
Obs de Biguli
Obs de Biguli was a troubadour from Lombardy and one of the few troubadours known by name none of whose works survive. He is mentioned by name only in a poem by Guilhem Raimon:-Sources:...
was present as a "singer" at the coronation of the Emperor Frederick II, already King of Sicily. Guillem Augier Novella
Guillem Augier Novella
Guillem Augier Novella was a troubadour from Vienne in the Dauphinois who lived most of his adulthood in Lombardy and was active as a minstrel in the early or mid thirteenth century...
before 1230 and Guilhem Figueira
Guilhem Figueira
Guillem or Guilhem Figueira or Figera was a Languedocian jongleur and troubadour from Toulouse active at the court of the Emperor Frederick II in the 1230s. He was a close associate of both Aimery de Pégulhan and Guillem Augier Novella...
thereafter were important Occitan poets at Frederick's court. Both had fled the Albigensian Crusade
Albigensian Crusade
The Albigensian Crusade or Cathar Crusade was a 20-year military campaign initiated by the Catholic Church to eliminate Catharism in Languedoc...
, like Aimeric de Peguilhan. The Crusade had devastated Languedoc
Languedoc
Languedoc is a former province of France, now continued in the modern-day régions of Languedoc-Roussillon and Midi-Pyrénées in the south of France, and whose capital city was Toulouse, now in Midi-Pyrénées. It had an area of approximately 42,700 km² .-Geographical Extent:The traditional...
and forced many troubadours of the area, whose poetry had not always been kind to the Church hierarchy, to flee to Italy, where an Italian tradition of papal criticism was begun. Protected by the emperor and the Ghibelline faction criticism of the Church establishment flourished.
Chivalric romance
The Historia de excidio Trojae, attributed to Dares PhrygiusDares Phrygius
Dares Phrygius , according to Homer, was a Trojan priest of Hephaestus. He was supposed to have been the author of an account of the destruction of Troy, and to have lived before Homer...
, claimed to be an eyewitness account of the Trojan war. It provided inspiration for writers in other countries such as Benoît de Sainte-Maure
Benoît de Sainte-Maure
Benoît de Sainte-Maure was a 12th century French poet, most probably from Sainte-Maure de Touraine near Tours, France. The Plantagenets' administrative center was located in Chinon - west of Tours....
, Herbort von Fritzlar, and Konrad von Würzburg
Konrad von Würzburg
Konrad von Würzburg was the chief German poet of the second half of the 13th century.As little is known of his life as that of any other epic poet of the age. By birth probably a native of Würzburg, he seems to have spent part of his life in Strassburg and his later years in Basel, where he died...
. While Benoît wrote in French, he took his material from a Latin history. Herbort and Konrad used a French source to make an almost original work in their own language. Guido delle Colonne
Guido delle Colonne
Guido delle Colonne was an early 13th century Sicilian writer, living at Messina, who wrote in Latin...
of Messina, one of the vernacular
Vernacular
A vernacular is the native language or native dialect of a specific population, as opposed to a language of wider communication that is not native to the population, such as a national language or lingua franca.- Etymology :The term is not a recent one...
poets of the Sicilian school, composed the Historia destructionis Troiae
Historia destructionis Troiae
Historia destructionis Troiae or Historia Troiana is a Latin prose narrative written by Guido delle Colonne, a Sicilian author, in the early 13th century. Its main source was the Old French verse romance by Benoît de Sainte-Maure, Roman de Troie...
. In his poetry Guido was an imitator of the Provençal
Provence
Provence ; Provençal: Provença in classical norm or Prouvènço in Mistralian norm) is a region of south eastern France on the Mediterranean adjacent to Italy. It is part of the administrative région of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur...
s, but in this book he converted Benoît's French romance into what sounded like serious Latin history.
Much the same thing occurred with other great legends. Qualichino of Arezzo wrote couplet
Couplet
A couplet is a pair of lines of meter in poetry. It usually consists of two lines that rhyme and have the same meter.While traditionally couplets rhyme, not all do. A poem may use white space to mark out couplets if they do not rhyme. Couplets with a meter of iambic pentameter are called heroic...
s about the legend of Alexander the Great. Europe was full of the legend of King Arthur
King Arthur
King Arthur is a legendary British leader of the late 5th and early 6th centuries, who, according to Medieval histories and romances, led the defence of Britain against Saxon invaders in the early 6th century. The details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of folklore and literary invention, and...
, but the Italians contented themselves with translating and abridging French romances. Jacobus de Voragine
Jacobus de Voragine
Blessed Jacobus de Varagine or Voragine was an Italian chronicler and archbishop of Genoa. He was the author, or more accurately the compiler, of Legenda Aurea, the Golden Legend, a collection of the legendary lives of the greater saints of the medieval church that was one of the most popular...
, while collecting his Golden Legend
Golden Legend
The Golden Legend is a collection of hagiographies by Jacobus de Voragine that became a late medieval bestseller. More than a thousand manuscripts of the text have survived, compared to twenty or so of its nearest rivals...
(1260), remained a historian. He seemed doubtful of the truthfulness of the stories he told. The intellectual life of Italy showed itself in an altogether special, positive, almost scientific form in the study of Roman law. Farfa
Farfa
Farfa is an Italian name which can refer to:*A place name in the province of the Lazio in Italy, as:** Farfa River** Farfa ** Farfa Abbey, one of the main medieval abbeys in Italy* A personal name, as:...
, Marsicano, and other scholars translated Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
, the precepts of the school of Salerno
Salerno
Salerno is a city and comune in Campania and is the capital of the province of the same name. It is located on the Gulf of Salerno on the Tyrrhenian Sea....
, and the travels of Marco Polo
Marco Polo
Marco Polo was a Venetian merchant traveler from the Venetian Republic whose travels are recorded in Il Milione, a book which did much to introduce Europeans to Central Asia and China. He learned about trading whilst his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, travelled through Asia and apparently...
, linking the classics and the Renaissance.
At the same time, epic poetry was written in a mixed language, a dialect of Italian based on French: hybrid words exhibited a treatment of sounds according to the rules of both languages, had French roots with Italian endings, and were pronounced according to Italian or Latin rules. In short, the language of the epic poetry belonged to both tongues. Examples include the chansons de geste
Chanson de geste
The chansons de geste, Old French for "songs of heroic deeds", are the epic poems that appear at the dawn of French literature. The earliest known examples date from the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, nearly a hundred years before the emergence of the lyric poetry of the trouvères and...
, Macaire
Macaire
The name "Macaire" was first documented as an Irish Saint in the Bible. It appears to have several claims of origin. It was a male name and currently is considered a male or female name...
, the Entre en Espagne written by Niccola of Padua, the Prise de Pampelune, and others. All this preceded the appearance of a purely Italian literature.
The emergence of native vernacular literature
The French and Occitan languages gradually gave way to the native Italian. Hybridism recurred, but it no longer predominated. In the Bovo d'Antona and the Rainaldo e Lesengrino the Venetian dialectVenetian language
Venetian or Venetan is a Romance language spoken as a native language by over two million people, mostly in the Veneto region of Italy, where of five million inhabitants almost all can understand it. It is sometimes spoken and often well understood outside Veneto, in Trentino, Friuli, Venezia...
is clearly felt, although the language is influenced by French forms. These writings, which Graziadio Isaia Ascoli
Graziadio Isaia Ascoli
Graziadio Isaia Ascoli was an Italian linguist.- Life and work :Ascoli was born in an Italian-speaking Jewish family in the multiethnic town of Gorizia, then part of the Austrian Empire...
has called miste (mixed), immediately preceded the appearance of purely Italian works.
There is evidence that a kind of literature already existed before the 13th century: The Ritmo cassinese
Ritmo cassinese
The Ritmo cassinese is a medieval Italian verse allegory of unresolved interpretation, told as a meeting between an Occidental and Oriental in ninety-six verses in twelve strophes of varying length...
, Ritmo di Sant'Alessio
Ritmo di Sant'Alessio
The Ritmo di Sant'Alessio or Ritmo marchigiano su Sant'Alessio is a late twelfth-century metrical vita of the legendary saint Alexius of Rome composed for public performance by an anonymous giullare. It is one of the earliest pieces of Italian literature.The cult of Alexius was mainly promoted by...
, Laudes creaturarum, Ritmo lucchese
Ritmo lucchese
The Ritmo lucchese is an anonymous vernacular poem in a Tuscan koiné. It is reckoned one of the earliest pieces of Italian literature, composed in or shortly after 1213. It records a battle between Lucca and Pisa near Massa fought in mid-January that year...
, Ritmo laurenziano, Ritmo bellunese
Ritmo bellunese
The Ritmo bellunese or Cantilena bellunese is a brief vernacular Italian passage in an anonymous fragment of a medieval Latin chronicle of events in the history of Belluno between 1183 and 1196. From circa 1198, it is the earliest securely datable text in an Italian vernacluar...
are classified by Cesare Segre
Cesare Segre
Cesare Segre is an Italian philologist, semiotician and literary critic of Jewish descent, currently the Director of the Texts and Textual Traditions Research Centre of the Institute for Advanced Studies of Pavia .He lived and studied in Turin, where he was awarded his degree in 1950, a pupil of...
, et al. as "Archaic Works" (Componimenti Arcaici): "such are labeled the first literary works in the Italian vernacular, their dates ranging from the last decades of the 12th century to the early decades of the 13th" (Segre: 1997). However, as he points out, such early literature does not yet present any uniform stylistic or linguistic traits.
This early development, however, was simultaneous in the whole peninsula, varying only in the subject matter of the art. In the north, the poems of Giacomino da Verona and Bonvicino da Riva were specially religious, and were intended to be recited to the people. They were written in a dialect of Milanese
Milanese
Milanese is the central variety of the Western Lombard language spoken in the city and province of Milan....
and Venetian; their style bore the influence of French narrative poetry. They may be considered as belonging to the "popular" kind of poetry, taking the word, however, in a broad sense. This sort of composition may have been encouraged by the old custom in the north of Italy of listening in the piazza
Piazza
A piazza is a city square in Italy, Malta, along the Dalmatian coast and in surrounding regions. The term is roughly equivalent to the Spanish plaza...
s and on the highways to the songs of the jongleur
Juggling
Juggling is a skill involving moving objects for entertainment or sport. The most recognizable form of juggling is toss juggling, in which the juggler throws objects up to catch and toss up again. This may be one object or many objects, at the same time with one or many hands. Jugglers often refer...
s. The crowds were delighted with the stories of romances, the wickedness of Macaire
Macaire
The name "Macaire" was first documented as an Irish Saint in the Bible. It appears to have several claims of origin. It was a male name and currently is considered a male or female name...
, and the misfortunes of Blanziflor
Floris and Blancheflour
Floris and Blancheflour is the name of a popular romantic story that was told in the Middle Ages in many different vernacular languages and versions. It first appears in Europe around 1160 in "aristocratic" French...
, the terrors of the Babilonia Infernale and the blessedness of the Gerusalemme celeste, and the singers of religious poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
vied with those of the chansons de geste.
Sicilian School
The year 1230 marked the beginning of the Sicilian SchoolSicilian School
The Sicilian School was a small community of Sicilian, and to a lesser extent, mainland Italian poets gathered around Frederick II, most of them belonging to his court, the Magna Curia. Headed by Giacomo da Lentini, they produced more than three-hundred poems of courtly love between 1230 and 1266,...
and of a literature showing more uniform traits. Its importance lies more in the language (the creation of the first standard Italian) than its subject, a love-song partly modeled on the Provençal poetry imported to the south by the Normans
Normans
The Normans were the people who gave their name to Normandy, a region in northern France. They were descended from Norse Viking conquerors of the territory and the native population of Frankish and Gallo-Roman stock...
and the Svevs
Swabia
Swabia is a cultural, historic and linguistic region in southwestern Germany.-Geography:Like many cultural regions of Europe, Swabia's borders are not clearly defined...
under Frederick II
Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor
Frederick II , was one of the most powerful Holy Roman Emperors of the Middle Ages and head of the House of Hohenstaufen. His political and cultural ambitions, based in Sicily and stretching through Italy to Germany, and even to Jerusalem, were enormous...
. This poetry differs from the French equivalent in its treatment of the woman, less erotic and more platonic
Platonic love
Platonic love is a chaste and strong type of love that is non-sexual.-Amor Platonicus:The term amor platonicus was coined as early as the 15th century by the Florentine scholar Marsilio Ficino. Platonic love in this original sense of the term is examined in Plato's dialogue the Symposium, which has...
, a vein further developed by Dolce Stil Novo
Dolce Stil Novo
Dolce Stil Novo , or stilnovismo, is the name given to the most important literary movement of 13th century in Italy. Influenced by both Sicilian and Tuscan poetry, its main theme is Love . Gentilezza and Amore are indeed topoi in the major works of the period...
in later 13th century Bologna and Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
. The customary repertoire of chivalry
Chivalry
Chivalry is a term related to the medieval institution of knighthood which has an aristocratic military origin of individual training and service to others. Chivalry was also the term used to refer to a group of mounted men-at-arms as well as to martial valour...
terms is adapted to Italian phonotactics
Phonotactics
Phonotactics is a branch of phonology that deals with restrictions in a language on the permissible combinations of phonemes...
, creating new Italian vocabulary. The French suffixes -ière and -ce generated hundreds of new Italian words in -iera and -za (for example, riv-iera and costan-za). These were adopted by Dante
Dante Alighieri
Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...
and his contemporaries, and handed on to future generations of Italian writers.
To the Sicilian school belonged Enzio
Enzio of Sardinia
Enzio was an illegitimate son of Emperor Frederick II and King of Sardinia.-Life:...
, king of Sardinia
Sardinia
Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea . It is an autonomous region of Italy, and the nearest land masses are the French island of Corsica, the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Tunisia and the Spanish Balearic Islands.The name Sardinia is from the pre-Roman noun *sard[],...
, Pietro della Vigna
Pietro della Vigna
Pietro della Vigna, , was an Italian jurist and diplomat, who acted as chancellor and secretary to Emperor Frederick II. Accused of lèse majesté, he was imprisoned and blinded and committed suicide soon after...
, Inghilfredi, Guido
Guido delle Colonne
Guido delle Colonne was an early 13th century Sicilian writer, living at Messina, who wrote in Latin...
and Odo delle Colonne, Jacopo d'Aquino, Ruggieri Apugliese, Giacomo da Lentini
Giacomo da Lentini
Giacomo da Lentini, also known as Giàcumu da Lintini and Jacopo Notaro, was an Italian poet of the 13th century. He was a senior poet of the Sicilian School and was a notary at the court of the Holy Roman emperor Frederick II...
, Arrigo Testa, and others. Most famous is No m'aggio posto in core, by Giacomo da Lentini, the head of the movement, but there is also poetry written by Frederick himself. Giacomo da Lentini is also credited with inventing the sonnet
Sonnet
A sonnet is one of several forms of poetry that originate in Europe, mainly Provence and Italy. A sonnet commonly has 14 lines. The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song" or "little sound"...
, a form later perfected by Dante and Petrarch
Petrarch
Francesco Petrarca , known in English as Petrarch, was an Italian scholar, poet and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch is often called the "Father of Humanism"...
. The censorship
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
imposed by Frederick meant that no political matter entered literary debate. In this respect, the poetry of the north, still divided into commune
Medieval commune
Medieval communes in the European Middle Ages had sworn allegiances of mutual defense among the citizens of a town or city. They took many forms, and varied widely in organization and makeup. Communes are first recorded in the late 11th and early 12th centuries, thereafter becoming a widespread...
s or city-state
City-state
A city-state is an independent or autonomous entity whose territory consists of a city which is not administered as a part of another local government.-Historical city-states:...
s with relatively democratic governments, provided new ideas. These new ideas are shown in the Sirventese genre, and later, Dante's Commedia
The Divine Comedy
The Divine Comedy is an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321. It is widely considered the preeminent work of Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature...
: his lines are full of invectives against contemporary political leaders and popes.
Though the conventional love-song prevailed at Frederick's (and later Manfred
Manfred of Sicily
Manfred was the King of Sicily from 1258 to 1266. He was a natural son of the emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen but his mother, Bianca Lancia , is reported by Matthew of Paris to have been married to the emperor while on her deathbed.-Background:Manfred was born in Venosa...
's) court, more spontaneous poetry existed in the Contrasto attributed to Cielo d'Alcamo
Cielo d'Alcamo
Cielo d'Alcamo was an Italian Sicilian poet, born in the early 13th century. He is one of the main exponents of the Italian medieval jester poetry...
. This contrasto (dispute) between two lovers in the Sicilian dialect
Sicilian language
Sicilian is a Romance language. Its dialects make up the Extreme-Southern Italian language group, which are spoken on the island of Sicily and its satellite islands; in southern and central Calabria ; in the southern parts of Apulia, the Salento ; and Campania, on the Italian mainland, where it is...
is not the most ancient or the only southern poem of a popular kind. It belongs without doubt to the time of the emperor Frederick II (no later than 1250), and is important as proof that there existed a popular, independent of literary, poetry. The Contrasto is probably a scholarly re-elaboration of a lost popular rhyme and is the closest to a kind of poetry that perished or was smothered by the ancient Sicilian literature. Its distinguishing point was its possession of all qualities opposite to the poetry of the rhymers of the "Sicilian School", though its style may betray a knowledge of Frederick's poetry, and there is probably a satiric
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
intent in the mind of the anonymous
Anonymity
Anonymity is derived from the Greek word ἀνωνυμία, anonymia, meaning "without a name" or "namelessness". In colloquial use, anonymity typically refers to the state of an individual's personal identity, or personally identifiable information, being publicly unknown.There are many reasons why a...
poet. It is vigorous in the expression of feelings. The conceit
Conceit
In literature, a conceit is an extended metaphor with a complex logic that governs a poetic passage or entire poem. By juxtaposing, usurping and manipulating images and ideas in surprising ways, a conceit invites the reader into a more sophisticated understanding of an object of comparison...
s, sometimes bold and very coarse, show that its subject matter is popular. Everything about the Contrasto is original.
The poems of the Sicilian school were written in the first known standard Italian. This was elaborated by these poets under the direction of Frederick II and combines many traits typical of the Sicilian, and to a lesser, but not negligible extent, Apulia
Apulia
Apulia is a region in Southern Italy bordering the Adriatic Sea in the east, the Ionian Sea to the southeast, and the Strait of Òtranto and Gulf of Taranto in the south. Its most southern portion, known as Salento peninsula, forms a high heel on the "boot" of Italy. The region comprises , and...
n dialects and other southern dialects, with many words of Latin and French origin. Dante's styles illustre, cardinale, aulico, curiale were developed from his linguistic study of the Sicilian School, which had been re-founded by Guittone d'Arezzo
Guittone d'Arezzo
Guittone d'Arezzo was a Tuscan poet and the founder of the Tuscan School. He was an acclaimed secular love poet before his conversion in the 1260s, when he became a religious poet. In 1256, he was exiled from Arezzo due to his Guelf sympathies....
in Tuscany
Tuscany
Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of about 23,000 square kilometres and a population of about 3.75 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence ....
. The standard changed slightly in Tuscany, because Tuscan scrivener
Scrivener
A scrivener was traditionally a person who could read and write. This usually indicated secretarial and administrative duties such as dictation and keeping business, judicial, and history records for kings, nobles, temples, and cities...
s perceived the five-vowel system used by southern Italian as a seven-vowel one. As a consequence, the texts that Italian students read in their anthology contain lines that do not rhyme with each other (sometimes Sic. -i > -e, -u > -o), and that may account for its decrease in popularity through the 19th and early 20th century.
Religious literature
In the 13th century a religious movement took place in Italy, with the rise of the DominicanDominican Order
The Order of Preachers , after the 15th century more commonly known as the Dominican Order or Dominicans, is a Catholic religious order founded by Saint Dominic and approved by Pope Honorius III on 22 December 1216 in France...
and Franciscan
Franciscan
Most Franciscans are members of Roman Catholic religious orders founded by Saint Francis of Assisi. Besides Roman Catholic communities, there are also Old Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, ecumenical and Non-denominational Franciscan communities....
Orders. The earliest preserved sermons in an Italian language are from Jordan of Pisa
Jordan of Pisa
Blessed Jordan of Pisa was a Dominican theologian and preacher, the first whose vernacular Italian sermons are preserved. His cultus was confirmed on 23 August 1833 by Pope Gregory XVI and he was beatified in 1838; his day is either March 6 or August 19...
, a Dominican. Francis of Assisi
Francis of Assisi
Saint Francis of Assisi was an Italian Catholic friar and preacher. He founded the men's Franciscan Order, the women’s Order of St. Clare, and the lay Third Order of Saint Francis. St...
, mystic and reformer in the Catholic Church
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
, the founder of the Franciscans, also wrote poetry. Though he was educated, Francis's poetry was beneath the refined poetry at the center of Frederick's court. According to legend, Francis dictated the hymn
Hymn
A hymn is a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of praise, adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification...
Cantico del Sole in the eighteenth year of his penance, almost rapt in ecstasy; doubts remain about its authenticity. It was the first great poetical work of Northern Italy, written in a kind of verse marked by assonance
Assonance
Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds to create internal rhyming within phrases or sentences, and together with alliteration and consonance serves as one of the building blocks of verse. For example, in the phrase "Do you like blue?", the is repeated within the sentence and is...
, a poetic device more widespread in Northern Europe. Other poems previously attributed to Francis are now generally recognized as lacking in authenticity.
Jacopone da Todi
Jacopone da Todi
Jacopone da Todi was a Franciscan friar from Umbria, Italy in the 13th century. He wrote several laudi in Italian. He was an early pioneer in Italian theatre, being one of the earliest scholars who dramatised gospel subjects.-Life:Jacopone studied law in Bologna and became a successful lawyer...
was a poet who represented the religious feeling that had made special progress in Umbria
Umbria
Umbria is a region of modern central Italy. It is one of the smallest Italian regions and the only peninsular region that is landlocked.Its capital is Perugia.Assisi and Norcia are historical towns associated with St. Francis of Assisi, and St...
. Jacopone was possessed by St. Francis's mysticism, but was also a satirist who mocked the corruption
Political corruption
Political corruption is the use of legislated powers by government officials for illegitimate private gain. Misuse of government power for other purposes, such as repression of political opponents and general police brutality, is not considered political corruption. Neither are illegal acts by...
and hypocrisy
Hypocrisy
Hypocrisy is the state of pretending to have virtues, moral or religious beliefs, principles, etc., that one does not actually have. Hypocrisy involves the deception of others and is thus a kind of lie....
of the Church personified by Pope Boniface VIII
Pope Boniface VIII
Pope Boniface VIII , born Benedetto Gaetani, was Pope of the Catholic Church from 1294 to 1303. Today, Boniface VIII is probably best remembered for his feuds with Dante, who placed him in the Eighth circle of Hell in his Divina Commedia, among the Simonists.- Biography :Gaetani was born in 1235 in...
, persecutor of Jacopone and Dante. Jacopone's wife died after the stands at a public tournament collapsed, and the sorrow at her sudden death caused Jacopone to sell all he possessed and give it to the poor. Jacopone covered himself with rags, joined St. Francis's Third Order
Third order
The term Third Order designates persons who live according to the Third Rule of a Roman Catholic religious order, an Anglican religious order, or a Lutheran religious order. Their members, known as Tertiaries, are generally lay members of religious orders, i.e...
, took pleasure in being laughed at, and was followed by a crowd of people who mocked him and called after him Jacopone, Jacopone. He went on raving for years, subjecting himself to the severest sufferings, and giving vent to his religious intoxication in his poems. Jacopone was a mystic
Christian mysticism
Christian mysticism refers to the development of mystical practices and theory within Christianity. It has often been connected to mystical theology, especially in the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions...
, who from his hermit
Hermit
A hermit is a person who lives, to some degree, in seclusion from society.In Christianity, the term was originally applied to a Christian who lives the eremitic life out of a religious conviction, namely the Desert Theology of the Old Testament .In the...
's cell looked out into the world and specially watched the papacy, scourging with his words Pope Celestine V
Pope Celestine V
Pope Saint Celestine V, born Pietro Angelerio , also known as Pietro da Morrone was elected pope in the year 1294, by the papal election of 1292–1294, the last non-conclave in the history of the Roman Catholic Church...
and Pope Boniface VIII, for which he was imprisoned.
The religious movement in Umbria was followed by another literary phenomenon, the religious drama. In 1258 a hermit, Raniero Fasani, left the cavern where he had lived for many years and suddenly appeared at Perugia
Perugia
Perugia is the capital city of the region of Umbria in central Italy, near the River Tiber, and the capital of the province of Perugia. The city is located about north of Rome. It covers a high hilltop and part of the valleys around the area....
. Fasani represented himself as sent by God to disclose mysterious visions, and to announce to the world terrible visitations. This was a turbulent period of political faction (the Guelphs and Ghibellines
Guelphs and Ghibellines
The Guelphs and Ghibellines were factions supporting the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor, respectively, in central and northern Italy. During the 12th and 13th centuries, the split between these two parties was a particularly important aspect of the internal policy of the Italian city-states...
), interdict
Interdict (Roman Catholic Church)
In Roman Catholic canon law, an interdict is an ecclesiastical censure that excludes from certain rites of the Church individuals or groups, who nonetheless do not cease to be members of the Church.-Distinctions in canon law:...
s and excommunication
Excommunication
Excommunication is a religious censure used to deprive, suspend or limit membership in a religious community. The word means putting [someone] out of communion. In some religions, excommunication includes spiritual condemnation of the member or group...
s issued by the popes, and reprisals of the imperial party. In this environment, Fasani's pronouncements stimulated the formation of the Compagnie di Disciplinanti, who, for a penance, scourged themselves till they drew blood, and sang Laudi in dialogue in their confraternities
Confraternity
A confraternity is normally a Roman Catholic or Orthodox organization of lay people created for the purpose of promoting special works of Christian charity or piety, and approved by the Church hierarchy...
. These laudi, closely connected with the liturgy
Liturgy
Liturgy is either the customary public worship done by a specific religious group, according to its particular traditions or a more precise term that distinguishes between those religious groups who believe their ritual requires the "people" to do the "work" of responding to the priest, and those...
, were the first example of the drama in the vernacular tongue of Italy. They were written in the Umbrian dialect, in verses of eight syllables, and, according to the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
Encyclopædia Britannica
The Encyclopædia Britannica , published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia that is available in print, as a DVD, and on the Internet. It is written and continuously updated by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 expert...
, "have not any artistic value." Their development, however, was rapid. As early as the end of the 13th century the Devozioni del Giovedi e Venerdi Santo appeared, mixing liturgy and drama. Later, di un Monaco che ando al servizio di Dio ("of a monk who entered the service of God") approached the definite form the religious drama would assume in the following centuries.
First Tuscan literature
Thirteenth century Tuscany was in a unique situation. The Tuscans spoke a dialect that closely resembled Latin and afterward became, almost exclusively, the language of literature, and which was already regarded at the end of the 13th century as surpassing other dialects. Lingua Tusca magis apta est ad literam sive literaturam ("The Tuscan tongue is better suited to the letter or literature") wrote Antonio da Tempo of Padua, born about 1275. After the fall of the HohenstaufenHohenstaufen
The House of Hohenstaufen was a dynasty of German kings in the High Middle Ages, lasting from 1138 to 1254. Three of these kings were also crowned Holy Roman Emperor. In 1194 the Hohenstaufens also became Kings of Sicily...
at the Battle of Benevento
Battle of Benevento
The Battle of Benevento was fought near Benevento, in present-day Southern Italy, on February 26, 1266, between the troops of Charles of Anjou and Manfred of Sicily. Manfred's defeat and death resulted in the capture of the Kingdom of Sicily by Charles....
in 1266, it was the first province of Italy. From 1266, Florence began a political reform movement that led, in 1282, to the appointment of the Priori delle Arti, and establishment of the Arti Minori. This was later copied by Siena
Siena
Siena is a city in Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the province of Siena.The historic centre of Siena has been declared by UNESCO a World Heritage Site. It is one of the nation's most visited tourist attractions, with over 163,000 international arrivals in 2008...
(with the Magistrato dei Nove), by Lucca
Lucca
Lucca is a city and comune in Tuscany, central Italy, situated on the river Serchio in a fertile plainnear the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Lucca...
, by Pistoia
Pistoia
Pistoia is a city and comune in the Tuscany region of Italy, the capital of a province of the same name, located about 30 km west and north of Florence and is crossed by the Ombrone Pistoiese, a tributary of the River Arno.-History:...
, and by other Guelph cities in Tuscany with similar popular institutions. The guild
Guild
A guild is an association of craftsmen in a particular trade. The earliest types of guild were formed as confraternities of workers. They were organized in a manner something between a trade union, a cartel, and a secret society...
s took the government into their hands, and it was a time of social and political prosperity.
In Tuscany, too, popular love poetry existed. A school of imitators of the Sicilians was led by Dante da Majano, but its literary originality took another line — that of humorous and satirical poetry. The entirely democratic form of government created a style of poetry that stood strongly against the medieval mystic and chivalrous style. Devout invocation of God or of a lady came from the cloister
Cloister
A cloister is a rectangular open space surrounded by covered walks or open galleries, with open arcades on the inner side, running along the walls of buildings and forming a quadrangle or garth...
and the castle
Castle
A castle is a type of fortified structure built in Europe and the Middle East during the Middle Ages by European nobility. Scholars debate the scope of the word castle, but usually consider it to be the private fortified residence of a lord or noble...
; in the streets of the cities everything that had gone before was treated with ridicule or biting sarcasm
Sarcasm
Sarcasm is “a sharp, bitter, or cutting expression or remark; a bitter jibe or taunt.” Though irony and understatement is usually the immediate context, most authorities distinguish sarcasm from irony; however, others argue that sarcasm may or often does involve irony or employs...
. Folgore da San Gimignano
Folgóre da San Gimignano
Folgóre da San Gimignano, pseudonym of Giacomo di Michele or Jacopo di Michele was an Italian poet.He represented mostly hunting scenes, jousts of the citadine bourgeoisie of Tuscany. 32 sonnets are attributed to him, written around 1308-1316. The most famous ones are the corone dedicated to the...
laughs when in his sonnets he tells a party of Sienese youths the occupations of every month in the year, or when he teaches a party of Florentine lads the pleasures of every day in the week. Cenne della Chitarra laughs when he parodies Folgore's sonnets. The sonnets of Rustico di Filippo are half-fun and half-satire, as is the work of Cecco Angiolieri
Cecco Angiolieri
- Biography :Cecco Angiolieri was born in Siena in 1260, son of Angioliero, who was himself the son of Angioliero Solafìca who was for several years a banker to Pope Gregory IX; his mother was Lisa de' Salimbeni, from a powerful Senese family....
of Siena, the oldest humorist we know, a far-off precursor of Rabelais
François Rabelais
François Rabelais was a major French Renaissance writer, doctor, Renaissance humanist, monk and Greek scholar. He has historically been regarded as a writer of fantasy, satire, the grotesque, bawdy jokes and songs...
and Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne , February 28, 1533 – September 13, 1592, was one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance, known for popularising the essay as a literary genre and is popularly thought of as the father of Modern Skepticism...
.
Another kind of poetry also began in Tuscany. Guittone d'Arezzo made art quit chivalry and Provençal forms for national motives and Latin forms. He attempted political poetry, and, although his work is often obscure, he prepared the way for the Bolognese school. Bologna was the city of science, and philosophical
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
poetry appeared there. Guido Guinizelli
Guido Guinizelli
Guido Guinizzelli , born in Bologna, Emilia-Romagna, Northern Italy, was an Italian poet and 'founder' of the Dolce Stil Novo...
was the poet after the new fashion of the art. In his work the ideas of chivalry are changed and enlarged. Only those whose heart is pure can be blessed with true love, regardless of class. He refuted the traditional credo of courtly love, for which love is a subtle philosophy only a few chosen knights and princesses could grasp. Love is blind to blasons but not to a good heart when it finds one: when it succeeds it is the result of the spiritual, not physical affinity between teo souls. Guinizzelli's democratic view can be better understood in the light of the greater equality and freedom enjoyed by the city-states of the center-north and the rise of a middle class eager to legitimise itself in the eyes of the old nobility, still regarded with respect and admiration but in fact dispossessed of its political power. Guinizelli's Canzoni
Canzone
Literally "song" in Italian, a canzone is an Italian or Provençal song or ballad. It is also used to describe a type of lyric which resembles a madrigal...
make up the bible of Dolce Stil Novo, and one in particular, "Al cor gentil" ("To a Kind Heart") is considered the manifesto of the new movement that bloomed in Florence under Cavalcanti, Dante, and their followers. His poetry has some of the faults of the school of d'Arezzo. Nevertheless, he marks a great development in the history of Italian art, especially because of his close connection with Dante's lyric poetry
Lyric poetry
Lyric poetry is a genre of poetry that expresses personal and emotional feelings. In the ancient world, lyric poems were those which were sung to the lyre. Lyric poems do not have to rhyme, and today do not need to be set to music or a beat...
.
In the 13th century, there were several major allegorical poems
Allegory
Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...
. One of these is by Brunetto Latini
Brunetto Latini
Brunetto Latini was an Italian philosopher, scholar and statesman.-Life:...
, who was a close friend of Dante. His Tesoretto is a short poem, in seven-syllable verses, rhyming in couplets, in which the author is lost in a wilderness and meets a lady, who represents Nature and gives him much instruction. We see here vision, allegory, and instruction with a moral object—three elements we find again in the Divine Comedy. Francesco da Barberino, a learned lawyer who was secretary to bishop
Bishop
A bishop is an ordained or consecrated member of the Christian clergy who is generally entrusted with a position of authority and oversight. Within the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox Churches, in the Assyrian Church of the East, in the Independent Catholic Churches, and in the...
s, a judge
Judge
A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as part of a panel of judges. The powers, functions, method of appointment, discipline, and training of judges vary widely across different jurisdictions. The judge is supposed to conduct the trial impartially and in an open...
, and a notary
Notary public
A notary public in the common law world is a public officer constituted by law to serve the public in non-contentious matters usually concerned with estates, deeds, powers-of-attorney, and foreign and international business...
, wrote two little allegorical poems, the Documenti d'amore and Del reggimento e dei costumi delle donne. The poems today are generally studied not as literature, but for historical context. A fourth allegorical work was the Intelligenza, which is sometimes attributed to Compagni, but is probably only a translation
Translation
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...
of French poems.
In the 15th century, humanist and publisher Aldus Manutius
Aldus Manutius
Aldus Pius Manutius , the Latinised name of Aldo Manuzio —sometimes called Aldus Manutius, the Elder to distinguish him from his grandson, Aldus Manutius, the Younger—was an Italian humanist who became a printer and publisher when he founded the Aldine Press at Venice.His publishing legacy includes...
published Tuscan poets Petrarch
Petrarch
Francesco Petrarca , known in English as Petrarch, was an Italian scholar, poet and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch is often called the "Father of Humanism"...
and Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri
Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...
(The Divine Comedy), creating the model for what became a standard for modern Italian.
Development of early prose
Italian prose of the 13th century was as abundant and varied as its poetry. The earliest example dates from 1231, and consists of short notices of entries and expenses by Mattasala di Spinello dei Lambertini of Siena. At this time, there was no sign of literary prose in Italian, though there was in FrenchFrench language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
. Halfway through the century, a certain Aldobrando or Aldobrandino, from either Florence or Siena, wrote a book for Beatrice of Savoy
Beatrice of Savoy
Beatrice of Savoy was the daughter of Thomas I of Savoy and Margaret of Geneva. She was Countess consort of Provence by her marriage to Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Provence.-Family:...
, countess of Provence, called Le Régime du corps. In 1267 Martino da Canale wrote a history of Venice in the same Old French (langue d'oïl). Rusticiano of Pisa, who was for a long while at the court of Edward I of England
Edward I of England
Edward I , also known as Edward Longshanks and the Hammer of the Scots, was King of England from 1272 to 1307. The first son of Henry III, Edward was involved early in the political intrigues of his father's reign, which included an outright rebellion by the English barons...
, composed many chivalrous romances, derived from the Arthurian cycle, and subsequently wrote the Travels of Marco Polo, which may have been dictated by Polo himself. And finally Brunetto Latini
Brunetto Latini
Brunetto Latini was an Italian philosopher, scholar and statesman.-Life:...
wrote his Tesoro in French. Latini also wrote some works in Italian prose such as La rettorica, an adaptation from Cicero
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...
's De inventione
De Inventione
The De Inventione is a handbook for orators that M. Tullius Cicero composed when he was still a young man. Quintillian tells us that Cicero considered the work rendered obsolete by his later writings. Originally four books in all, only two have survived into modern times.-External links:* by C.D....
, and translated three orations from Cicero: Pro Ligario
Pro Ligario
Pro Ligario is a political speech made by Marcus Tullius Cicero in 46 BC in defense of Quintus Ligarius before Gaius Julius Caesar.In this speech Cicero defends Ligarius, who is accused of crimes in Africa. Ligarius' accuser is Tubero, who has himself committed crimes in Africa. Cicero attempts to...
, Pro Marcello
Pro Marcello
Pro Marcello is Latin for on behalf of Marcellus.Marcus Claudius Marcellus was descended from the most illustrious families at Rome, and had been consul with Servius Sulpicius Rufus; in which office he had given great offence to Caesar by making a motion in the Senate to deprive him of his command;...
and Pro rege Deiotaro. Another important writer was the Florentine judge Bono Giamboni, who translated Orosius's Historiae adversus paganos, Vegetius
Vegetius
Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus, commonly referred to simply as Vegetius, was a writer of the Later Roman Empire. Nothing is known of his life or station beyond what he tells us in his two surviving works: Epitoma rei militaris , and the lesser-known Digesta Artis Mulomedicinae, a guide to...
's Epitoma rei militaris, made a translation/adaptation of Cicero's De inventione mixed with the Rethorica ad Erennium
Rhetorica ad Herennium
The Rhetorica ad Herennium, formerly attributed to Cicero but of unknown authorship, is the oldest surviving Latin book on rhetoric, dating from the 90s BC, and is still used today as a textbook on the structure and uses of rhetoric and persuasion....
, and a translation/adaptation of Innocent III's De miseria humane conditionis. He also wrote an allegorical novel called Libro de' Vizi e delle Virtudi whose earlier version (Trattato delle virtù e dei vizi) is also preserved. Andrea of Grosseto, in 1268, translated three Treaties of Albertanus of Brescia
Albertanus of Brescia
Albertanus of Brescia , author of Latin social treatises and sermons.-Biography:...
, from Latin to Tuscan dialect
Tuscan dialect
The Tuscan language , or the Tuscan dialect is an Italo-Dalmatian language spoken in Tuscany, Italy.Standard Italian is based on Tuscan, specifically on its Florentine variety...
.
After the original compositions in the langue d'oïl came translations or adaptations from the same. There are some moral narratives taken from religious legends, a romance of Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....
, some short histories of ancient knights, the Tavola rotonda
Round Table
The Round Table is King Arthur's famed table in the Arthurian legend, around which he and his Knights congregate. As its name suggests, it has no head, implying that everyone who sits there has equal status. The table was first described in 1155 by Wace, who relied on previous depictions of...
, translations of the Viaggi of Marco Polo
Marco Polo
Marco Polo was a Venetian merchant traveler from the Venetian Republic whose travels are recorded in Il Milione, a book which did much to introduce Europeans to Central Asia and China. He learned about trading whilst his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, travelled through Asia and apparently...
, and of Latini's Tesoro. At the same time, translations from Latin of moral and ascetic works, histories, and treatises on rhetoric
Rhetoric
Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...
and oratory
Oratory
Oratory is a type of public speaking.Oratory may also refer to:* Oratory , a power metal band* Oratory , a place of worship* a religious order such as** Oratory of Saint Philip Neri ** Oratory of Jesus...
appeared. Some of the works previously regarded as the oldest in the Italian language have been shown to be forgeries of a much later time. The oldest prose writing is a scientific book, Composizione del mondo by Ristoro d'Arezzo, who lived about the middle of the 13th century. This work is a copious treatise on astronomy
Astronomy
Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...
and geography
Geography
Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...
. Ristoro was a careful observer of natural phenomena; many of the things he relates were the result of his personal investigations, and consequently his works are more reliable than those of other writers of the time on similar subjects.
Another short treatise exists: De regimine rectoris, by Fra Paolino, a Minorite friar
Friar
A friar is a member of one of the mendicant orders.-Friars and monks:...
of Venice, who was probably bishop of Pozzuoli, and who also wrote a Latin chronicle. His treatise stands in close relation to that of Egidio Colonna, De regimine principum. It is written in the Venetian language
Venetian language
Venetian or Venetan is a Romance language spoken as a native language by over two million people, mostly in the Veneto region of Italy, where of five million inhabitants almost all can understand it. It is sometimes spoken and often well understood outside Veneto, in Trentino, Friuli, Venezia...
.
The 13th century was very rich in tales. A collection called the Cento Novelle antiche contains stories drawn from many sources, including Asian, Greek and Trojan traditions, ancient and medieval history, the legends of Brittany
Brittany
Brittany is a cultural and administrative region in the north-west of France. Previously a kingdom and then a duchy, Brittany was united to the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain...
, Provence
Provence
Provence ; Provençal: Provença in classical norm or Prouvènço in Mistralian norm) is a region of south eastern France on the Mediterranean adjacent to Italy. It is part of the administrative région of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur...
and Italy, the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
, local Italian traditions, and histories of animals and old mythology
Mythology
The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...
. This book has a distant resemblance to the Spanish collection known as El Conde Lucanor. The peculiarity of the Italian book is that the stories are very short, and seem to be mere outlines to be filled in by the narrator as he goes along. Other prose novels were inserted by Francesco Barberino in his work Del reggimento e dei costumi delle donne, but they are of much less importance.
On the whole the Italian novels of the 13th century have little originality, and are a faint reflection of the very rich legendary literature of France
French literature
French literature is, generally speaking, literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of France other than French. Literature written in French language, by citizens...
. Some attention should be paid to the Lettere of Fra Guittone d'Arezzo, who wrote many poems and also some letters in prose, the subjects of which are moral and religious. Guittone's love of antiquity and the traditions of Rome and its language was so strong that he tried to write Italian in a Latin style. The letters are obscure, involved and altogether barbarous. Guittone took as his special model Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work humorist, of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero...
, and hence his prose became bombastic. Guittone viewed his style as very artistic, but later scholars view it as extravagant and grotesque.
Dolce Stil Novo
In the year 1282 a period of new literature began, developing from the Tuscan beginnings. With the school of Lapo GianniLapo Gianni
Lapo Gianni was an Italian poet who lived in Florence in the 13th-14th centuries. He was a member of the Florentine circle of the Italian movement called Dolce Stil Novo, and was probably a notary....
, Guido Cavalcanti
Guido Cavalcanti
Guido Cavalcanti was a Florentine poet, as well as an intellectual influence on his best friend, Dante. His poems in their original Italian are available on Wikisource .-Historical background:...
, Cino da Pistoia
Cino da Pistoia
Cino da Pistoia was an Italian jurist and poet.He was born in Pistoia, Tuscany. His full name was Guittoncino dei Sinibaldi de Candia Pistoia or, Latinised as Cinus de Sighibuldis, his father was from a noble man from the House of Sinibaldi and his mother a noble lady of the House of Candia Pistoia...
and Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri
Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...
, lyric poetry became exclusively Tuscan. The whole novelty and poetic power of this school, consisted in, according to Dante, Quando Amore spira, noto, ed a quel niodo Ch'ei detta dentro, vo significando: that is, in a power of expressing the feelings of the soul in the way in which love inspires them, in an appropriate and graceful manner, fitting form to matter, and by art fusing one with the other. Love is a divine gift that redeems man in the eyes of God, and the poet's mistress is the angel sent from heaven to show the way to salvation. This a neo-platonic approach widely endorsed by Dolce Stil Novo, and although in Cavalcanti's case it can be upsetting and even destructive, it is nonetheless a metaphysical experience able to lift man onto a higher, spiritual dimension. Gianni's new style was still influenced by the Siculo-Provençal school.
Cavalcanti's poems fall into two classes: those that portray the philosopher, (il sottilissimo dialettico, as Lorenzo the Magnificent called him) and those more directly the product of his poetic nature imbued with mysticism
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...
and metaphysics
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
. To the first set belongs the famous poem Sulla natura d'amore, which in fact is a treatise on amorous metaphysics
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
, and was annotated later in a learned way by renowned Platonic philosophers of the 15th century, such as Marsilius Ficinus and others. In other poems, Cavalcanti tends to stifle poetic imagery under a dead weight of philosophy. On the other hand, in his Ballate, he pours himself out ingenuously, but with a consciousness of his art. The greatest of these is considered to be the ballata composed by Cavalcanti when he was banished from Florence with the party of the Bianchi in 1300, and took refuge at Sarzana
Sarzana
Sarzana is a town and comune in the Province of La Spezia, of Liguria, Italy, 15 km east of Spezia, on the railway to Pisa, at the point where the railway to Parma diverges to the north...
.
The third poet among the followers of the new school was Cino da Pistoia, of the family of the Sinibuldi. His love poems are sweet, mellow and musical.
Dante
La Vita Nuova
La Vita Nuova is a medieval text written by Dante Alighieri in 1295. It is an expression of the medieval genre of courtly love in a prosimetrum style, a combination of both prose and verse...
("new life" in English, so called to indicate that his first meeting with Beatrice
Beatrice Portinari
Beatrice "Bice" di Folco Portinari was a Florentine woman known as the muse of the poet Dante Alighieri. Beatrice was the principal inspiration for Dante's Vita Nuova, and also appears as his guide in the Divine Comedy in the last book, Paradiso, and in the last four canti of Purgatorio...
was the beginning of a new life), in which he idealizes love. It is a collection of poems to which Dante added narration and explication. Everything is supersensual, aerial, heavenly, and the real Beatrice is supplanted by an idealized vision of her, losing her human nature and becoming a representation of the divine.
Dante is the main character of the work, and the narration purports to be autobiographical, though historical information about Dante's life proves this to be poetic license.
Several of the lyrics of the La Vita Nuova deal with the theme of the new life. Not all the love poems refer to Beatrice, however—other pieces are philosophical and bridge over to the Convivio
Convivio
Convivio is a work written by Dante Alighieri roughly between 1304 and 1307. It contains details of the author's growing interest in philosophy, particularly in reference to the works of Cicero and Boethius...
.
The Divine Comedy
Divina CommediaThe Divine Comedy
The Divine Comedy is an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321. It is widely considered the preeminent work of Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature...
made Dante immortal, and raised him above all other men of genius in Italy. It tells of the poet's travels through the three realms of the dead—Hell
Hell
In many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...
, Purgatory
Purgatory
Purgatory is the condition or process of purification or temporary punishment in which, it is believed, the souls of those who die in a state of grace are made ready for Heaven...
, and Paradise
Paradise
Paradise is a place in which existence is positive, harmonious and timeless. It is conceptually a counter-image of the miseries of human civilization, and in paradise there is only peace, prosperity, and happiness. Paradise is a place of contentment, but it is not necessarily a land of luxury and...
—accompanied by the Latin poet Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
. An allegorical meaning hides under the literal one of this great epic. Dante, travelling through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, symbolizes mankind aiming at the double object of temporal and eternal happiness. The forest where the poet loses himself symbolizes the civil and religious confusion of society, deprived of its two guides, the emperor and the pope. The mountain illuminated by the sun is universal monarchy.
The three beasts are the three vices and the three powers that offered the greatest obstacles to Dante's designs. Envy is Florence, light, fickle and divided by the Black Guelphs and the White Guelphs
Guelphs and Ghibellines
The Guelphs and Ghibellines were factions supporting the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor, respectively, in central and northern Italy. During the 12th and 13th centuries, the split between these two parties was a particularly important aspect of the internal policy of the Italian city-states...
. Pride is the house of France. Avarice is the papal court. Virgil represents reason and the empire. Beatrice is the symbol of the supernatural aid mankind must have to attain the supreme end, which is God.
The merit of the poem does not lie in the allegory, which still connects it with medieval literature
Medieval literature
Medieval literature is a broad subject, encompassing essentially all written works available in Europe and beyond during the Middle Ages . The literature of this time was composed of religious writings as well as secular works...
. What is new is the individual art of the poet, the classic art transfused for the first time into a Romance form. Whether he describes nature, analyses passions, curses the vices or sings hymns to the virtues, Dante is notable for the grandeur and delicacy of his art. He took the materials for his poem from theology
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
, philosophy, history, and mythology, but especially from his own passions, from hatred and love. Under the pen of the poet, the dead come to life again; they become men again, and speak the language of their time, of their passions. Farinata degli Uberti
Farinata degli Uberti
Farinata degli Uberti , real name Manente degli Uberti, was an Italian aristocrat and military leader, considered by some to be a heretic, who appears in Dante Alighieri's Inferno and is mentioned in C.S...
, Boniface VIII, Count Ugolino, Manfred
Manfred
Manfred is a dramatic poem written in 1816–1817 by Lord Byron. It contains supernatural elements, in keeping with the popularity of the ghost story in England at the time. It is a typical example of a Romantic closet drama...
, Sordello
Sordello
Sordello da Goito or Sordel de Goit was a 13th-century Lombard troubadour, born in the municipality of Goito in the province of Mantua...
, Hugh Capet, St. Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas, O.P. , also Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, was an Italian Dominican priest of the Catholic Church, and an immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the tradition of scholasticism, known as Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis, or Doctor Universalis...
, Cacciaguida
Cacciaguida
Cacciaguida degli Elisei was an Italian crusader, the great-great-grandfather of Dante Alighieri.Little is known about his life. He was born in Florence, and two documents from 1189 and 1201 mention his existence; all other details of his biography are those from his most famous descendant's works...
, St. Benedict, and St. Peter, are all so many objective creations; they stand before us in all the life of their characters, their feelings, and their habits.
The real chastizer of the sins and rewarder of virtues is Dante himself. The personal interest he brings to bear on the historical representation of the three worlds is what most interests us and stirs us. Dante remakes history after his own passions. Thus the Divina Commedia is not only a life-like drama of contemporary thoughts and feelings, but also a clear and spontaneous reflection of the individual feelings of the poet, from the indignation of the citizen and the exile to the faith of the believer and the ardour of the philosopher. The Divina Commedia defined the destiny of Italian literature, giving artistic lustre to all forms of literature the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
had produced.
Petrarch
Petrarch
Francesco Petrarca , known in English as Petrarch, was an Italian scholar, poet and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch is often called the "Father of Humanism"...
: classical research and the new human feeling introduced into his lyric poetry. The facts are not separate; rather, the former caused the latter. The Petrarch who unearthed the works of the great Latin writers helps us understand the Petrarch who loved a real woman, named Laura, and celebrated her in her life and after her death in poems full of studied elegance. Petrarch was the first humanist
Humanism
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....
, and he was at the same time the first modern lyric poet. His career was long and tempestuous. He lived for many years at Avignon
Avignon
Avignon is a French commune in southeastern France in the départment of the Vaucluse bordered by the left bank of the Rhône river. Of the 94,787 inhabitants of the city on 1 January 2010, 12 000 live in the ancient town centre surrounded by its medieval ramparts.Often referred to as the...
, cursing the corruption of the papal court; he travelled through nearly the whole of Europe; he corresponded with emperors and popes, and he was considered the most important writer of his time.
His Canzoniere is divided into three parts: the first containing the poems written during Laura's lifetime, the second the poems written after her death, the third the Trionfi. The one and only subject of these poems is love; but the treatment is full of variety in conception, in imagery and in sentiment, derived from the most varied impressions of nature. Petrarch's lyric verse is quite different, not only from that of the Provençal troubadour
Troubadour
A troubadour was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages . Since the word "troubadour" is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a trobairitz....
s and the Italian poets before him, but also from the lyrics of Dante. Petrarch is a psychological poet, who examines all his feelings and renders them with an art of exquisite sweetness. The lyrics of Petrarch are no longer transcendental like Dante's, but keep entirely within human limits. The second part of the Canzoniere is the more passionate. The Trionfi are inferior; in them Petrarch tried to imitate the Divina Commedia, but failed. The Canzoniere includes also a few political poems, one supposed to be addressed to Cola di Rienzi and several sonnets against the court of Avignon. These are remarkable for their vigour of feeling, and also for showing that, compared to Dante, Petrarch had a sense of a broader Italian consciousness. He wooed an Italy that was different from any conceived by the people of the Middle Ages. In this, he was a precursor of modern times and modern aspirations. Petrarch had no decided political idea. He exalted Cola di Rienzi, invoked the emperor Charles IV
Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor
Charles IV , born Wenceslaus , was the second king of Bohemia from the House of Luxembourg, and the first king of Bohemia to also become Holy Roman Emperor....
, and praised the Visconti
House of Visconti
Visconti is the family name of two important Italian noble dynasties of the Middle Ages. There are two distinct Visconti families: The first one in the Republic of Pisa in the mid twelfth century who achieved prominence first in Pisa, then in Sardinia where they became rulers of Gallura...
; in fact, his politics were affected more by impressions than by principles. Above all this was his love of Italy, which in his mind was reunited with Rome, the great city of his heroes, Cicero
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...
and Scipio
Scipio
-Classical:* Scipio, a representation of the Cornelii Scipiones, branch of the illustrious Cornelii family from Ancient Rome.* Scipio Africanus, Roman general who defeated Hannibal at Zama, the final battle of the Second Punic War....
. Petrarca, some say, began the Renaissance humanism.
Boccaccio
Iliad
The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...
and, in 1375, the Odyssey
Odyssey
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...
. His classical learning was shown in the work De genealogia deorum, in which he enumerates the gods according to genealogical trees from the various authors who wrote about the pagan divinities. The Genealogia deorum is, as A. H. Heeren said, an encyclopaedia of mythological knowledge; and it was the precursor of the humanist
Humanism
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....
movement of the 15th century. Boccaccio was also the first historian of women in his De mulieribus claris
De mulieribus claris
De mulieribus claris is a collection of biographies of historical and mythological women by the Florentine author Giovanni Boccaccio, first published in 1374. It is notable as the first collection devoted exclusively to biographies of women in Western literature...
, and the first to tell the story of the great unfortunates in his De casibus virorum illustrium. He continued and perfected former geographical investigations in his interesting book De montibus, silvis, fontibus, lacubus, fluminibus, stagnis, et paludibus, et de nominibus maris, for which he made use of Vibius Sequester
Vibius Sequester
Vibius Sequester , is the author of an alphabetical list of geographical names occurring in the Roman poets, with special reference to Virgil, Ovid and Lucan...
. Of his Italian works, his lyrics do not come anywhere near to the perfection of Petrarch's. His narrative poetry is better. He did not invent the octave stanza, but was the first to use it in a work of length and artistic merit, his Teseide, the oldest Italian romantic poem. The Filostrato relates the loves of Troiolo and Griseida (Troilus and Cressida
Troilus and Cressida
Troilus and Cressida is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1602. It was also described by Frederick S. Boas as one of Shakespeare's problem plays. The play ends on a very bleak note with the death of the noble Trojan Hector and destruction of the love between Troilus...
). It may be that Boccaccio knew the French poem of the Trojan war by Benoit de Sainte-More; but the interest of his poem lies in the analysis of the passion of love. The Ninfale fiesolano tells the love story of the nymph Mesola and the shepherd Africo. The Amorosa Visione, a poem in triplets, doubtless owed its origin to the Divina Commedia. The Ameto is a mixture of prose and poetry, and is the first Italian pastoral romance.
The Filocopo takes the earliest place among prose romance
Romance (genre)
As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a knight errant portrayed as...
s. In it Boccaccio tells the loves of Florio and Biancafiore. Probably for this work he drew materials from a popular source or from a Byzantine
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...
romance, which Leonzio Pilato may have mentioned to him. In the Filocopo, there is a remarkable exuberance in the mythological part, which damages the romance as an artistic work, but contributes to the history of Boccaccio's mind. The Fiammetta is another romance, about the loves of Boccaccio and Maria d'Aquino, a supposed natural daughter of King Robert, whom he always called by this name of Fiammetta.
Boccaccio became famous principally for the Italian work, Decamerone, a collection of a hundred novels, related by a party of men and women who retired to a villa near Florence to escape the plague
Black Death
The Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, peaking in Europe between 1348 and 1350. Of several competing theories, the dominant explanation for the Black Death is the plague theory, which attributes the outbreak to the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Thought to have...
in 1348. Novel-writing, so abundant in the preceding centuries, especially in France, now for the first time assumed an artistic shape. The style of Boccaccio tends to the imitation of Latin, but in him prose first took the form of elaborated art. The rudeness of the old fabliau
Fabliau
A fabliau is a comic, often anonymous tale written by jongleurs in northeast France between ca. 1150 and 1400. They are generally characterized by an excessiveness of sexual and scatological obscenity. Several of them were reworked by Giovanni Boccaccio for the Decamerone and by Geoffrey Chaucer...
x gives place to the careful and conscientious work of a mind that has a feeling for what is beautiful, that has studied the classic authors, and that strives to imitate them as much as possible. Over and above this, in the Decamerone, Boccaccio is a delineator of character and an observer of passions. In this lies his novelty. Much has been written about the sources of the novels of the Decamerone. Probably Boccaccio made use both of written and of oral sources. Popular tradition must have furnished him with the materials of many stories, as, for example, that of Griselda.
Unlike Petrarch, who was always discontented, preoccupied, wearied with life, disturbed by disappointments, we find Boccaccio calm, serene, satisfied with himself and with his surroundings. Notwithstanding these fundamental differences in their characters, the two great authors were old and warm friends. But their affection for Dante was not equal. Petrarch, who says that he saw him once in his childhood, did not preserve a pleasant recollection of him, and it would be useless to deny that he was jealous of his renown. The Divina Commedia was sent him by Boccaccio, when he was an old man, and he confessed that he never read it. On the other hand, Boccaccio felt for Dante something more than love—enthusiasm. He wrote a biography of him (which some critics deprecate the accuracy of) and gave public critical lectures on the poem in Santa Maria del Fiore
Santa Maria del Fiore
The Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore is the cathedral church of Florence, Italy. The Duomo, as it is ordinarily called, was begun in 1296 in the Gothic style to the design of Arnolfo di Cambio and completed structurally in 1436 with the dome engineered by Filippo Brunelleschi...
at Florence.
Imitators
Fazio degli Uberti and Federico FrezziFederico Frezzi
Federico Frezzi was Italian poet and bishop. He entered in Dominican order, studied in Florence, he became professor of theologhy in various Italian universities and gathered various important positions in church. In year 1403 Frezzi became bishop of Roman Catholic Diocese of Foligno, he was also...
were imitators of the Divina Commedia, but only in its external form. The former wrote the Dittamondo, a long poem, in which the author supposes that he was taken by the geographer Solinus into different parts of the world, and that his Commedia guide related the history of them. The legends of the rise of the different Italian cities have some importance historically. Frezzi, bishop of his native town Foligno
Foligno
Foligno is an ancient town of Italy in the province of Perugia in east central Umbria, on the Topino river where it leaves the Apennines and enters the wide plain of the Clitunno river system...
, wrote the Quadriregio, a poem of the four kingdoms Love, Satan, the Vices, and the Virtues. This poem has many points of resemblance with the Divina Commedia. Frezzi pictures the condition of man who rises from a state of vice to one of virtue, and describes hell, limbo, purgatory and heaven. The poet has Pallas
Athena
In Greek mythology, Athena, Athenê, or Athene , also referred to as Pallas Athena/Athene , is the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, warfare, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, justice, and skill. Minerva, Athena's Roman incarnation, embodies similar attributes. Athena is...
for a companion.
Ser Giovanni Fiorentino wrote, under the title of Pecorone, a collection of tales, which are supposed to have been related by a monk and a nun in the parlour of the monastery Novelists of Forli. He closely imitated Boccaccio, and drew on Villani's chronicle for his historical stories. Franco Sacchetti
Franco Sacchetti
Franco Sacchetti , was an Italian poet and novelist.-Biography:Born in Florence or in Ragusa , he was the son of Benci di Uguccione, surnamed "Buono", Florentine merchant of the noble and ancient family of the Sacchetti...
wrote tales too, for the most part on subjects taken from Florentine history. His book gives a life-like picture of Florentine society at the end of the 14th century. The subjects are almost always improper, but it is evident that Sacchetti collected these anecdotes so he could draw his own conclusions and moral reflections, which he puts at the end of each story. From this point of view, Sacchetti's work comes near to the Monalisaliones of the Middle Ages. A third novelist was Giovanni Sercambi
Giovanni Sercambi
Giovanni Sercambi was an Italian author from Lucca who wrote a history of his city, Le croniche di Luccha, as well as Il novelliere , a collection of 155 tales....
of Lucca, who after 1374 wrote a book, in imitation of Boccaccio, about a party of people who were supposed to fly from a plague and to go travelling about in different Italian cities, stopping here and there telling stories. Later, but important, names are those of Masuccio Salernitano
Masuccio Salernitano
Masuccio Salernitano , born Tommaso Guardati, was an Italian poet.Born in Salerno or Sorrento, he is best known today for Il Novellino, a collection of 50 "novelle" or short stories, each prefaced by a letter of dedication to a famous person and with an epilogue containing the "moral" of the...
(Tommaso Guardato), who wrote the Novellino, and Antonio Cornazzano
Antonio Cornazzano
Antonio Cornazzano was an Italian poet, writer, biographer, and dancing master.-Antonio Cornazzano:In the city of Piacenza, which was then in the Duchy of Milan, Antonio Cornazzano was born probably in 1432...
whose Proverbii became extremely popular.
Chronicles
Chronicles formerly believed to have been of the 13th century are now mainly regarded as forgeries. At the end of the 13th century there is a chronicle by Dino CompagniDino Compagni
Dino Compagni was an Italian historical writer and political figure.He was born into a prosperous family of Florence, supporters of the Guelphs. He was democratic in feeling, and was a supporter of the new ordinances of Giano della Bella.As prior and gonfalonier of justice he always had the public...
, probably authentic.
Giovanni Villani
Giovanni Villani
Giovanni Villani was an Italian banker, official, diplomat and chronicler from Florence who wrote the Nuova Cronica on the history of Florence. He was a leading statesman of Florence but later gained an unsavory reputation and served time in prison as a result of the bankruptcy of a trading and...
, born in 1300, was more of a chronicler than an historian. He relates the events up to 1347. The journeys that he made in Italy and France, and the information thus acquired, mean that his chronicle, the Historie Fiorentine, covers events all over Europe. He speaks at length, not only of events in politics and war, but of the stipends of public officials, the sums of money used to pay for soldiers and public festivals, and many other things of which knowledge is valuable. Villani's narrative is often encumbered with fables and errors, particularly when he speaks of things that happened before his time.
Matteo was the brother of Giovanni Villani, and continued the chronicle up to 1363. It was again continued by Filippo Villani.
Ascetics
The Divine Commedia is ascetic in its conception, and in a good many points of its execution. Petrarch's work has similar qualities; yet neither Petrarch nor Dante could be classified among the pure ascetics of their time. But many other writers come under this head. St Catherine of SienaCatherine of Siena
Saint Catherine of Siena, T.O.S.D, was a tertiary of the Dominican Order, and a Scholastic philosopher and theologian. She also worked to bring the papacy of Gregory XI back to Rome from its displacement in France, and to establish peace among the Italian city-states. She was proclaimed a Doctor...
's mysticism was political. This extraordinary woman aspired to bring back the Church of Rome to evangelical virtue, and left a collection of letters written in a high and lofty tone to all kinds of people, including popes. Hers is the clearest religious utterance to have made itself heard in 14th century Italy. Although precise ideas of reformation did not enter her head, the want of a great moral reform was felt in her heart. She must take her place among those who prepared the way for the religious movement of the 16th century.
Another Sienese, Giovanni Colombini
Giovanni Colombini
Giovanni Colombini was an Italian merchant, andfounder of the Congregation of Jesuati.-Life:...
, founder of the order of Jesuati
Jesuati
The Jesuati were a religious order founded by Giovanni Colombini of Siena in 1360. The order was initially called Clerici apostolici Sancti Hieronymi because of a special veneration for St. Jerome and the apostolic life the founders led...
, preached poverty by precept and example, going back to the religious idea of St Francis of Assisi. His letters are among the most remarkable in the category of ascetic works in the 14th century. Jacopo Passavanti, in his Specchio della vera penitenza, attached instruction to narrative. Domenico Cavalca translated from the Latin the Vite de' Santi Padri. Rivalta left behind him many sermons, and Franco Sacchetti
Franco Sacchetti
Franco Sacchetti , was an Italian poet and novelist.-Biography:Born in Florence or in Ragusa , he was the son of Benci di Uguccione, surnamed "Buono", Florentine merchant of the noble and ancient family of the Sacchetti...
(the famous novelist) many discourses. On the whole, there is no doubt that one of the most important productions of the Italian spirit of the 14th century was religious literature.
Popular works
Humorous poetry, largely developed in the 13th century, was carried on in the 14th by Bindo Bonichi, Arrigo di Castruccio, Cecco Nuccoli, Andrea Orgagna, Filippo de Bardi, Adriano de Rossi, Antonio Pucci and other lesser writers. Orgagna was specially comic; Bonichi was comic with a satirical and moral purpose.Pucci was superior to all of them for the variety of his production. He put into triplets the chronicle of Giovanni Villani (Centiloquio), and wrote many historical poems called Serventesi, many comic poems, and not a few epico-popular compositions on various subjects. A little poem of his in seven cantos treats of the war between the Florentines and the Pisa
Pisa
Pisa is a city in Tuscany, Central Italy, on the right bank of the mouth of the River Arno on the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa...
ns from 1362 to 1365.
Other poems drawn from a legendary source celebrate the Reina d'Oriente, Apollonio di Tiro, the Bel Gherardino, etc. These poems, meant to be recited, are the ancestors of the romantic epic.
Political works
Many poets of the 14th century produced political works. Fazio degli Uberti, the author of Dittamondo, who wrote a Serventese to the lords and people of Italy, a poem on Rome, and a fierce invective against Charles IV, deserves notice, as do Francesco di Vannozzo, Frate Stoppa and Matteo Frescobaldi. It may be said in general that following the example of Petrarch many writers devoted themselves to patriotic poetry.From this period also dates that literary phenomenon known under the name of Petrarchism. The Petrarchists, or those who sang of love, imitating Petrarch's manner, were found already in the 14th century. But others treated the same subject with more originality, in a manner that might be called semi-popular. Such were the Ballate of Ser Giovanni Fiorentino, of Franco Sacchetti, of Niccolo Soldanieri, and of Guido and Bindo Donati. Ballate were poems sung to dancing, and we have very many songs for music of the 14th century. We have already stated that Antonio Pucci versified Villani's Chronicle. It is enough to notice a chronicle of Arezzo
Arezzo
Arezzo is a city and comune in Central Italy, capital of the province of the same name, located in Tuscany. Arezzo is about 80 km southeast of Florence, at an elevation of 296 m above sea level. In 2011 the population was about 100,000....
in terza rima
Terza rima
Terza rima is a rhyming verse stanza form that consists of an interlocking three-line rhyme scheme. It was first used by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri.-Form:Terza rima is a three-line stanza using chain rhyme in the pattern A-B-A, B-C-B, C-D-C, D-E-D...
by Gorello de Sinigardi, and the history, also in terza rima, of the journey of Pope Alexander III to Venice, by Pier de Natali. Besides this, every kind of subject, whether history, tragedy or husbandry, was treated in verse. Neri di Landocio wrote a life of St Catherine; Jacopo Gradenigo put the Gospels into triplets.
Renaissance humanism
Renaissance humanism developed during the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries, and was a response to the challenge of Mediæval scholastic education, emphasizing practical, pre-professional and -scientific studies. ScholasticismScholasticism
Scholasticism is a method of critical thought which dominated teaching by the academics of medieval universities in Europe from about 1100–1500, and a program of employing that method in articulating and defending orthodoxy in an increasingly pluralistic context...
focused on preparing men to be doctors, lawyers or professional theologians, and was taught from approved textbooks in logic, natural philosophy, medicine, law and theology. The main centers of humanism were Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
and Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
.
Rather than train professionals in jargon and strict practice, humanists sought to create a citizenry (including, sometimes, women) able to speak and write with eloquence and clarity. Thus, they would be capable of better engaging the civic life of their communities and persuading others to virtuous and prudent actions. This was to be accomplished through the study of the studia humanitatis
Humanitas
The word humanitas was used by Cicero to describe the formation of an ideal speaker who he believed should be educated to possess a collection of virtues of character suitable for an active life of public service; these would include a fund of learning acquired from the study of bonae litterae ,...
, today known as the humanities
Humanities
The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....
: grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry and moral philosophy.
Early humanists, such as Petrarch
Petrarch
Francesco Petrarca , known in English as Petrarch, was an Italian scholar, poet and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch is often called the "Father of Humanism"...
, Coluccio Salutati
Coluccio Salutati
Coluccio Salutati was an Italian Humanist and man of letters, and one of the most important political and cultural leaders of Renaissance Florence.-Birth and Early Career:...
and Leonardo Bruni
Leonardo Bruni
Leonardo Bruni was an Italian humanist, historian and statesman. He has been called the first modern historian.-Biography:...
, were great collectors of antique manuscripts. Many worked for the organized Church and were in holy orders (like Petrarch), while others were lawyers and chancellors of Italian cities, like Petrarch's disciple, Salutati, the Chancellor of Florence, and thus had access to book copying workshops.
In Italy, the humanist educational program won rapid acceptance and, by the mid-fifteenth century, many of the upper classes had received humanist educations. Some of the highest officials of the Church were humanists with the resources to amass important libraries. Such was Cardinal Basilios Bessarion, a convert to the Latin Church from Greek Orthodoxy, who was considered for the papacy and was one of the most learned scholars of his time. There were five fifteenth-century Humanist Popes, one of whom, Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (Pius II), was a prolific author and wrote a treatise on "The Education of Boys".
Literature in the Florence of the Medici
At Florence the most celebrated humanists wrote also in the vulgar tongue, and commented on Dante and Petrarch, and defended them from their enemies. Leone Battista AlbertiLeone Battista Alberti
Leon Battista Alberti was an Italian author, artist, architect, poet, priest, linguist, philosopher, cryptographer and general Renaissance humanist polymath...
, the learned Greek and Latin scholar, wrote in the vernacular, and Vespasiano da Bisticci
Vespasiano da Bisticci
Vespasiano da Bisticci was an Italian humanist and librarian .Born near Rignano sull'Arno, not far from Florence, he was chiefly a dealer in books, or cartolaio, and had a share in the formation of all the great libraries of the time...
, while he was constantly absorbed in Greek and Latin manuscripts, wrote the Vite di uomini illustri, valuable for their historical contents, and rivalling the best works of the 14th century in their candour and simplicity. Andrea da Barberino
Andrea da Barberino
Andrea Mangiabotti, called Andrea da Barberino was an Italian writer and cantastorie of the Quattrocento Renaissance. He was born in Barberino di Val d'Elsa and lived in Florence...
wrote the beautiful prose of the Reali di Francia, giving a coloring of romanità to the chivalrous romances. Belcari and Girolamo Benivieni
Girolamo Benivieni
Girolamo Benivieni was a Florentine poet who was an intimate of several great men of the Renaissance.-External links:*http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/cgi-bin/WebObjects.dll/CollectionPublisher.woa/wa/work?workNumber=NG2491...
returned to the mystic idealism of earlier times.
But it is in Lorenzo de Medici that the influence of Florence on the Renaissance is particularly seen. His mind was formed by the ancients: he attended the class of the Greek John Argyropulos, sat at Platonic banquets, took pains to collect codices, sculptures, vases, pictures, gems and drawings to ornament the gardens of San Marco and to form the library later named after him. In the saloons of his Florentine palace, in his villas at Careggi, Fiesole
Fiesole
Fiesole is a town and comune of the province of Florence in the Italian region of Tuscany, on a famously scenic height above Florence, 8 km NE of that city...
and Anibra, stood the wonderful chests painted by Dello di Niccolò Delli
Dello di Niccolò Delli
Dello di Niccolò Delli , also known as Dello Delli, as Dello di Niccolò and as Dello, was an Italian sculptor and painter from Florence. His father was a tailor named Niccolò di Dello...
with stories from Ovid
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
, the Hercules
Hercules
Hercules is the Roman name for Greek demigod Heracles, son of Zeus , and the mortal Alcmene...
of Pollaiuolo
Pollaiuolo
Pollaiulo is the name of several people:* Brothers Antonio del Pollaiolo and* Piero del Pollaiolo, 15th-Century artists....
, the Pallas of Botticelli
Sandro Botticelli
Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance...
, the works of Filippino and Verrocchio. De Medici lived entirely in the classical world; and yet if we read his poems we only see the man of his time, the admirer of Dante and of the old Tuscan poets, who takes inspiration from the popular muse, and who succeeds in giving to his poetry the colors of the most pronounced realism as well as of the loftiest idealism, who passes from the Platonic sonnet
Sonnet
A sonnet is one of several forms of poetry that originate in Europe, mainly Provence and Italy. A sonnet commonly has 14 lines. The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song" or "little sound"...
to the impassioned triplets of the Amori di Venere, from the grandiosity of the Salve to Nencia and to Beoni, from the Canto carnascialesco to the lauda. The feeling of nature is strong in him; at one time sweet and melancholy, at another vigorous and deep, as if an echo of the feelings, the sorrows, the ambitions of that deeply agitated life. He liked to look into his own heart with a severe eye, but he was also able to pour himself out with tumultuous fulness. He described with the art of a sculptor; he satirized, laughed, prayed, sighed, always elegant, always a Florentine, but a Florentine who read Anacreon
Anacreon
Anacreon was a Greek lyric poet, notable for his drinking songs and hymns. Later Greeks included him in the canonical list of nine lyric poets.- Life :...
, Ovid and Tibullus
Tibullus
Albius Tibullus was a Latin poet and writer of elegies.Little is known about his life. His first and second books of poetry are extant; many other texts attributed to Tibullus are of questionable origins. There are only a few references to him in later writers and a short Life of doubtful authority...
, who wished to enjoy life, but also to taste of the refinements of art.
Next to Lorenzo comes Poliziano
Poliziano
Angelo Ambrogini, commonly known by his nickname, anglicized as Politian, Italian Poliziano, Latin Politianus was an Italian Renaissance classical scholar and poet, one of the revivers of Humanist Latin...
, who also united, and with greater art, the ancient and the modern, the popular and the classical style. In his Rispetti and in his Ballate the freshness of imagery and the plasticity of form are inimitable. A great Greek scholar, Piliziano wrote Italian verses with dazzling colors; the purest elegance of the Greek sources pervaded his art in all its varieties, in the Orfeo as well as the Stanze per la giostra.
A completely new style of poetry arose, the Canto carnascialesco. These were a kind of choral songs, which were accompanied with symbolic masquerades, common in Florence at the carnival. They were written in a metre like that of the ballate; and for the most part they were put into the mouth of a party of workmen and tradesmen, who, with not very chaste allusions, sang the praises of their art. These triumphs and masquerades were directed by Lorenzo himself. In the evening, there set out into the city large companies on horseback, playing and singing these songs. There are some by Lorenzo himself, which surpass all the others in their mastery of art. That entitled Bacco ed Arianna is the most famous.
Epic: Pulci and Boiardo
Italy did not yet have true epic poetryEpic poetry
An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...
; but had, however, many poems called cantari, because they contained stories that were sung to the people; and besides there were romantic poems, such as the Buovo d'Antona, the Regina Ancroja and others. But the first to introduce life into this style was Luigi Pulci
Luigi Pulci
Luigi Pulci was an Italian poet best known for his Morgante, an epic story of a giant who is converted to Christianity and follows the knight Orlando....
, who grew up in the house of the Medici, and who wrote the Morgante Maggiore at the request of Lucrezia Tornabuoni
Lucrezia Tornabuoni
Lucrezia Tornabuoni was a daughter of Francesco di Simone Tornabuoni and Nanna di Niccolo di Luigi Guicciardini. Her brother was Giovanni Tornabuoni.- Biography :...
, mother of Lorenzo the Magnificent. The material of the Morgante is almost completely taken from an obscure chivalrous poem of the 15th century, rediscovered by Pio Rajna. Pulci erected a structure of his own, often turning the subject into ridicule, burlesquing the characters, introducing many digressions, now capricious, now scientific, now theological. Pulci raised the romantic epic into a work of art, and united the serious and the comic.
With a more serious intention Matteo Boiardo, count of Scandiano
Scandiano
Scandiano is a town and comune in Emilia-Romagna, in the northeast part of Italy country, near Reggio nell'Emilia city and Secchia river . It had some 24,700 inhabitants as of 31 March 2009....
, wrote his Orlando innamorato
Orlando Innamorato
Orlando Innamorato is an epic poem written by the Italian Renaissance author Matteo Maria Boiardo. The poem is a romance concerning the heroic knight Orlando .-Composition and publication:...
, in which he seems to have aspired to embrace the whole range of Carolingian
Carolingian
The Carolingian dynasty was a Frankish noble family with origins in the Arnulfing and Pippinid clans of the 7th century AD. The name "Carolingian", Medieval Latin karolingi, an altered form of an unattested Old High German *karling, kerling The Carolingian dynasty (known variously as the...
legends; but he did not complete his task. We find here too a large vein of humour and burlesque. Still Boiardo was drawn to the world of romance by a profound sympathy for chivalrous manners and feelings; that is to say, for love, courtesy, valour and generosity. A third romantic poem of the 15th century was the Mambriano by Francesco Bello (Cieco of Ferrara). He drew from the Carolingian cycle, from the romances of the Round Table
Round Table
The Round Table is King Arthur's famed table in the Arthurian legend, around which he and his Knights congregate. As its name suggests, it has no head, implying that everyone who sits there has equal status. The table was first described in 1155 by Wace, who relied on previous depictions of...
, and from classical antiquity. He was a poet of no common genius, and of ready imagination. He showed the influence of Boiardo, especially in the use of fantasy.
Other
History had neither many nor very good students in the 15th century. Its revival belonged to the following age. It was mostly written in Latin. Leonardo BruniLeonardo Bruni
Leonardo Bruni was an Italian humanist, historian and statesman. He has been called the first modern historian.-Biography:...
of Arezzo wrote the history of Florence, Gioviano Pontano that of Naples, in Latin. Bernardino Corio wrote the history of Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
in Italian, but in a rude way.
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...
wrote a treatise on painting, Leone Battista Alberti
Leone Battista Alberti
Leon Battista Alberti was an Italian author, artist, architect, poet, priest, linguist, philosopher, cryptographer and general Renaissance humanist polymath...
one on sculpture and architecture. But the names of these two men are important, not so much as authors of these treatises, but as being embodiments of another characteristic of the age of the Renaissance; versatility of genius, power of application along many and varied lines, and of being excellent in all. Leonardo was an architect, a poet, a painter, an hydraulic engineer and a distinguished mathematician. Alberti was a musician, studied jurisprudence, was an architect and a draughtsman, and had great fame in literature. He had a deep feeling for nature, and an almost unique faculty of assimilating all that he saw and heard. Leonardo and Alberti are representatives and almost a compendium in themselves of all that intellectual vigour of the Renaissance age, which in the 16th century took to developing itself in its individual parts, making way for what has by some been called the golden age of Italian literature.
Piero Capponi
Piero Capponi
Piero Capponi was an Italian statesman and warrior from Florence.He was at first intended for a business career, but Lorenzo de' Medici, appreciating his ability, sent him as ambassador to various courts, where he acquitted himself with distinction...
, author of the Commentari deli acquisto di Pisa and of the narration of the Tumulto dei Ciompi, belonged to both the 14th and the 15th centuries.
Albertino Mussato
Albertino Mussato
Albertino Mussato was an Early Renaissance Italian statesman, poet, historian and dramatist credited with providing an impetus to the revival of literary Latin....
of Padua
Padua
Padua is a city and comune in the Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Padua and the economic and communications hub of the area. Padua's population is 212,500 . The city is sometimes included, with Venice and Treviso, in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area, having...
wrote in Latin a history of Emperor Henry VII. He then produced a Latin tragedy on Ezzelino da Romano
Ezzelino III da Romano
Ezzelino III da Romano was an Italian feudal lord in the March of Treviso who was a close ally of the emperor Frederick II and ruled Verona, Vicenza and Padua for almost two decades...
, Henry's imperial vicar in northern Italy, the Eccerinus, which was probably not represented on the stage. This remained an isolated work.
The development of the drama in the 15th century was very great. This kind of semi-popular literature was born in Florence, and attached itself to certain popular festivities that were usually held in honor of St John the Baptist
John the Baptist
John the Baptist was an itinerant preacher and a major religious figure mentioned in the Canonical gospels. He is described in the Gospel of Luke as a relative of Jesus, who led a movement of baptism at the Jordan River...
, patron saint of the city. The Sacra Rappresentazione is the development of the medieval Mistero (mystery play
Mystery play
Mystery plays and miracle plays are among the earliest formally developed plays in medieval Europe. Medieval mystery plays focused on the representation of Bible stories in churches as tableaux with accompanying antiphonal song...
). Although it belonged to popular poetry, some of its authors were literary men of much renown: Lorenzo de Medici, for example, wrote San Giovanni e Paolo, and Feo Belcari wrote San Panunzio, Abramo ed Isaac, and more. From the 15th century, some element of the comic-profane found its way into the Sacra Rappresentazione. From its Biblical and legendary conventionalism Poliziano emancipated himself in his Orfeo, which, although in its exterior form belonging to the sacred representations, yet substantially detaches itself from them in its contents and in the artistic element introduced.
After the Renaissance
The fundamental characteristic of the literary epoch following that of the Renaissance is that it perfected itself in every kind of art, in particular uniting the essentially Italian character of its language with classicism of style. This period lasted from about 1494 to about 1560—1494 being when Charles VIII descended into Italy, marking the beginning of Italy's foreign domination and political decadence.The famous men of the first half of the 16th century had been educated in the preceding century. Pietro Pomponazzi
Pietro Pomponazzi
Pietro Pomponazzi was an Italian philosopher. He is sometimes known by his Latin name, Petrus Pomponatius.-Biography:...
was born in 1462, Marcello Adriani Virgilio in 1464, Baldassare Castiglione
Baldassare Castiglione
Baldassare Castiglione, count of was an Italian courtier, diplomat, soldier and a prominent Renaissance author.-Biography:Castiglione was born into an illustrious Lombard family at Casatico, near Mantua, where his family had constructed an impressive palazzo...
in 1468, Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli was an Italian historian, philosopher, humanist, and writer based in Florence during the Renaissance. He is one of the main founders of modern political science. He was a diplomat, political philosopher, playwright, and a civil servant of the Florentine Republic...
in 1469, Pietro Bembo
Pietro Bembo
Pietro Bembo was an Italian scholar, poet, literary theorist, and cardinal. He was an influential figure in the development of the Italian language, specifically Tuscan, as a literary medium, and his writings assisted in the 16th-century revival of interest in the works of Petrarch...
in 1470, Michelangelo Buonarroti and Ariosto in 1474, Jacopo Nardi
Jacopo Nardi
Jacopo Nardi was an Italian historian from Florence.-Biography:He occupied various positions in the service of the Florentine republic after the expulsion of the Medici in 1494, and even on their return in 1512 he continued in the public service.In 1527 he joined the movement for the expulsion of...
in 1476, Gian Giorgio Trissino
Gian Giorgio Trissino
Gian Giorgio Trissino was an Italian Renaissance humanist, poet, dramatist, diplomat, and grammarian.-Biography:...
in 1478, and Francesco Guicciardini
Francesco Guicciardini
Francesco Guicciardini was an Italian historian and statesman. A friend and critic of Niccolò Machiavelli, he is considered one of the major political writers of the Italian Renaissance...
in 1482. Literary activity that appeared from the end of the 15th century to the middle of the 16th century was the product of the political and social conditions of an earlier age.
The science of history: Machiavelli and Guicciardini
Machiavelli and Guicciardini were the chief originators of the science of history.Machiavelli's principal works are the Istorie fiorentine, the Discorsi sulla prima deca di Tito Livio, the Arte della guerra and the Principe. His merit consists in having emphasized the experimental side of the study of political action in having observed facts, studied histories and drawn principles from them. His history is sometimes inexact in facts; it is rather a political than an historical work. The peculiarity of Machiavelli's genius lay, as has been said, in his artistic feeling for the treatment and discussion of politics in and for themselves, without regard to an immediate end in his power of abstracting himself from the partial appearances of the transitory present, in order more thoroughly to possess himself of the eternal and inborn kingdom, and to bring it into subjection to himself.
Next to Machiavelli both as an historian and a statesman comes Guicciardini. Guicciardini was very observant, and endeavoured to reduce his observations to a science. His Storia d'Italia, which extends from the death of Lorenzo de Medici to 1534, is full of political wisdom, is skillfully arranged in its parts, gives a lively picture of the character of the persons it treats of, and is written in a grand style. He shows a profound knowledge of the human heart, and depicts with truth the temperaments, the capabilities and habits of the different European nations. Going back to the causes of events, he looked for the explanation of the divergent interests of princes and of their reciprocal jealousies. The fact of his having witnessed many of the events he related, and having taken part in them, adds authority to his words. The political reflections are always deep; in the Pensieri, as Gino Capponi
Gino Capponi
Marquis Gino Capponi was an Italian statesman and historian.The Capponi family is one of the most illustrious Florentine houses, and is mentioned as early as 1250; it acquired great wealth as a mercantile and banking firm, and many of its members distinguished themselves in the service of the...
says, he seems to aim at extracting through self-examination a quintessence, as it were, of the things observed and done by him; thus endeavouring to form a political doctrine as adequate as possible in all its parts. Machiavelli and Guicciardini may be considered as distinguished historians as well as originators of the science of history founded on observation.
Inferior to them, but still always worthy of note, were Jacopo Nardi
Jacopo Nardi
Jacopo Nardi was an Italian historian from Florence.-Biography:He occupied various positions in the service of the Florentine republic after the expulsion of the Medici in 1494, and even on their return in 1512 he continued in the public service.In 1527 he joined the movement for the expulsion of...
(a just and faithful historian and a virtuous man, who defended the rights of Florence against the Medici before Charles V), Benedetto Varchi
Benedetto Varchi
Benedetto Varchi was an Italian humanist, a historian and poet.-Biography:Born in Florence to a family that had originated at Montevarchi, he frequented the neoplatonic academy that Bernardo Rucellai organized in his garden, the Orti Oricellari; there, in spite of the fact that Rucellai was...
, Giambattista Adriani, Bernardo Segni, and, outside Tuscany, Camillo Porzio
Camillo Porzio
Camillo Porzio was an Italian historian.He belonged to a wealthy and noble Neapolitan family, and was the son of the philosopher Simone Porzio...
, who related the Congiura de baroni and the history of Italy from 1547 to 1552; Angelo di Costanza, Pietro Bembo
Pietro Bembo
Pietro Bembo was an Italian scholar, poet, literary theorist, and cardinal. He was an influential figure in the development of the Italian language, specifically Tuscan, as a literary medium, and his writings assisted in the 16th-century revival of interest in the works of Petrarch...
, Paolo Paruta
Paolo Paruta
-Biography:He was born at Venice of a Luccan family. After studying at Padua he served the Republic of Venice in various political capacities, including that of secretary to one of the Venetian delegates at the Council of Ten...
, and others.
Ludovico Ariosto
Orlando Furioso
Orlando Furioso is an Italian epic poem by Ludovico Ariosto which has exerted a wide influence on later culture. The earliest version appeared in 1516, although the poem was not published in its complete form until 1532...
was a continuation of Boiardo's Innamorato. His characteristic is that he assimilated the romance of chivalry to the style and models of classicism. Romantic Ariosto was an artist only for the love of his art; his epic.
His sole aim was to make a romance that would please himself and his generation. His Orlando has no grave and serious purpose. On the contrary, it creates a fantastic world in which the poet rambles, indulges his caprice, and sometimes smiles at his own work. His great desire is to depict everything with the greatest possible perfection; the cultivation of style is what occupies him most. In his hands the style becomes wonderfully plastic to every conception, whether high or low, serious or sportive. With him, the octave stanza reached a high level of grace, variety, and harmony.
Pietro Bembo
Pietro BemboPietro Bembo
Pietro Bembo was an Italian scholar, poet, literary theorist, and cardinal. He was an influential figure in the development of the Italian language, specifically Tuscan, as a literary medium, and his writings assisted in the 16th-century revival of interest in the works of Petrarch...
was an influential figure in the development of the Italian language
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, specifically Tuscan, as a literary medium, and his writings assisted in the 16th-century revival of interest in the works of Petrarch
Petrarch
Francesco Petrarca , known in English as Petrarch, was an Italian scholar, poet and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch is often called the "Father of Humanism"...
. As a writer, Bembo attempted to restore some of the legendary "affect" that ancient Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
had on its hearers, but in Tuscan Italian instead. He held as his model, and as the highest example of poetic expression ever achieved in Italian, the work of Petrarch and Boccaccio, two 14th century writers he assisted in bringing back into fashion.
In the Prose della volgar lingua, he set Petrarch up as the perfect model, and discussed verse composition in detail, including rhyme, stress, the sounds of words, balance and variety. In Bembo's theory, the specific placement of words in a poem, with strict attention to their consonants and vowels, their rhythm, their position within lines long and short, could produce emotions ranging from sweetness and grace to gravity and grief in a listener. This work was of decisive importance in the development of the Italian madrigal, the most famous secular musical form of the 16th century, as it was these poems, carefully constructed (or, in the case of Petrarch, analyzed) according to Bembo's ideas, that were to be the primary texts for the music.
Torquato Tasso
Torquato Tasso
Torquato Tasso was an Italian poet of the 16th century, best known for his poem La Gerusalemme liberata , in which he depicts a highly imaginative version of the combats between Christians and Muslims at the end of the First Crusade, during the siege of Jerusalem...
should be placed in the period of the highest development of the Renaissance, or whether he should form a period by himself, intermediate between that and the one following. Certainly he was profoundly out of harmony with his own century. His religious faith, the seriousness of his character, the deep melancholy settled in his heart, his continued aspiration after an ideal perfection—all place him outside the literary epoch represented by Machiavelli, Ariosto, and Berni. As Carducci
Giosuè Carducci
Giosuè Alessandro Michele Carducci was an Italian poet and teacher. He was very influential and was regarded as the official national poet of modern Italy. In 1906 he became the first Italian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.-Biography:...
said, Tasso is the legitimate heir of Dante: he believes, and reasons on his faith by philosophy; he loves, and comments on his love in a learned style; he is an artist, and writes dialogues of scholastic
Scholasticism
Scholasticism is a method of critical thought which dominated teaching by the academics of medieval universities in Europe from about 1100–1500, and a program of employing that method in articulating and defending orthodoxy in an increasingly pluralistic context...
speculation that would be considered Platonic. He was only eighteen years old when, in 1562, he tried his hand at epic poetry, and wrote Rinaldo, in which be said that he had tried to reconcile the Aristotelian rules with the variety of Ariosto. He later wrote the Aminta, a pastoral drama of exquisite grace, but the work to which he had long turned his thoughts was an heroic poem, and that absorbed all his powers. He explains his intentions in the three Discorsi, written while he composed the Gerusalemme: he would choose a great and wonderful subject, not so ancient as to have lost all interest, nor so recent as to prevent the poet from embellishing it with invented circumstances. He would treat it rigorously according to the rules of the unity of action observed in Greek and Latin poems, but with a far greater variety and splendour of episodes, so that in this point it should not fall short of the romantic poem; and finally, he would write it in a lofty and ornate style. This is what Tasso has done in the Gerusalemme liberata, the subject of which is the liberation of the sepulchre
Sepulchre
The rock-cut tombs in ancient Israel are a group of hundreds of rock-cut tombs constructed in Israel in ancient times. They were cut into the rock, sometimes with elaborate facades and multiple burial chambers. Some are free-standing, but most are caves. Each tomb typically belonged to a...
of Jesus Christ in the 11th century by Godfrey of Bouillon
Godfrey of Bouillon
Godfrey of Bouillon was a medieval Frankish knight who was one of the leaders of the First Crusade from 1096 until his death. He was the Lord of Bouillon, from which he took his byname, from 1076 and the Duke of Lower Lorraine from 1087...
. The poet does not follow faithfully all the historical facts, but sets before us the principal causes of them, bringing in the supernatural agency of God and Satan. The Gerusalemme is the best heroic poem that Italy can show. It approaches to classical perfection. Its episodes above all are most beautiful. There is profound feeling in it, and everything reflects the melancholy soul of the poet. As regards the style, however, although Tasso studiously endeavoured to keep close to the classical models, one cannot help noticing that he makes excessive use of metaphor
Metaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
, of antithesis
Antithesis
Antithesis is a counter-proposition and denotes a direct contrast to the original proposition...
, of far-fetched conceits; and it is specially from this point of view that some historians have placed Tasso in the literary period generally known under the name of Secentismo, and that others, more moderate in their criticism, have said that he prepared the way for it.
Minor writers
Meanwhile, side by side with the romantic, there was an attempt at the historical epic. Gian Giorgio TrissinoGian Giorgio Trissino
Gian Giorgio Trissino was an Italian Renaissance humanist, poet, dramatist, diplomat, and grammarian.-Biography:...
of Vicenza
Vicenza
Vicenza , a city in north-eastern Italy, is the capital of the eponymous province in the Veneto region, at the northern base of the Monte Berico, straddling the Bacchiglione...
composed a poem called Italia liberata dai Goti. Full of learning and of the rules of the ancients, he formed himself on the latter, in order to sing of the campaigns of Belisarius
Belisarius
Flavius Belisarius was a general of the Byzantine Empire. He was instrumental to Emperor Justinian's ambitious project of reconquering much of the Mediterranean territory of the former Western Roman Empire, which had been lost less than a century previously....
; he said that he had forced himself to observe all the rules of Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
, and that he had imitated Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
. In this again, we see one of the products of the Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
; and, although Trissino's work is poor in invention and without any original poetical coloring, yet it helps one to understand better what were the conditions of mind in the 16th century.
Lyric poetry was certainly not one of the kinds that rose to any great height in the 16th century. Originality was entirely wanting, since it seemed in that century as if nothing better could be done than to copy Petrarch. Still, even in this style there were some vigorous poets. Monsignore Giovanni Guidiccioni
Giovanni Guidiccioni
Giovanni Guidiccioni was an Italian poet.He was born at Lucca, and died at Macerata.He occupied a high position, being bishop of Fossombrone and president of Romagna...
of Lucca
Lucca
Lucca is a city and comune in Tuscany, central Italy, situated on the river Serchio in a fertile plainnear the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Lucca...
(1500–1541) showed that he had a generous heart. In fine sonnets he expressed his grief for the sad state of his country. Francesco Molza of Modena
Modena
Modena is a city and comune on the south side of the Po Valley, in the Province of Modena in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy....
(1489–1544), learned in Greek, Latin and Hebrew, wrote in a graceful style and with spirit. Giovanni della Casa
Giovanni della Casa
Giovanni della Casa was an Italian poet and cleric.-Biography:He was born at Florence, in Tuscany. He studied at Bologna, Padua, Florence and Rome, and by his learning attracted the patronage of Alexander Farnese, who, as Pope Paul III, made him archbishop of Benevento and later nuncio to Venice,...
(1503–1556) and Pietro Bembo
Pietro Bembo
Pietro Bembo was an Italian scholar, poet, literary theorist, and cardinal. He was an influential figure in the development of the Italian language, specifically Tuscan, as a literary medium, and his writings assisted in the 16th-century revival of interest in the works of Petrarch...
(1470–1547), although Petrarchists, were elegant. Even Michelangelo was at times a Petrarchist, but his poems bear the stamp of his extraordinary and original genius. And a good many ladies are to be placed near these poets, such as Vittoria Colonna
Vittoria Colonna
Vittoria Colonna , marchioness of Pescara, was an Italian noblewoman and poet.-Biography:The daughter of Fabrizio Colonna, grand constable of the kingdom of Naples, and of Agnese da Montefeltro, Vittoria Colonna was born at Marinoa fief of the Colonna family in the Alban Hills near Rome.Betrothed...
(loved by Michelangelo), Veronica Gambara
Veronica Gambara
Veronica Gambara was an Italian poet, stateswoman and political leader.-Family:Born in Pralboino , in Lombardy, Italy, Gambara came from a distinguished family , one of the seven children of Count Gianfrancesco da Gambara and Alda Pio da Carpi...
, Tullia d'Aragona
Tullia d'Aragona
Tullia d'Aragona was a 16th century Italian courtesan, author and philosopher in Venice. She had one daughter, Penelope d'Aragona, born in 1535, and a son, Celio, by Silvestro Guiccardi....
, and Giulia Gonzaga
Giulia Gonzaga
Giulia Gonzaga was an Italian noblewoman of the Renaissance.-Biography:Giulia was born in Gazzuolo in 1512. In 1526 she was married to count Vespasiano Colonna , count of Fondi and duke of Traetto...
, poets of great delicacy, and superior in genius to many literary men of their time.
Many tragedies were written in the 16th century, but they are all weak. The cause of this was the moral and religious indifference of the Italians, the lack of strong passions and vigorous characters. The first to occupy the tragic stage was Trissino with his Sofonisba, following the rules of the art most scrupulously, but written in sickly verses, and without warmth of feeling. The Oreste and the Rosmunda of Giovanni Rucellai
Giovanni Rucellai
Giovanni Rucellai is the name of a father and grandson of the Rucellai family wool-dyers turned bankers.The former, Giovanni di Paolo, or Giovanni I, as the effective head of the Rucellai family commissioned the building of the Palazzo Rucellai, designed by Leon Battista Alberti and the father of...
were no better, nor Luigi Alamanni
Luigi Alamanni
Luigi Alamanni was an Italian poet and statesman. He was regarded as a prolific and versatile poet. He was credited with introducing the epigram into Italian poetry.-Biography:...
's Antigone
Antigone
In Greek mythology, Antigone is the daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta, Oedipus' mother. The name may be taken to mean "unbending", coming from "anti-" and "-gon / -gony" , but has also been suggested to mean "opposed to motherhood", "in place of a mother", or "anti-generative", based from the root...
. Sperone Speroni
Sperone Speroni
Sperone Speroni degli Alvarotti was an Italian Renaissance humanist, scholar and dramatist. He was one of the central members of Padua's literary academy Accademia degli Infiammati and wrote on both moral and literary matters.-Biography:...
in his Canace
Canace (play)
Canace is a verse tragedy by Italian playwright Sperone Speroni . It is based on the Greek legend of Canace, the daughter of Aeolus, who was forced by her father to commit suicide for having fallen in love with her brother, Macar....
and Giraldi Cintio in his Orbecche
Orbecche
Orbecche is a tragedy written by Giovanni Battista Giraldi in 1541. It was the first modern tragedy written on classical principles, and along with Sperone Speroni's Canace, was responsible for a sixteenth-century theoretical debate on theater, especially with regards to decorum.It was produced in...
tried to become innovators in tragic literature, but provoked criticisms of grotesquerie and debate over the role of decorum. They were often seen as inferior to the Torrismondo of Torquato Tasso
Torquato Tasso
Torquato Tasso was an Italian poet of the 16th century, best known for his poem La Gerusalemme liberata , in which he depicts a highly imaginative version of the combats between Christians and Muslims at the end of the First Crusade, during the siege of Jerusalem...
, specially remarkable for the choruses, which sometimes remind one of the chorus of the Greek tragedies.
The Italian comedy of the 16th century was almost entirely modelled on the Latin comedy. They were almost always alike in the plot, in the characters of the old man, of the servant, of the waiting-maid; and the argument was often the same. Thus the Lucidi of Agnolo Firenzuola
Agnolo Firenzuola
Agnolo Firenzuola was an Italian poet and litterateur.-Biography:Agnolo Firenzuola was born at Florence. The family name was taken from the town of Firenzuola, situated at the foot of the Apennines, its original home....
, and the Vecchio amoroso of Donato Giannotti
Donato Giannotti
Donato Giannotti was an Italian political writer and playwright.He was one of the leaders of the short-lived Florentine Republic of 1527. He subsequently wrote theoretical works on republicanism. After the return of the Medicis, he lived in exile, dying in Rome...
were modelled on comedies by Plautus
Plautus
Titus Maccius Plautus , commonly known as "Plautus", was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest surviving intact works in Latin literature. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the genre devised by the innovator of Latin literature, Livius Andronicus...
, as were the Sporta by Giambattista Gelli
Giambattista Gelli
Giambattista Gelli was a Florentine humanist man of letters, from an artisan background. He is known for his works of the 1540s, Capricci del bottaio and La Circe, which are ethical and philosophical dialogues...
, the Marito by Lodovico Dolce
Lodovico Dolce
Lodovico Dolce was an Italian theorist of painting. He was a broadly-based Venetian humanist and prolific author, translator and editor; he is now remembered for his Dialogue on Painting.-Biography:...
, and others. There appear to be only three writers who should be distinguished among the many who wrote comedies: Machiavelli, Ariosto, and Giovan Maria Cecchi. In his Mandragola Machiavelli, unlike the others, composed a comedy of character, creating personalities that seem living even now because he copied them from reality with a finely observant eye. Ariosto, on the other hand, was distinguished for his picture of the habits of his time, and especially of those of the Ferrarese nobles, rather than for the objective delineation of character. Lastly, Cecchi left in his comedies a treasure of spoken language, which lets us, in a wonderful way, acquaint ourselves with that age. The notorious Pietro Aretino
Pietro Aretino
Pietro Aretino was an Italian author, playwright, poet and satirist who wielded immense influence on contemporary art and politics and invented modern literate pornography.- Life :...
might also be included in the list of the best writers of comedy.
The 15th century included humorous poetry. Antonio Cammelli, surnamed the Pistoian, is specially deserving of notice, because of his pungent bonhomie, as Sainte-Beuve called it. But it was Francesco Berni
Francesco Berni
Francesco Berni was an Italian poet. He is credited for beginning what is now known as "Bernesque poetry", a serio-comedic type of poetry with elements of satire.-Life:...
who and satire, carried this kind of literature to perfection in the 16th century. From him the style has been called bernesque poetry. In the Berneschi we find nearly the same phenomenon that we already noticed with regard to Orlando furioso. It was art for arts sake that inspired and moved Berni to write, as well as Antonio Francesco Grazzini
Antonio Francesco Grazzini
Antonio Francesco Grazzini was an Italian author.-Biography:He was born at Florence of a good family, but there is no record of his upbringing and education. He probably began to practise as an apothecary as a youth...
, called Il Lasca, and other lesser writers. It may be said that there is nothing in their poetry; and it is true that they specially delight in praising low and disgusting things and in jeering at what is noble and serious. Bernesque poetry is the clearest reflection of that religious and moral scepticism that was a characteristic of Italian social life in the 16th century, and that showed itself in most of the works of that period—a scepticism that stopped the religious Reformation in Italy
Reformation in Italy
The Protestant Reformation began early in the Italian states, before the end of the 15th century, and quickly collapsed at the beginning of the 17th century. Its development was hindered by the Inquisition and also popular disdain.-Pre-Reformation Italy:...
, and which in its turn was an effect of historical conditions. The Berneschi, and especially Berni himself, sometimes assumed a satirical tone. But theirs could not be called true satire. Pure satirists, on the other hand, were Antonio Vinciguerra, a Venetian, Lodovico Alamanni and Ariosto, the last superior to the others for the Attic elegance of his style, and for a certain frankness, passing into malice, which is particularly interesting when the poet talks of himself.
In the 16th century there were not a few didactic works. In his poem Api Giovanni Rucellai
Giovanni Rucellai
Giovanni Rucellai is the name of a father and grandson of the Rucellai family wool-dyers turned bankers.The former, Giovanni di Paolo, or Giovanni I, as the effective head of the Rucellai family commissioned the building of the Palazzo Rucellai, designed by Leon Battista Alberti and the father of...
approaches to the perfection of Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
. His style is clear and light, and he adds interest to his book by frequent allusions to the events of the time. The most important didactic work, however, is Castiglione's Cortigiano, in which he imagines a discussion in the palace of the dukes of Urbino
Urbino
Urbino is a walled city in the Marche region of Italy, south-west of Pesaro, a World Heritage Site notable for a remarkable historical legacy of independent Renaissance culture, especially under the patronage of Federico da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino from 1444 to 1482...
between knights and ladies as to what gifts a perfect courtier
Courtier
A courtier is a person who is often in attendance at the court of a king or other royal personage. Historically the court was the centre of government as well as the residence of the monarch, and social and political life were often completely mixed together...
requires. This book is valuable as an illustration of the intellectual and moral state of the highest Italian society in the first half of the 16th century.
Of the novelists of the 16th century, the two most important were Grazzini, and Matteo Bandello
Matteo Bandello
-Biography:Matteo Bandello was born at Castelnuovo Scrivia, near Tortona , c. 1480 or 1485. He received a good education, and entered the church, but does not seem to have been very interested in theology. For many years he lived at Mantua, and superintended the education of the celebrated Lucrezia...
; the former as playful and bizarre as the latter is grave and solemn. Bandello was a Dominican
Dominican Order
The Order of Preachers , after the 15th century more commonly known as the Dominican Order or Dominicans, is a Catholic religious order founded by Saint Dominic and approved by Pope Honorius III on 22 December 1216 in France...
friar
Friar
A friar is a member of one of the mendicant orders.-Friars and monks:...
and a bishop, but that notwithstanding his novels were very loose in subject, and that he often holds up the ecclesiastics of his time to ridicule.
At a time when admiration for qualities of style, the desire for classical elegance, was so strong as in the 16th century, much attention was naturally paid to translating Latin and Greek authors. Among the very numerous translations of the time those of the Aeneid
Aeneid
The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter...
and of the Pastorals of Longus
Longus
Longus, sometimes Longos , was the author of an ancient Greek novel or romance, Daphnis and Chloe. Very little is known of his life, and it is assumed that he lived on the isle of Lesbos during the 2nd century AD...
the Sophist by Annibale Caro
Annibale Caro
Annibale Caro was an Italian poet.-Biography:Born in Civitanova Marche, province of Macerata, he became tutor to the wealthy family of Lodovico Gaddi in Florence, and then secretary to Lodovico's brother Giovanni...
are still famous; as are also the translations of Ovid
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
's Metamorphoses
Metamorphoses (poem)
Metamorphoses is a Latin narrative poem in fifteen books by the Roman poet Ovid describing the history of the world from its creation to the deification of Julius Caesar within a loose mythico-historical framework. Completed in AD 8, it is recognized as a masterpiece of Golden Age Latin literature...
by Giovanni Andrea dell' Anguillara
Giovanni Andrea dell' Anguillara
Giovanni Andrea dell'Anguillara was an Italian poet.He was born in Sutri, in Tuscany. He worked as a proof-reader.He translated Ovid's Metamorphoses in ottava rima, and wrote a tragedy Edippo .- External links :...
, of Apuleius
Apuleius
Apuleius was a Latin prose writer. He was a Berber, from Madaurus . He studied Platonist philosophy in Athens; travelled to Italy, Asia Minor and Egypt; and was an initiate in several cults or mysteries. The most famous incident in his life was when he was accused of using magic to gain the...
's The Golden Ass
The Golden Ass
The Metamorphoses of Apuleius, which St. Augustine referred to as The Golden Ass , is the only Latin novel to survive in its entirety....
by Firenzuola, and of Plutarch
Plutarch
Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...
's Lives and Moralia by Marcello Adriani.
The 17th century: A period of decadence
From about 1559 began a period of decadence in Italian literature. Tommaso CampanellaTommaso Campanella
Tommaso Campanella OP , baptized Giovanni Domenico Campanella, was an Italian philosopher, theologian, astrologer, and poet.-Biography:...
was tortured by the Inquisition
Inquisition
The Inquisition, Inquisitio Haereticae Pravitatis , was the "fight against heretics" by several institutions within the justice-system of the Roman Catholic Church. It started in the 12th century, with the introduction of torture in the persecution of heresy...
, and Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno , born Filippo Bruno, was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician and astronomer. His cosmological theories went beyond the Copernican model in proposing that the Sun was essentially a star, and moreover, that the universe contained an infinite number of inhabited...
was burned at the stake. Cesare Balbo
Cesare Balbo
Cesare Balbo , Count of Vinadio, was an Italian writer and statesman.Balbo was born at Turin on the 21st of November 1789. His father, Prospero Balbo, who belonged to a noble Piedmontese family, held a high position in the Sardinian court, and at the time of Cesare’s birth was mayor of the capital...
says that, if the happiness of the masses consists in peace without industry, if the nobility's consists in titles without power, if princes are satisfied by acquiescence in their rule without real independence, without sovereignty, if literary men and artists are content to write, paint and build with the approbation of their contemporaries, but to the contempt of posterity, if a whole nation is happy in ease without dignity and the tranquil progress of corruption, then no period ever was so happy for Italy as the 140 years from the Peace of Cateau Cambrésis to the War of the Spanish Succession
War of the Spanish Succession
The War of the Spanish Succession was fought among several European powers, including a divided Spain, over the possible unification of the Kingdoms of Spain and France under one Bourbon monarch. As France and Spain were among the most powerful states of Europe, such a unification would have...
. This period is known in the history of Italian literature as the Secentismo. Its writers resorted to exaggeration; they tried to produce effect with what in art is called mannerism
Mannerism
Mannerism is a period of European art that emerged from the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520. It lasted until about 1580 in Italy, when a more Baroque style began to replace it, but Northern Mannerism continued into the early 17th century throughout much of Europe...
or barocchism. Writers vied with one another in their use of metaphors, affectations, hyperbole
Hyperbole
Hyperbole is the use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device or figure of speech. It may be used to evoke strong feelings or to create a strong impression, but is not meant to be taken literally....
and other oddities and draw it off from the substantial element of thought.
Marinism
At the head of the school of the Secentisti was Giambattista Marino of Naples, born in 1569, especially known for his long poem, Adone. He used the most extravagant metaphors, the most forced antitheses and the most far-fetched conceits. He strings antitheses together one after the other, so that they fill up whole stanzas without a break. Claudio AchilliniClaudio Achillini
Claudio Achillini was an Italian philosopher, theologian, mathematician, poet, and jurist.Born in Bologna, he was grandson to Giovanni Filoteo Achillini and grand-nephew to Alessandro Achillini. He was professor of jurisprudence for several years at his native Bologna, Parma, and Ferrara, with the...
of Bologna followed in Marino's footsteps, but his peculiarities were even more extravagant. Almost all the poets of the 17th century were more or less infected with Marinism. Alessandro Guidi, although he does not attain to the exaggeration of his master, is bombastic and turgid, while Fulvio Testi
Fulvio Testi
Fulvio Testi was an Italian diplomat and poet. Recognised as one of the main exponents of 17th century Baroque literature, he worked in the service of the d'Este dukes in Modena, for whom he held high office, such as the governorship of Garfagnana...
is artificial and affected. Yet Guidi as well as Testi felt the influence of another poet, Gabriello Chiabrera
Gabriello Chiabrera
Gabriello Chiabrera was an Italian poet, sometimes called the Italian Pindar.-Biography:He was of patrician descent, and was born at Savona, a little town in the domain of the Genoese republic, twenty-eight years after the...
, born at Savona
Savona
Savona is a seaport and comune in the northern Italian region of Liguria, capital of the Province of Savona, in the Riviera di Ponente on the Mediterranean Sea....
in 1552. Enamoured of the Greeks, he made new metres, especially in imitation of Pindar
Pindar
Pindar , was an Ancient Greek lyric poet. Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved. Quintilian described him as "by far the greatest of the nine lyric poets, in virtue of his inspired magnificence, the beauty of his thoughts and figures, the rich...
, treating of religious, moral, historical, and amatory subjects. Chiabrera, though elegant in form, attempts to disguise a lack of substance with poetical ornaments of every kind. Nevertheless, Chiabrera's school marks an improvement; and sometimes he shows lyrical capacities, wasted on his literary environment.
Arcadia
The belief arose that it would be necessary to change the form in order to restore literature. In 1690 the Academy of ArcadiaAcademy of Arcadia
The Academy of Arcadia or Academy of Arcadians was an Italian literary academy founded in Rome in 1690.-History:...
was instituted. Its founders were Giovan Maria Crescimbeni and Gian Vincenzo Gravina. The Arcadia was so called because its chief aim was to imitate the simplicity of the ancient shepherds who were supposed to have lived in Arcadia
Arcadia (utopia)
Arcadia refers to a vision of pastoralism and harmony with nature. The term is derived from the Greek province of the same name which dates to antiquity; the province's mountainous topography and sparse population of pastoralists later caused the word Arcadia to develop into a poetic byword for an...
in the golden age. As the Secentisti erred by an overweening desire for novelty, so the Arcadians proposed to return to the fields of truth, always singing of subjects of pastoral simplicity. This was merely the substitution of a new artifice for the old one; and they fell from bombast into effeminacy, from the hyperbolical into the petty, from the turgid into the over-refined. The Arcadia was a reaction against Secentismo, but a reaction that only succeeded in impoverishing still further and completely withering Italian literature. The poems of the Arcadians fill many volumes, and are made up of sonnet
Sonnet
A sonnet is one of several forms of poetry that originate in Europe, mainly Provence and Italy. A sonnet commonly has 14 lines. The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song" or "little sound"...
s, madrigals
Madrigal (music)
A madrigal is a secular vocal music composition, usually a partsong, of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Traditionally, polyphonic madrigals are unaccompanied; the number of voices varies from two to eight, and most frequently from three to six....
, canzonette and blank verse
Blank verse
Blank verse is poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. It has been described as "probably the most common and influential form that English poetry has taken since the sixteenth century" and Paul Fussell has claimed that "about three-quarters of all English poetry is in blank verse."The first...
. The one who most distinguished himself among the sonneteers was Felice Zappi. Among the authors of songs, Paolo Rolli was illustrious. Innocenzo Frugoni was more famous than all the others, a man of fruitful imagination but of shallow intellect.
Vincenzo da Filicaja, a Florentine, had a lyric talent, particularly in the songs about Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
besieged by the Turks
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
, which raised him above the vices of the time; but even in him we see clearly the rhetorical artifice and false conceits. In general all the lyric poetry of the 17th century had the same defects, but in different degrees. These defects may be summed up as absence of feeling and exaggeration of form.
The independent thinkers
Whilst the political and social conditions in Italy in the 17th century made it appear that every light of intelligence was extinguished, some strong and independent thinkers, such as Bernardino TelesioBernardino Telesio
Bernardino Telesio was an Italian philosopher and natural scientist.While his natural theories were later disproven, his emphasis on observation made him the "first of the moderns" who eventually developed thescientific method.-Biography:...
, Lucilio Vanini
Lucilio Vanini
Lucilio Vanini was an Italian free-thinker, who in his works styled himself Giulio Cesare Vanini.He was born at Taurisano, near Lecce, and studied philosophy and theology at Rome. After his return to Lecce he applied himself to the physical studies which had come into vogue with the Renaissance....
, Bruno and Campanella turned philosophical inquiry into fresh channels, and opened the way for the scientific conquests of Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei , was an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution. His achievements include improvements to the telescope and consequent astronomical observations and support for Copernicanism...
, the great contemporary of René Descartes
René Descartes
René Descartes ; was a French philosopher and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day...
in France and of Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...
in England. Galileo was not only a great man of science, but also occupied a conspicuous place in the history of letters. A devoted student of Ariosto, he seemed to transfuse into his prose the qualities of that great poet: clear and frank freedom of expression, precision and ease, and at the same time elegance. Galileo's prose is in perfect antithesis to the poetry of his time and is regarded by some as the best prose that Italy has ever had.
Another symptom of revival, a sign of rebellion against the vileness of Italian social life, is given us in satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
, particularly that of Salvator Rosa
Salvator Rosa
Salvator Rosa was an Italian Baroque painter, poet and printmaker, active in Naples, Rome and Florence. As a painter, he is best known as an "unorthodox and extravagant" and a "perpetual rebel" proto-Romantic.-Early life:...
and Alessandro Tassoni
Alessandro Tassoni
Alessandro Tassoni was an Italian poet and writer.- Life :He was born in Modena, to a noble family. In 1597, he began his service for the cardinal Colonna whom he followed to Spain. In 1603 he was back in Italy and moved to Rome.In 1612 he published anonymously the booklet Le Filippiche in which...
. Rosa, born in 1615 near Naples, was a painter, a musician and a poet. As a poet he mourned the sad condition of his country, and gave vent to his feeling (as another satire-writer, Giuseppe Giusti
Giuseppe Giusti
Giuseppe Giusti was an Italian poet.-Biography:Giusti was born at Monsummano Terme, a small town of the Valdinievole, now in the province of Pistoia....
, said) in generosi rabbuffi. He was a precursor of the patriotic literature that inaugurated the revival of the 18th century. Tassoni showed independent judgment in the midst of universal servility, and his Secchia Rapita proved that he was an eminent writer. This is an heroic comic poem, which is at the same time an epic and a personal satire. He was bold enough to attack the Spaniards in his Filippiche, in which he urged Duke Carlo Emanuele of Savoy to persist in the war against them.
Agriculture
Paganino Bonafede in the Tesoro de rustici gave many precepts in agriculture, beginning that kind of georgic poetry later fully developed by AlamanniAlamanni
The Alamanni, Allemanni, or Alemanni were originally an alliance of Germanic tribes located around the upper Rhine river . One of the earliest references to them is the cognomen Alamannicus assumed by Roman Emperor Caracalla, who ruled the Roman Empire from 211 to 217 and claimed thereby to be...
in his Coltivazione, by Girolamo Baruffaldi in the Canapajo, by Rucellai in Le api, by Bartolomeo Lorenzi in the Coltivazione de' monti, and by Giambattista Spolverini in the Coltivazione del riso.
The revival in the 18th century: the Age of Reason and Reform
In the 18th century, the political condition of Italy began to improve, under Joseph II, Holy Roman EmperorJoseph II, Holy Roman Emperor
Joseph II was Holy Roman Emperor from 1765 to 1790 and ruler of the Habsburg lands from 1780 to 1790. He was the eldest son of Empress Maria Theresa and her husband, Francis I...
, and his successors. These princes were influenced by philosophers, who in their turn felt the influence of a general movement of ideas at large in many parts of Europe, sometimes called The Enlightenment.
History and society: Vico, Muratori and Beccaria
Giambattista VicoGiambattista Vico
Giovanni Battista ' Vico or Vigo was an Italian political philosopher, rhetorician, historian, and jurist....
showed the awakening of historical consciousness in Italy. In his Scienza nuova, he investigated the laws governing the progress of the human race, and according to which events develop. From the psychological study of man he tried to infer the comune natura delle nazioni, i.e., the universal laws of history, by which civilizations rise, flourish and fall. From the same scientific spirit that inspired Vico came a different kind of investigation, that of the sources of Italian civil and literary history.
Lodovico Antonio Muratori, after having collected in his Rerum Italicarum scriptores the chronicle
Chronicle
Generally a chronicle is a historical account of facts and events ranged in chronological order, as in a time line. Typically, equal weight is given for historically important events and local events, the purpose being the recording of events that occurred, seen from the perspective of the...
s, biographies, letters and diaries of Italian history from 500 to 1500, and having discussed the most obscure historical questions in the Antiquitates Italicae medii aevi, wrote the Annali d'Italia, minutely narrating facts derived from authentic sources. Muratori's associates in his historical research were Scipione Maffei of Verona and Apostolo Zeno
Apostolo Zeno
Apostolo Zeno was a Venetian poet, librettist, journalist, and man of letters.-Early life:Apostolo Zeno was born of Cretan Greek descent in Venice in 1669...
of Venice. In his Verona illustrata Maffei left a treasure of learning that was also an excellent historical monograph. Zeno added much to the erudition of literary history, both in his Dissertazioni Vossiane and in his notes to the Biblioteca dell'eloquenza italiana of Monsignore Giusto Fontanini. Girolamo Tiraboschi
Girolamo Tiraboschi
Girolamo Tiraboschi was an Italian literary critic, the first historian of Italian literature.-Biography:Born in Bergamo, he studied at the Jesuit college in Monza, entered the order, and was appointed in 1755 professor of eloquence in the University of Milan...
and Count Giovanni Maria Mazzuchelli of Brescia devoted themselves to literary history.
While the new spirit of the times led to the investigation of historical sources, it also encouraged inquiry into the mechanism of economic and social laws. Francesco Galiani wrote on currency; Gaetano Filangieri
Gaetano Filangieri
Gaetano Filangieri , Italian jurist and philosopher, was born in San Sebastiano al Vesuvio, a country near Naples....
wrote a Scienza della legislazione. Cesare Beccaria, in his Trattato dei delitti e delle pene, made a contribution to the reform of the penal system and promoted the abolition of torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
.
Metastasio and the melodramma
The reforming movement sought to throw off the conventional and the artificial, and to return to truth. Apostolo ZenoApostolo Zeno
Apostolo Zeno was a Venetian poet, librettist, journalist, and man of letters.-Early life:Apostolo Zeno was born of Cretan Greek descent in Venice in 1669...
and Metastasio
Metastasio
Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi, better known by his pseudonym of Metastasio, was an Italian poet and librettist, considered the most important writer of opera seria libretti.-Early life:...
(the Arcadian name for Pietro Trapassi, a native of Rome) had endeavoured to make melodrama
Melodrama
The term melodrama refers to a dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters in order to appeal to the emotions. It may also refer to the genre which includes such works, or to language, behavior, or events which resemble them...
and reason compatible. Metastasio gave fresh expression to the affections, a natural turn to the dialogue and some interest to the plot; if he had not fallen into constant unnatural overrefinement and mawkishness, and into frequent anachronism
Anachronism
An anachronism—from the Greek ανά and χρόνος — is an inconsistency in some chronological arrangement, especially a chronological misplacing of persons, events, objects, or customs in regard to each other...
s, he might have been considered the first dramatic reformer of the 18th century.
Carlo Goldoni
Carlo GoldoniCarlo Goldoni
Carlo Osvaldo Goldoni was an Italian playwright and librettist from the Republic of Venice. His works include some of Italy's most famous and best-loved plays. Audiences have admired the plays of Goldoni for their ingenious mix of wit and honesty...
, a Venetian, overcame resistance from the old popular form of comedy, with the masks of pantalone
Pantalone
Pantalone, or Pantalone del bisognosi, Italian for 'Pantalone of the needy', is one of the most important principal characters found in commedia del arte...
, of the doctor, harlequin
Harlequin
Harlequin or Arlecchino in Italian, Arlequin in French, and Arlequín in Spanish is the most popularly known of the zanni or comic servant characters from the Italian Commedia dell'arte and its descendant, the Harlequinade.-Origins:...
, Brighella
Brighella
Brighella is a comic, masked character from the Commedia dell'arte. His early costume consisted of loosely-fitting, white smock and pants with green trim and was often equipped with a battachio or slapstick, or else with a wooden sword. Later he took to wearing a sort of livery with a matching cape...
, etc., and created the comedy of character, following Molière
Molière
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...
's example. Goldoni's characters are often superficial, but he wrote lively dialogue. He produced over 150 comedies, and had no time to polish and perfect his works; but for a comedy of character we must go straight from Machiavelli's Mandragola to him. Goldoni's dramatic aptitude is illustrated by the fact that he took nearly all his types from Venetian society, yet managed to give them an inexhaustible variety. Many of his comedies were written in Venetian dialect
Venetian language
Venetian or Venetan is a Romance language spoken as a native language by over two million people, mostly in the Veneto region of Italy, where of five million inhabitants almost all can understand it. It is sometimes spoken and often well understood outside Veneto, in Trentino, Friuli, Venezia...
.
Giuseppe Parini
The leading figure of the literary revival of the 18th century was Giuseppe PariniGiuseppe Parini
Giuseppe Parini was an Italian Enlightenment satirist and poet of the neoclassic period.-Biography:Parini was born in Bosisio in Brianza, Lombardy...
. Born in a Lombard
Lombardy
Lombardy is one of the 20 regions of Italy. The capital is Milan. One-sixth of Italy's population lives in Lombardy and about one fifth of Italy's GDP is produced in this region, making it the most populous and richest region in the country and one of the richest in the whole of Europe...
village in 1729, he was educated at Milan, and as a youth was known among the Arcadian poets by the name of Darisbo Elidonio. Even as an Arcadian, Parini showed originality. In a collection of poems he published at twenty-three years of age, under the name of Ripano Eupilino, the poet shows his faculty of taking his scenes from real life, and in his satirical pieces he exhibits a spirit of outspoken opposition to his own times. These poems, though derivative, indicate a resolute determination to challenge the literary conventionalities. Improving on the poems of his youth, he showed himself an innovator in his lyrics, rejecting at once Petrarchism, Secentismo and Arcadia, the three maladies that he thought had weakened Italian art in the preceding centuries. In the Odi the satirical note is already heard, but it comes out more strongly in Del giorno, in which he imagines himself to be teaching a young Milanese patrician all the habits and ways of gallant life; he shows up all its ridiculous frivolities, and with delicate irony unmasks the futilities of aristocratic habits. Dividing the day into four parts, the Mattino, the Mezzogiorno, the Vespero, and the Notte, he describes the trifles of which they were made up, and the book thus assumes major social and historical value. As an artist, going straight back to classical forms, aspiring to imitate Virgil and Dante, he opened the way to the school of Vittorio Alfieri
Vittorio Alfieri
Count Vittorio Alfieri was an Italian dramatist, considered the "founder of Italian tragedy."-Early life:Alfieri was born at Asti in Piedmont....
, Ugo Foscolo
Ugo Foscolo
Ugo Foscolo , born Niccolò Foscolo, was an Italian writer, revolutionary and poet.-Biography:Foscolo was born on the Ionian island of Zakynthos...
and Vincenzo Monti
Vincenzo Monti
Vincenzo Monti was an Italian poet, playwright, translator, and scholar.-Biography:Monti was born in Alfonsine, Province of Ravenna, Emilia-Romagna the son of Fedele and Domenica Maria Mazzari, landowners...
. As a work of art, the Giorno is wonderful for its delicate irony. The verse has new harmonies; sometimes it is a little hard and broken, as a protest against the Arcadian monotony.
The linguistic purism
Whilst the most burning political passions were raging, and whilst the most brilliant men of genius in the new classical and patriotic school were purists at the height of their influence, a question arose about purism of languageLinguistic purism
Linguistic purism or linguistic protectionism is the practice of defining one variety of a language as being purer than other varieties. The ideal of purity is often opposed in reference to a perceived decline from an "ideal past" or an unwanted similarity with other languages, but sometimes simply...
. In the second half of the 18th century the Italian language was specially full of French expressions. There was great indifference about fitness, still more about elegance of style. Prose needed to be restored for the sake of national dignity, and it was believed that this could not be done except by going back to the writers of the 14th century, to the aurei trecentisti, as they were called, or else to the classics of Italian literature. One of the promoters of the new school was Antonio Cesari of Verona, who republished ancient authors, and brought out a new edition, with additions, of the Vocabolario della Crusca. He wrote a dissertation Sopra lo stato presente della lingua italiana, and endeavoured to establish the supremacy of Tuscan and of the three great writers, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. In accordance with that principle he wrote several books, taking pains to copy the trecentisti as closely as possible. But patriotism in Italy has always had something municipal in it; so to this Tuscan supremacy, proclaimed and upheld by Cesari, there was opposed a Lombard school, which would know nothing of Tuscan, and with Dante's De vulgari eloquentia
De vulgari eloquentia
De vulgari eloquentia is the title of an essay by Dante Alighieri, written in Latin and initially meant to consist of four books, but abandoned in the middle of the second. It was probably composed shortly after Dante went into exile; internal evidence points to a date between 1302 and 1305...
returned to the idea of the lingua illustre.
This was an old question, largely and bitterly argued in the Cinquecento (16th century) by Varchi, Muzio, Lodovico Castelvetro
Lodovico Castelvetro
Lodovico Castelvetro was an important figure in the development of neo-classicism, especially in drama. It was his reading of Aristotle that led to a widespread adoption of a tight version of the Three Unities, as a dramatic standard....
, Speroni
Speroni
Speroni is a surname, and may refer to* Francesco Speroni, Italian politician* Julián Speroni, Argentinian footballer* Sperone Speroni, Italian humanist playwright...
, and others. Now the question was raised afresh. At the head of the Lombard school were Monti and his son-in-law Count Giulio Perticari. This caused Monti to write Pro pasta di alcune correzioni ed aggiunte al vocabolario della Crusca, in which he attacked the Tuscanism of the Crusca, but in a graceful and easy style, so as to form a prose that is one of the most beautiful in Italian literature. Perticari, whose intellect was inferior, narrowed and exasperated the question in two treatises, Degli scrittori del Trecento and Dell'amor patrio di Dante. The dispute about language took its place beside literary and political disputes, and all Italy took part in it: Basilio Puoti at Naples, Paolo Costa
Paolo Costa
Paolo Costa is an Italian Member of the European Parliament. He was elected on the Olive Tree ticket and sits with the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe group....
in the Romagna
Romagna
Romagna is an Italian historical region that approximately corresponds to the south-eastern portion of present-day Emilia-Romagna. Traditionally, it is limited by the Apennines to the south-west, the Adriatic to the east, and the rivers Reno and Sillaro to the north and west...
, Marc Antonio Parenti at Modena
Modena
Modena is a city and comune on the south side of the Po Valley, in the Province of Modena in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy....
, Salvatore Betti at Rome, Giovanni Gherardini in Lombardy, Luigi Fornaciari at Lucca, and Vincenzo Nannucci at Florence.
A patriot, a classicist and a purist all at once was Pietro Giordani
Pietro Giordani
Pietro Giordani was an Italian writer, classical literary scholar, and a close friend of, and influence on, Giacomo Leopardi.- Biography :Born in Piacenza, Giordani originally set out to become a monk...
, born in 1774; he was almost a compendium of the literary movement of the time. His whole life was a battle for liberty. Learned in Greek and Latin authors, and in the Italian trecentisti, he left only a few writings, but they were carefully elaborated in point of style, and his prose was greatly admired in its time. Giordani closes the literary epoch of the classicists.
Minor Writers
Gasparo GozziGasparo Gozzi
Gasparo, count Gozzi was an Italian critic and dramatist.The brother of Carlo Gozzi, he was born in Venice. In 1739, he married the poet Luise Bergalli, and she undertook the management of the theatre of Sant'Angelo, Venice. Her husband supplied the performers with dramas chiefly translated from...
's satire was less elevated, but directed towards the same end as Parini's. In his Osservatore, something like Joseph Addison
Joseph Addison
Joseph Addison was an English essayist, poet, playwright and politician. He was a man of letters, eldest son of Lancelot Addison...
's Spectator, in his Gazzetta veneta, and in the Mondo morale, by means of allegories and novelties he hit the vices with a delicate touch, introducing a practical moral. Gozzi's satire has some slight resemblance in style to Lucian
Lucian
Lucian of Samosata was a rhetorician and satirist who wrote in the Greek language. He is noted for his witty and scoffing nature.His ethnicity is disputed and is attributed as Assyrian according to Frye and Parpola, and Syrian according to Joseph....
's. Gozzi's prose is graceful and lively, but imitates the writers of the 14th century. Another satirical writer of the first half of the 18th century was Giuseppe Baretti of Turin. In a journal called the Frusta letteraria he mercilessly criticized the works then being published in Italy. He had learnt much by travelling; his long stay in Britain had contributed to the independent character of his mind. The Frusta was the first book of independent criticism directed particularly against the Arcadians and the pedants.
In 1782 was born Giambattista Niccolini. In literature he was a classicist; in politics he was a Ghibelline, a rare exception in Guelph
Guelphs and Ghibellines
The Guelphs and Ghibellines were factions supporting the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor, respectively, in central and northern Italy. During the 12th and 13th centuries, the split between these two parties was a particularly important aspect of the internal policy of the Italian city-states...
Florence, his birthplace. In imitating Aeschylus
Aeschylus
Aeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived, the others being Sophocles and Euripides, and is often described as the father of tragedy. His name derives from the Greek word aiskhos , meaning "shame"...
, as well as in writing the Discorsi sulla tragedia greca, and on the Sublime Michelangelo, Niccolini displayed his passionate devotion to ancient literature. In his tragedies he set himself free from the excessive rigidity of Alfieri, and partly approached the English and German tragic authors. He nearly always chose political subjects, striving to keep alive in his compatriots the love of liberty. Such are Nabucco
Nabucco
Nabucco is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Temistocle Solera, based on the Biblical story and the 1836 play by Auguste Anicet-Bourgeois and Francis Cornue...
, Antonio Foscarini, Giovanni da Procida
John of Procida
John of Procida was an Italian medieval physician and diplomat.He was born at Salerno, educated in the Schola Medica as a physician. He was a noted physician for his age and received at professorial chair at this university...
, Lodovico il Moro and others. He assailed papal Rome in Arnaldo da Brescia, a long tragic piece, not suited for acting, and epic rather than dramatic. Niccolini's tragedies show a rich lyric vein rather than dramatic genius. He has the merit of having vindicated liberal ideas, and of having opened a new path to Italian tragedy.
Carlo Botta
Carlo Giuseppe Guglielmo Botta
Carlo Giuseppe Guglielmo Botta was an Italian historian.He was born at San Giorgio Canavese in Piedmont. He studied medicine at the University of Turin, and obtained his doctors degree when about twenty years of age...
, born in 1766, was a spectator of French spoliation in Italy and of the overbearing rule of Napoleon. He wrote a History of Italy from 1789 to 1814; and later continued Guicciardini's History up to 1789. He wrote after the manner of the Latin authors, trying to imitate Livy, putting together long and sonorous periods in a style that aimed at being like Boccaccio's, caring little about what constitutes the critical material of history, only intent on declaiming his academic prose for his country's benefit. Botta wanted to be classical in a style that could no longer be so, and hence he failed completely to attain his literary goal. His fame is only that of a man of a noble and patriotic heart. Not so bad as the two histories of Italy is that of the Guerra dell'indipendenza americana.
Close to Botta comes Pietro Colletta
Pietro Colletta
Pietro Colletta was a Neapolitan general and historian, entered the Neapolitan artillery in 1796 and took part in the campaign against the French in 1798.-Biography:Colletta was born in Naples...
, a Neapolitan born nine years after him. He also in his Storia del reame di Napoli dal 1734 al 1825 had the idea of defending the independence and liberty of Italy in a style borrowed from Tacitus
Tacitus
Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire. The surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals and the Histories—examine the reigns of the Roman Emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and those who reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors...
; and he succeeded rather better than Botta. He has a rapid, brief, nervous style, which makes his book attractive reading. But it is said that Pietro Giordani
Pietro Giordani
Pietro Giordani was an Italian writer, classical literary scholar, and a close friend of, and influence on, Giacomo Leopardi.- Biography :Born in Piacenza, Giordani originally set out to become a monk...
and Gino Capponi
Gino Capponi
Marquis Gino Capponi was an Italian statesman and historian.The Capponi family is one of the most illustrious Florentine houses, and is mentioned as early as 1250; it acquired great wealth as a mercantile and banking firm, and many of its members distinguished themselves in the service of the...
corrected it for him. Lazzaro Papi of Lucca, author of the Commentari della rivoluzione francese dal 1789 al 1814, was not altogether unlike Botta and Colletta. He also was an historian in the classical style, and treats his subject with patriotic feeling; but as an artist he perhaps excels the other two.
The Revolution: Patriotism and classicism
The ideas behind the French RevolutionFrench Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
of 1789 gave a special direction to Italian literature in the second half of the 18th century. Love of liberty and desire for equality created a literature aimed at national objects, seeking to improve the condition of the country by freeing it from the double yoke of political and religious despotism. The Italians who aspired to political redemption believed it inseparable from an intellectual revival, and thought that this could only be effected by a reunion with ancient classicism. This was a repetition of what had occurred in the first half of the 15th century.
Vittorio Alfieri
Patriotism and classicism were the two principles that inspired the literature that began with Vittorio AlfieriVittorio Alfieri
Count Vittorio Alfieri was an Italian dramatist, considered the "founder of Italian tragedy."-Early life:Alfieri was born at Asti in Piedmont....
. He worshipped the Greek and Roman idea of popular liberty in arms against tyranny. He took the subjects of his tragedies from the history of these nations and made his ancient characters talk like revolutionists of his time. The Arcadian school, with its verbosity and triviality, was rejected. His aim was to be brief, concise, strong and bitter, to aim at the sublime as opposed to the lowly and pastoral. He saved literature from Arcadian vacuities, leading it towards a national end, and armed himself with patriotism and classicism.
Vincenzo Monti
Vincenzo MontiVincenzo Monti
Vincenzo Monti was an Italian poet, playwright, translator, and scholar.-Biography:Monti was born in Alfonsine, Province of Ravenna, Emilia-Romagna the son of Fedele and Domenica Maria Mazzari, landowners...
was a patriot too, but in his own way. He had no one deep feeling that ruled him, or rather the mobility of his feelings is his characteristic; but each of these was a new form of patriotism that took the place of an old one. He saw danger to his country in the French Revolution, and wrote the Pellegrino apostolico, the Bassvilliana and the Feroniade; Napoleon's victories caused him to write the Pronreteo and the Musagonia; in his Fanatismo and his Superstizione he attacked the papacy; afterwards he sang the praises of the Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
ns. Thus every great event made him change his mind, with a readiness that might seem incredible, but is easily explained. Monti was, above everything, an artist. Everything else in him was liable to change. Knowing little Greek, he succeeded in translating the Iliad in a way remarkable for its Homeric feeling, and in his Bassvilliana he is on a level with Dante. In him classical poetry seemed to revive in all its florid grandeur.
Ugo Foscolo
Ugo Foscolo
Ugo Foscolo , born Niccolò Foscolo, was an Italian writer, revolutionary and poet.-Biography:Foscolo was born on the Ionian island of Zakynthos...
was an eager patriot, inspired by classical models. The Lettere di Jacopo Ortis, inspired by Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long...
's Werther
Werther
Werther is an opera in four acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Édouard Blau, Paul Milliet and Georges Hartmann based on the German epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe....
, are a love story with a mixture of patriotism; they contain a violent protest against the Treaty of Campo Formio
Treaty of Campo Formio
The Treaty of Campo Formio was signed on 18 October 1797 by Napoleon Bonaparte and Count Philipp von Cobenzl as representatives of revolutionary France and the Austrian monarchy...
, and an outburst from Foscolo's own heart about an unhappy love-affair of his. His passions were sudden and violent. To one of these passions Ortis owed its origin, and it is perhaps the best and most sincere of all his writings. He is still sometimes pompous and rhetorical, but less so than, for example, in the lectures Dell'origine e dell'ufficio della letteratura. On the whole, Foscolo's prose is turgid and affected, and reflects the character of a man who always tried to pose in dramatic attitudes. This was indeed the defect of the Napoleonic epoch; there was a horror of anything common, simple, natural; everything must assume some heroic shape. In Foscolo this tendency was excessive. The Sepolcri, which is his best poem, was prompted by high feeling, and the mastery of versification shows wonderful art. There are most obscure passages in it, where it seems even the author did not form a clear idea. He left incomplete three hymns to the Graces
Grâces
Grâces is a commune in the Côtes-d'Armor department in Bretagne in northwestern France.-Population:Inhabitants of Grâces are called gracieux.-External links:*...
, in which he sang of beauty as the source of courtesy, of all high qualities and of happiness. Among his prose works a high place belongs to his translation of the Sentimental Journey
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy is a novel by the Irish-born English author Laurence Sterne, written and first published in 1768, as Sterne was facing death. In 1765, Sterne travelled through France and Italy as far south as Naples, and after returning determined to describe his...
of Laurence Sterne
Laurence Sterne
Laurence Sterne was an Irish novelist and an Anglican clergyman. He is best known for his novels The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy; but he also published many sermons, wrote memoirs, and was involved in local politics...
, a writer by whom Foscolo was deeply affected. He went as an exile to England, and died there. He wrote for English readers some Essays on Petrarch and on the texts of the Decamerone and of Dante, which are remarkable for when they were written, and which may have initiated a new kind of literary criticism in Italy. Foscolo is still greatly admired, and not without reason. The men who made the revolution of 1848 were brought up on his work.
Nineteenth century: Romanticism and the Risorgimento
Silvio Pellico
Silvio Pellico was an Italian writer, poet, dramatist and patriot.-Biography:Silvio Pellico was born at Saluzzo . He spent the earlier portion of his life at Pinerolo and Turin, under the tuition of a priest named Manavella. At the age of ten he composed a tragedy inspired by a translation of the...
, Lodovico di Breme
Lodovico di Breme
Ludovico di Breme , whose complete name was Ludovico Arborio Gattinara dei Marchesi di Breme, was an Italian writer and thinker, as well as a contributor to Milan's principal romantic journal, Il Conciliatore....
, Giovile Scalvini, Tommaso Grossi
Tommaso Grossi
Tommaso Grossi , Lombard poet and novelist, was born in Bellano, beside the Lake of Como.He took his degree in law at Pavia in 1810, and proceeded thence to Milan to exercise his profession; but the Austrian government, suspecting his loyalty, interfered with his prospects, and in consequence...
, Giovanni Berchet
Giovanni Berchet
Giovanni Berchet was an Italian poet and patriot. He wrote an influential manifesto on Italian Romanticism, Lettera semiseria di Grisostomo, which appeared in 1816, and contributed to Il Conciliatore, a reformist periodical....
, Samuele Biava, and Alessandro Manzoni
Alessandro Manzoni
Alessandro Francesco Tommaso Manzoni was an Italian poet and novelist.He is famous for the novel The Betrothed , generally ranked among the masterpieces of world literature...
. All were influenced by the ideas that, especially in Germany, constituted the movement called Romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
. In Italy the course of literary reform took another direction.
Alessandro Manzoni
The main instigator of the reform was Manzoni. He formulated the objects of the new school, saying that it aspired to try to discover and express il vero storico and il vero morale, not only as an end, but as the widest and eternal source of the beautiful. It is realism in art that characterizes Italian literature from Manzoni onwards. The Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed) is the work that has made him immortal. No doubt the idea of the historical novelHistorical novel
According to Encyclopædia Britannica, a historical novel is-Development:An early example of historical prose fiction is Luó Guànzhōng's 14th century Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which covers one of the most important periods of Chinese history and left a lasting impact on Chinese culture.The...
came to him from Sir Walter Scott
Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet, popular throughout much of the world during his time....
, but Manzoni succeeded in something more than an historical novel in the narrow meaning of that word; he created an eminently realistic work of art. The reader's attention is entirely fixed on the powerful objective creation of the characters. From the greatest to the least they have a wonderful verisimilitude. Manzoni is able to unfold a character in all particulars and to follow it through its different phases. Don Abbondio and Renzo are as perfect as Azzeccagarbugli and Il Sarto. Manzoni dives down into the innermost recesses of the human heart, and draws from it the most subtle psychological reality. In this his greatness lies, which was recognized first by his companion in genius, Goethe. As a poet too he had gleams of genius, especially in the Napoleonic ode, Il Cinque Maggio, and where he describes human affections, as in some stanzas of the Inni and in the chorus of the Adelchi.
Giacomo Leopardi
Giacomo Leopardi
Giacomo Taldegardo Francesco di Sales Saverio Pietro Leopardi was an Italian poet, essayist, philosopher, and philologist...
, born thirteen years after Manzoni at Recanati
Recanati
Recanati is a town and comune in the Province of Macerata, Marche region of Italy. Recanati was founded around 1150 AD from three pre-existing castles. In 1290 it proclaimed itself an independent republic and, in the 15th century, was famous for its international fair...
, of a patrician family. He became so familiar with Greek authors that he used afterwards to say that the Greek mode of thought was more clear and living to his mind than the Latin or even the Italian. Solitude, sickness, and domestic tyranny prepared him for profound melancholy. He passed into complete religious scepticism, from which he sought rest in art. Everything is terrible and grand in his poems, which are the most agonizing cry in modern literature, uttered with a solemn quietness that at once elevates and terrifies us. He was also an admirable prose writer. In his Operette Morali—dialogues and discourses marked by a cold and bitter smile at human destinies that freezes the reader—the clearness of style, the simplicity of language and the depth of conception are such that perhaps he is not only the greatest lyrical poet since Dante, but also one of the most perfect writers of prose that Italian literature has had.
History and politics in the 19th
As realism in art gained ground, the positive method in criticism kept pace with it. History returned to its spirit of learned research, as is shown in such works as the Archivio storico italiano, established at Florence by Giampietro Vieusseux, the Storia d'Italia nel medio evo by Carlo TroyaCarlo Troya
Carlo Troya or Carlo Troja was an Italian politician, historian and constitutional prime minister of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies....
, a remarkable treatise by Manzoni himself, Sopra alcuni punti della storia longobardica in Italia, and the very fine history of the Vespri siciliani
Sicilian Vespers
The Sicilian Vespers is the name given to the successful rebellion on the island of Sicily that broke out on the Easter of 1282 against the rule of the French/Angevin king Charles I, who had ruled the Kingdom of Sicily since 1266. Within six weeks three thousand French men and women were slain by...
by Michele Amari
Michele Amari
Michele Amari was an Italian patriot and historian. Born at Palermo, he devoted a great part of his life to the history of Sicily, and took part in its emancipation...
. Alongside the great artists Leopardi and Manzoni, alongside the learned scholars, there was also in the first half of the 19th century a patriotic literature. Vieusseux had a distinct political object when in 1820 he established the monthly review Antologia. His Archivio storico italiano (1842) was, under a different form, a continuation of the Antologia, which was suppressed in 1833 owing to the action of the Russian government. Florence was in those days the asylum of all the Italian exiles, and these exiles met and shook hands in Vieusseux's rooms, where there was more literary than political talk, but where one thought and one only animated all minds, the thought of Italy.
The literary movement that preceded and was contemporary with the political revolution of 1848 may be said to be represented by four writers - Giuseppe Giusti
Giuseppe Giusti
Giuseppe Giusti was an Italian poet.-Biography:Giusti was born at Monsummano Terme, a small town of the Valdinievole, now in the province of Pistoia....
, Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi
Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi
Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi was an Italian writer and politician involved in the Italian risorgimento.-Biography:...
, Vincenzo Gioberti
Vincenzo Gioberti
thumb|250px|Vincenzo Gioberti.Vincenzo Gioberti was an Italian philosopher, publicist and politician.-Biography:Gioberti was born in Turin....
and Cesare Balbo
Cesare Balbo
Cesare Balbo , Count of Vinadio, was an Italian writer and statesman.Balbo was born at Turin on the 21st of November 1789. His father, Prospero Balbo, who belonged to a noble Piedmontese family, held a high position in the Sardinian court, and at the time of Cesare’s birth was mayor of the capital...
. Giusti wrote epigram
Epigram
An epigram is a brief, interesting, usually memorable and sometimes surprising statement. Derived from the epigramma "inscription" from ἐπιγράφειν epigraphein "to write on inscribe", this literary device has been employed for over two millennia....
matic satires in popular language. In incisive phrases he scourged the enemies of Italy. He was a telling political writer, but a mediocre poet. Guerrazzi had a great reputation and great influence, but his historical novels, though avidly read before 1848, were soon forgotten. Gioberti, a powerful polemic
Polemic
A polemic is a variety of arguments or controversies made against one opinion, doctrine, or person. Other variations of argument are debate and discussion...
al writer, had a noble heart and a great mind; his philosophical works are now as good as dead, but the Primato morale e civile degli Italiani will last as an important document of the times, and the Gesuita moderno is the most tremendous indictment of the Jesuits ever written. Balbo was an earnest student of history, and made history useful for politics. Like Gioberti in his first period, Balbo was zealous for the civil papacy, and for a federation of the Italian states presided over by it. His Sommario della storia d'Italia is an excellent epitome.
Between the 19th and 20th century
The first trend is the Scapigliatura
Scapigliatura
Scapigliatura is the name of the artistic movement which developed in Italy after the period known as Risorgimento,...
, that attempted to rejuvenate Italian culture through foreign influences, notably from the poetry of Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
and the works of American writer Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
. The second trend is represented by Giosuè Carducci
Giosuè Carducci
Giosuè Alessandro Michele Carducci was an Italian poet and teacher. He was very influential and was regarded as the official national poet of modern Italy. In 1906 he became the first Italian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.-Biography:...
, a dominant figure of this period, fiery opponent of the Romantics and restorer of the ancient metres and spirit who, great as a poet, was scarcely less distinguished as a literary critic and historian.
The influence of Emile Zola
Émile Zola
Émile François Zola was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism...
is evident in the Verismo
Verismo
Verismo was an Italian literary movement which peaked between approximately 1875 and the early 1900s....
. Luigi Capuana
Luigi Capuana
Luigi Capuana was an Italian author and journalist and one of the most important members of the Verist movement. He was a contemporary of Giovanni Verga, both having been born in the province of Catania within a year of each other. He was also one of the first authors influenced by the works of...
but most notably Giovanni Verga
Giovanni Verga
Giovanni Carmelo Verga was an Italian realist writer, best known for his depictions of life in Sicily, and especially for the short story "Cavalleria Rusticana" and the novel I Malavoglia .-Life and career:The first son of Giovanni Battista Catalano Verga and Caterina Di Mauro,...
and were its main exponents and the authors of a verismo manifesto. Capuana published the novel Giacinta, generally regarded as the "manifesto" of Italian verismo. Unlike French naturalism, which was based on positivistic
Positivism
Positivism is a a view of scientific methods and a philosophical approach, theory, or system based on the view that, in the social as well as natural sciences, sensory experiences and their logical and mathematical treatment are together the exclusive source of all worthwhile information....
ideals, Verga and Capuana rejected claims of the scientific nature and social usefulness of the movement.
Instead Decadentism was based mainly on the Decadent
Decadent movement
The Decadent movement was a late 19th century artistic and literary movement of Western Europe. It flourished in France, but also had devotees in England and throughout Europe, as well as in the United States.-Overview:...
style of some artists and authors of France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
about the end of the 19th century. The main authors of the Italian version were Antonio Fogazzaro
Antonio Fogazzaro
Antonio Fogazzaro was an Italian novelist.-Biography:Fogazzaro was born in Vicenza to a rich family.In 1864 he got a law degree in Turin...
, Giovanni Pascoli
Giovanni Pascoli
Giovanni Placido Agostino Pascoli was an Italian poet and classical scholar.- Biography :Giovanni Pascoli was born at San Mauro di Romagna , into a well-to-do family. He was the fourth of ten children of Ruggero Pascoli and Caterina Vincenzi Alloccatelli...
, best known by his Myricae and Poemetti, and Gabriele D'Annunzio
Gabriele D'Annunzio
Gabriele D'Annunzio or d'Annunzio was an Italian poet, journalist, novelist, and dramatist...
. Although differing stylistically, they championed idiosyncrasy and irrationality against scientific rationalism. Gabriele d'Annunzio produced original work in poetry, drama and fiction, of extraordinary quality. He began with some lyrics distinguished no less by their exquisite beauty of form than by their licence, and these characteristics reappeared in a long series of poems, plays and novels.
Edmondo de Amicis
Edmondo De Amicis
Edmondo De Amicis was an Italian novelist, journalist, poet and short-story writer. His best-known book is the children's novel Heart.-Early career:...
is better known for his moral works and travels than for his fiction. Of the women novelists, Matilde Serao
Matilde Serao
frame|Matilde Serao.Matilde Serao was a Greek-born Italian journalist and novelist. She was the founder and editor of Il Mattino, and she also wrote several novels.-Biography:...
and Grazia Deledda
Grazia Deledda
Grazia Deledda was an Italian writer whose works won her the Nobel Prize for Literature for 1926.-Biography:...
became popular.
Minor writers
Giovanni PratiGiovanni Prati
Giovanni Prati was an Italian poet born in what then was part of the Austrian Empire and educated in law at Padua...
and Aleardo Aleardi
Aleardo Aleardi
Aleardo Aleardi , born Gaetano Maria, was an Italian poet who belonged to the so-called Neo-romanticists....
continue romantic traditions. Other classical poets are Giuseppe Chiarini, Arturo Graf
Arturo Graf
Arturo Graf , Italian poet, of German ancestry, was born at Athens.He was educated at the University of Naples and became a lecturer on Italian literature in Rome, till in 1882 he was appointed professor at Turin....
, Guido Mazzoni
Guido Mazzoni (poet)
Guido Mazzoni was an Italian poet.He was born at Florence, and educated at Pisa and Bologna. In 1887 he became professor of Italian at Padua, and in 1894 at Florence, where he remained until retirement in 1934...
and Giovanni Marradi
Giovanni Marradi
Giovanni Marradi was an Italian poet born at Livorno and educated at Pisa and Florence. At the latter place he started with others a short-lived review, the Nuovi Goliardi, which made some literary sensation. He became a teacher at various colleges, and eventually an educational inspector in Massa...
, of whom the two last named may perhaps be regarded as special disciples of Carducci. Enrico Panzacchi was at heart still a romantic. Olindo Guerrini
Olindo Guerrini
Olindo Guerrini was an Italian poet who also published under the pseudonyms Lorenzo Stecchetti and Argia Sbolenfi....
(who wrote under the pseudonym of Lorenzo Stecchetti) is the chief representative of verismo in poetry, and, though his early works obtained a succès de scandale, he is the author of many lyrics of intrinsic value. Alfredo Baccelli and Mario Rapisardi
Mario Rapisardi
Mario Rapisardi was an Italian poet, supporter of Risorgimento and member of the Scapigliatura.-Life:...
are epic poets of distinction. Felice Cavallotti
Felice Cavallotti
Felice Cavallotti was an Italian politician, poet and dramatic author.- Early career :Born in Milan, Cavallotti fought with the Garibaldian Corps in their 1860 and 1866 campaigns during the Italian Wars of Independence....
is the author of the stirring Marcia de Leonida.
Among dialect writers, the great Roman poet Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli
Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli
Giuseppe Francesco Antonio Maria Gioachino Raimondo Belli was an Italian poet, famous for his sonnets in Romanesco, the dialect of Rome.- Biography :...
found numerous successors, such as Renato Fucini (Pisa) and Cesare Pascarella
Cesare Pascarella
Cesare Pascarella , was an Italian dialect poet and a painter. He was appointed to the Royal Academy of Italy in 1930....
(Rome). Among the women poets, Ada Negri
Ada Negri
Ada Negri was an Italian poet and writer.-Biography:She was born in Lodi into an artisan family to Giuseppe Negri and his wife Vittoria Cornalba. She attended Lodi’s Normal School for Girls and earned an elementary teacher’s diploma...
, with her socialistic Fatalità and Tempeste, achieved a great reputation; and others, such as Annie Vivanti, were highly esteemed in Italy.
Among the dramatists, Pietro Cossa
Pietro Cossa
Pietro Cossa , Italian dramatist, was born at Rome, and claimed descent from the family of John XXIII, deposed by the council of Constance....
in tragedy, Ferdinando Martini
Ferdinando Martini
-Biography:Born in Florence, he worked as journalist and writer. He collaboreated to Il Fanfulla and in 1879 he founded the Fanfulla della domenica literary supplement, which he directed until 1882; he was also editor of La Domenica letteraria from 1882 al 1885 and professor at the University of...
, and Paolo Ferrari
Paolo Ferrari
Paolo Ferrari , Italian dramatist, was born at Modena. His numerous works, chiefly comedies, and all marked by a fresh and piquant style, are the finest product of the modern Italian drama. After producing some minor pieces, in 1852 he made his reputation as a playwright with Goldoni e le sue...
in comedy, represent the older schools. More modern methods were adopted by Giuseppe Giacosa
Giuseppe Giacosa
Giuseppe Giacosa was an Italian poet, playwright and librettist.He was born in Colleretto Parella, now Colleretto Giacosa, near Turin. His father was a magistrate. Giuseppe went to the University of Turin, studying in the University of Turin, Faculty of Law...
.
In fiction, the historical romance fell into disfavour, though Emilio de Marchi
Emilio de Marchi
Emilio De Marchi was an Italian operatic tenor. He had a significant career during the late 19th century and early 20th century, appearing at major theatres on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1900, he entered the annals of musical history as the creator of the role of Cavaradossi in Giacomo...
produced some good examples. The novel of intrigue was cultivated by Salvatore Farina
Salvatore Farina
Salvatore Farina was an Italian novelist whose style of sentimental humor has been compared to that of Charles Dickens....
.
20th century and beyond
Italo Svevo
Aron Ettore Schmitz , better known by the pseudonym Italo Svevo, was an Italian writer and businessman, author of novels, plays, and short stories.- Biography :...
, the author of La coscienza di Zeno (1923), and Luigi Pirandello
Luigi Pirandello
Luigi Pirandello was an Italian dramatist, novelist, and short story writer awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934, for his "bold and brilliant renovation of the drama and the stage." Pirandello's works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and about 40 plays, some of which are written...
(winner of the 1934 Nobel Prize in Literature), who explored the shifting nature of reality in his prose fiction and such plays as Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore (Six Characters in Search of an Author
Six Characters in Search of an Author
Six Characters in Search of an Author is a play by the Italian writer Luigi Pirandello.The play is a satirical tragicomedy. It was first performed in 1921 at the Teatro Valle in Rome, to a very mixed reception, with shouts from the audience of "Manicomio!" .Subsequently the play enjoyed a much...
, 1921)
Poetry was represented by the Crepuscolari
Crepuscolari
The Crepuscolari were a group of Italian poets whose work is notable for its use of musical and mood-conveying language and its general tone of despondency...
and the Futurists
Futurism
Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century.Futurism or futurist may refer to:* Afrofuturism, an African-American and African diaspora subculture* Cubo-Futurism* Ego-Futurism...
; the foremost member of the latter group was Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti was an Italian poet and editor, the founder of the Futurist movement, and a fascist ideologue.-Childhood and adolescence:...
. Leading Modernist
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
poets from later in the century include Salvatore Quasimodo
Salvatore Quasimodo
Salvatore Quasimodo was an Italian author and poet. In 1959 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature "for his lyrical poetry, which with classical fire expresses the tragic experience of life in our own times". Along with Giuseppe Ungaretti and Eugenio Montale, he is one of the foremost Italian poets...
(winner of the 1959 Nobel Prize in Literature), Giuseppe Ungaretti
Giuseppe Ungaretti
Giuseppe Ungaretti was an Italian modernist poet, journalist, essayist, critic and academic. A leading representative of the experimental trend known as Ermetismo , he was one of the most prominent contributors to 20th century Italian literature. Influenced by symbolism, he was briefly aligned...
, Umberto Saba
Umberto Saba
Umberto Poli was an Italian poet and novelist, born in the cosmopolitan Mediterranean port of Trieste when it was the fourth largest city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Poli assumed the nom de plume "Saba" in 1910, and his name was officially changed to Umberto Saba in 1928. From 1919 he was the...
, who won fame for his collection of poems Il canzoniere, and Eugenio Montale
Eugenio Montale
Eugenio Montale was an Italian poet, prose writer, editor and translator, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1975.- Early years :...
(winner of the 1975 Nobel Prize in Literature
Nobel Prize in Literature
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...
). They were described by critics as "hermeticists
Hermeticism (poetry)
Hermeticism in poetry, or Hermetic poetry, is a term used to describe obscure and difficult poetry, as of the Symbolist school. The name alludes to the mythical Hermes Trismegistus, supposed author of mystic doctrines composed in the Neoplatonic tradition.Hermeticism was influential in the...
".
Neorealism
Italian neorealism
Italian neorealism is a style of film characterized by stories set amongst the poor and working class, filmed on location, frequently using nonprofessional actors...
was developed by Alberto Moravia
Alberto Moravia
Alberto Moravia, born Alberto Pincherle was an Italian novelist and journalist. His novels explored matters of modern sexuality, social alienation, and existentialism....
(e.g. Il conformista
The Conformist
The Conformist is a novel by Alberto Moravia published in 1951, which details the life and desire for normalcy of a government official during Italy's fascist period. It is also known for the 1970 film adaptation by Bernardo Bertolucci....
, 1951), Primo Levi
Primo Levi
Primo Michele Levi was an Italian Jewish chemist and writer. He was the author of two novels and several collections of short stories, essays, and poems, but is best known for If This Is a Man, his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland...
, who documented his experiences in Auschwitz in Se questo è un uomo (If This Is a Man
If This Is a Man
If This Is a Man is a work by the Italian writer, Primo Levi, describing his 11 months—from February 21, 1944 until liberation on January 27, 1945—in the German concentration camp at Auschwitz in Poland, during the Second World War...
, 1947) and other books, Cesare Pavese
Cesare Pavese
Cesare Pavese was an Italian poet, novelist, literary critic and translator; he is widely considered among the major authors of the 20th century in his home country.- Early life and education :...
(e.g. The Moon and the Bonfires (1949), Corrado Alvaro
Corrado Alvaro
Corrado Alvaro was an Italian journalist and writer of novels, short stories, screenplays and plays. He often used the verismo style to describes the hopeless poverty in his native Calabria...
and Elio Vittorini
Elio Vittorini
Elio Vittorini was an Italian writer and novelist. He was a contemporary of Cesare Pavese and an influential voice in the modernist school of novel writing. His best-known work is the anti-fascist novel Conversations in Sicily, for which he was jailed when it was published in 1941. The first U.S...
.
Dino Buzzati
Dino Buzzati
Dino Buzzati-Traverso was an Italian novelist, short story writer, painter and poet, as well as a journalist for Corriere della Sera. His worldwide fame is mostly due to his novel Il deserto dei Tartari, translated into English as The Tartar Steppe.-Life:Buzzati was born at San Pellegrino,...
wrote fantastic and allegorical fiction that critics have compared to Kafka
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
and Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
. Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy , the Cosmicomics collection of short stories , and the novels Invisible Cities and If on a winter's night a traveler .Lionised in Britain and the United States,...
also ventured into fantasy in the trilogy I nostri antenati (Our Ancestors
Our Ancestors
Our Ancestors is the name of Italo Calvino's "heraldic trilogy" that comprises The Cloven Viscount , The Baron in the Trees , and The Nonexistent Knight ....
, 1952–1959) and post-modernism in the novel Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore... (If on a Winter's Night a Traveller
If on a winter's night a traveler
If on a winter's night a traveler is a 1979 novel by the Italian writer Italo Calvino. The narrative is about a reader trying to read a book called If on a winter's night a traveler. Every odd-numbered chapter is in the second person, and tells the reader what he is doing in preparation for...
, 1979).
Carlo Emilio Gadda
Carlo Emilio Gadda
Carlo Emilio Gadda was an Italian writer and poet. He belongs to the tradition of the language innovators, writers that played with the somewhat stiff standard pre-war Italian language, and added elements of dialects, technical jargon and wordplay.-Biography:Gadda was a practising engineer from...
was the author of the experimental Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana (1957). Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini was an Italian film director, poet, writer, and intellectual. Pasolini distinguished himself as a poet, journalist, philosopher, linguist, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, newspaper and magazine columnist, actor, painter and political figure...
was a controversial poet and novelist.
Giuseppe di Lampedusa wrote only one novel, Il Gattopardo
Il gattopardo
Il gattopardo may refer to:*The Leopard, a novel*The Leopard , a film based on the novel...
(The Leopard, 1958), but it is one of the most famous in Italian literature; it deals with the life of a Sicilian
Sicily
Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...
nobleman in the 19th century. Leonardo Sciascia
Leonardo Sciascia
Leonardo Sciascia was an Italian writer, novelist, essayist, playwright and politician. Some of his works have been made into films, including Open Doors and Il giorno della civetta .- Biography :Sciascia was born in Racalmuto, Sicily...
came to public attention with his novel Il giorno della civetta
The Day of the Owl
The Day of the Owl is a crime novel about the Mafia by Leonardo Sciascia, finished in 1960 and published in 1961.As the author wrote in his preface of the 1972 Italian edition, the novel was written at a time in which the existence of the Mafia itself was debated and denied...
(The Day of the Owl, 1961), exposing the extent of Mafia
Mafia
The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...
corruption in modern Sicilian society. More recently, Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco Knight Grand Cross is an Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist, best known for his novel The Name of the Rose , an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory...
became internationally successful with the Medieval detective story Il nome della rosa (The Name of the Rose
The Name of the Rose
The Name of the Rose is the first novel by Italian author Umberto Eco. It is a historical murder mystery set in an Italian monastery in the year 1327, an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory...
, 1980).
Further reading
Important German works, besides Gaspary, are those of Wilse and Percopo (illustrated; Leipzig, 1899), and of Tommaso Casini (in Grober's Grundr. der rom. Phil., Strasbourg, 1896–1899).English students are referred to John Addington Symonds
John Addington Symonds
John Addington Symonds was an English poet and literary critic. Although he married and had a family, he was an early advocate of male love , which he believed could include pederastic as well as egalitarian relationships. He referred to it as l'amour de l'impossible...
's Renaissance in Italy (especially, but not exclusively, vols. iv. and v.; new ed., London, 1902), and to Richard Garnett
Richard Garnett
Richard Garnett C.B. was a scholar, librarian, biographer and poet. He was son of Richard Garnett, an author, philologist and assistant keeper of printed books in the British Museum....
's History of Italian Literature (London, 1898).
A Short History of Italian Literature, by J. H. Whitfield (1969, Pelican Books)
Original texts and criticism
- De Sanctis, F., Storia della letteratura italiana. Napoli, Morano, 1870
- Gardner, E. G.Edmund Garratt GardnerEdmund Garratt Gardner FBA was an English scholar and writer, specializing in Italian history and literature. At the beginning of the twentieth century, he was regarded as one of the foremost British Dante scholars.-Career:...
, The National Idea in Italian Literature, Manchester, 1921 - Momigliano, A., Storia della letteratura italiana. Messina-Milano, Principato, 1936
- Sapegno, N., Compendio di storia della letteratura italiana. La Nuova Italia, 1936–47
- Croce, B., La letteratura italiana per saggi storicamente disposti. Laterza, 1956–60
- Russo, L., Compendio storico della letteratura italiana. Messina-Firenze, D'Anna, 1961
- Petronio, G., Compendio di storia della letteratura italiana. Palermo, Palumbo, 1968
- Asor Rosa, A., Sintesi di storia della letteratura italiana. Firenze, La Nuova Italia, 1986
- AA.VV., Antologia della poesia italiana, ed. C. Segre and C. Ossola. Torino, Einaudi, 1997
- De Rienzo, Giorgio, Breve storia della letteratura italiana. Milano, Tascabili Bompiani, 2006 [1997], ISBN 88-452-4815-1
- Giudice, A., Bruni, G., Problemi e scrittori della letteratura italiana. Torino, 1973
- Bruni F., Testi e documenti. Torino, UTET, 1984
- Bruni, F. L'Italiano nelle regioni. Torino, UTET, 1997
- Ferroni, G, Storia della letteratura italiana, Milano, Mondadori, 2006