Italian literature

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. An early example of Italian literature is the tradition of
vernacular lyric poetry performed in Occitan, which reached Italy by the end
of the 12th century. In 1230, the Sicilian School is notable for being the first
style in standard Italian. Dante, one of the greatest of Italian poets, is
notable for his Divina Commedia. Petrarch did classical research and wrote
lyric poetry. Renaissance humanism developed during the 14th and the
beginning of the 15th centuries. Humanists sought to create a citizenry able
to speak and write with eloquence and clarity. Early humanists, such as
Petrarch, were great collectors of antique manuscripts. Lorenzo de Medici
shows the influence of Florence on the Renaissance. Leonardo da Vinci wrote
a treatise on painting. The development of the drama in the 15th century
was very great. The fundamental characteristic of the era following
Renaissance is that it perfected the Italian character of its language.
Machiavelli and Guicciardini were the chief originators of the science of
history. Pietro Bembo was an influential figure in the development of the
Italian language and an influence on the 16th-century revival of interest in
the works of Petrarch.
In 1690 the Academy of Arcadia was instituted with the goal of "restoring"
literature by imitating the simplicity of the ancient shepherds with sonnets,
madrigals, canzonette and blank verse. In the 17th century, some strong and
independent thinkers, such as Bernardino Telesio, Lucilio Vanini, Bruno and
Campanella turned philosophical inquiry into fresh channels, and opened the
way for the scientific conquests of Galileo Galilei, who is notable both for his
scientific discoveries and his writing. In the 18th century, the political
condition of Italy began to improve, and philosophers throughout Europe in
the period known as the The Enlightenment. Apostolo Zeno and Metastasio
are two of the notable figures of the age. Carlo Goldoni, a Venetian, created
the comedy of character. The leading figure of the literary revival of the 18th
century was Giuseppe Parini.
The ideas behind the French Revolution 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 object. Patriotism
and classicism were the two principles that inspired the literature that began
with Vittorio Alfieri. Other patriots included Vincenzo Monti and Ugo Foscolo.
The romantic school had as its organ the Conciliatore established in 1818 at
Milan. The main instigator of the reform was Manzoni. The great poet of the
age was Giacomo Leopardi. History returned to its spirit of learned research.

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. After the Risorgimento, political literature becomes less
important. The first part of this period is characterized by two divergent
trends of literature that both opposed Romanticism, the Scapigliatura and
Verismo. Important early 20th century writers include Italo Svevo and Luigi
Pirandello (winner of the 1934 Nobel Prize in Literature). Neorealism was
developed by Alberto Moravia. Umberto Eco became internationally
successful with the Medieval detective story Il nome della rosa (The Name of
the Rose, 1980).
Early medieval Latin literature
A depiction of Boetius teaching his
students (1385). Boetius, a 6th-century
Christian philosopher, helped keep alive
the classic tradition in post-Roman Italy.
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, 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.
High medieval 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 poetry arose
in Poitou in the early 12th century and spread south and east, eventually

reaching Italy by the end of the 12th 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 MontferratBoniface I, William VI, and Boniface IIwere
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 podest 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 podest-troubadour
phenomenon: men who served in several cities as podests on behalf of
either the Guelph or Ghibelline party and who wrote political poetry in
Occitan. Rambertino Buvalelli was the first podest-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
sonnets, 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 chansonniers and the composition of vidas and razos.
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 (1220s1230s) 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.
Chivalric romance
The Historia de excidio Trojae, attributed to Dares Phrygius, claimed to be an
eyewitness account of the Trojan war. It provided inspiration for writers in
other countries such as Benot de Sainte-Maure, Herbort von Fritzlar, and
Konrad von Wrzburg. While Benot 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 Provenals,

but in this book he converted Benot's French romance into what sounded
like serious Latin history.
Much the same thing occurred with other great legends. Qualichino of Arezzo
wrote couplets 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.
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 dialect 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 piazzas and on the highways to the songs of the jongleurs. 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.
Sicilian School
The year 1230 marked the beginning of the Sicilian School 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 Provenal 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 -ire 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 communes or city-states 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 reelaboration 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
conceits, 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, Apulian 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 scriveners 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 Dominican and Franciscan Orders. The earliest preserved sermons in an
Italian language are from Jordan of Pisa, a Dominican.[1] 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), interdicts
and excommunications 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 until 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
Encyclopdia 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.

First Tuscan literature

13th 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 Hohenstaufen 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 guilds 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 Provenal 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 centernorth 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 objectthree elements we find again in the Divine Comedy.
Francesco da Barberino, a learned lawyer who was secretary to bishops, 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.
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
French. 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 Rgime du corps. In 1267 Martino da Canale wrote a
history of Venice in the same Old French (langue d'ol). 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 virt 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'ol 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.
Dolce Stil Novo
In the year 1282 a period of new literature began, developing from the
Tuscan beginnings. With the school of Lapo Gianni, 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-Provenal 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.
The 14th century: the roots of Renaissance
Dante
Profile portrait of Dante, by Sandro Botticelli.
Dante, one of 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, howeverother pieces are
philosophical and bridge over to the Convivio.
The Divine Comedy

First page of an early printed edition of Dante's Divine Comedy.

Divina Commedia made Dante immortal, and

raised him above all other men of genius in Italy.
[dubious discuss]
It tells of the poet's travels through
the three realms of the deadHell, Purgatory,
and Paradiseaccompanied 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 lifelike 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.
Petrarch
Statue outside the Uffizi, Florence
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[citation needed]. 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 Provenal troubadours 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
From an edition of Boccaccio's "De Casibus
Virorum Illustrium" showing Lady Fortune
spinning her wheel.
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 romances. 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 fabliaux 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 loveenthusiasm. 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.
Others
Imitators

Fazio degli Uberti and Federico Frezzi 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 lifelike 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.
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 Compagni, 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.
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 Siena'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. Bianco da Siena wrote several
religiously-inspired poems (lauda) that were popular in the Middle Ages.
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.
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 epicopopular compositions on various subjects. A little poem of his in seven cantos
treats of the war between the Florentines and the Pisans 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 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.
Renaissance humanism
Renaissance humanism developed during the 14th and the beginning of the
15th centuries, and was a response to the challenge of Medival scholastic
education, emphasizing practical, pre-professional and -scientific studies.
Scholasticism 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. [2] The main centers of
humanism were Florence and Naples.[3]
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.[4]
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-15th 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 15th-century Humanist Popes,[5] one of whom, Aeneas
Silvius Piccolomini (Pius II), was a prolific author and wrote a treatise on "The
Education of Boys".[6]
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 Alberti, 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 romanit 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 Niccol
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, Poliziano 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 poetry; 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.
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 Bruni 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.

After the Renaissance

Baldassare Castiglione. Portrait by Raphael
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 15601494
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 was born in 1462, Marcello Adriani Virgilio in
1464, Baldassare Castiglione in 1468, Niccol 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.
The science of history: Machiavelli and Guicciardini
Portrait of Niccol Machiavelli by Santi di Tito.

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 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.
Ludovico Ariosto
Page from 1565 edition of Orlando furioso by
Francesco Franceschi.
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.
Pietro Bembo
Pietro Bembo 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.
Torquato Tasso
Torquato Tasso.
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 perfectionall 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.
Minor writers
Meanwhile, side by side with the romantic, there was an attempt at the
historical epic. Gian Giorgio Trissino 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 (15001541) 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 (14891544), learned in Greek, Latin and Hebrew, wrote in
a graceful style and with spirit. Giovanni della Casa (15031556) and Pietro
Bembo (14701547), 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 Le Api
Giovanni Rucellai approaches 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.
The 17th century: A period of decadence
From about 1559 began a period of decadence in Italian literature. Tommaso
Campanella 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 Cambrsis 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.
Marinism
Title page of L'Adone
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 Achillini 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.
Arcadia
The belief arose that it would be necessary to change the form in order to
restore literature. In 1690 the Academy of Arcadia 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 sonnets,
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. The
members of the Arcadia was almost exclusively men, but at least one
woman, Maria Antonia Scalera Stellini, managed to be elected on poetical
merits.
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.
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 Telesio, 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
Ren 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 rabbuf. 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
Alamanni 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 Emperor, 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 Vico 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 chronicles, 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.
Metastasio and the melodramma
The reforming movement sought to throw off the conventional and the
artificial, and to return to truth. Apostolo Zeno 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 anachronisms, he might have been considered the first
dramatic reformer of the 18th century.
Carlo Goldoni
Carlo Goldoni.
Carlo Goldoni, 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 Molire'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.

Giuseppe Parini
The leading figure of the literary revival of the 18th century was Giuseppe
Parini. 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.
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 language.
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 exacerbated 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.
Minor Writers
Gasparo Gozzi'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.

The Revolution: Patriotism and classicism

The ideas behind the French Revolution 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 Alfieri. 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 Monti 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 Austrians. 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 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 loveaffair 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'ufcio 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.
19th century: Romanticism and the Risorgimento
Alessandro Manzoni

The romantic school had as its organ the

Conciliatore established in 1818 at Milan, on the
staff of which were Silvio Pellico, Ludovico 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.
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 novel came to him from Sir Walter Scott[citation needed], 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

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
[citation needed]
and terrifies us.
He was also an admirable prose writer. In his
Operette Moralidialogues and discourses marked by a cold and bitter smile
at human destinies that freezes the readerthe 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 Troya, 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 epigrammatic 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 polemical 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
Gabriele D'Annunzio
After the Risorgimento, 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 Giosu 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 mile 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. Deledda was awarded the 1926 Nobel Prize in Literature for
her works.[7]
Minor writers
Giovanni Prati 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 succs 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
Fatalit 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.
20th century and beyond
Luigi Pirandello

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).
Federigo Tozzi was a great novelist, critically
appreciated only in recent years, and considered
one of the forerunners of existentialism in the
European novel.
Grazia Deledda was a Sardinian writer that
focused on the life, customs, and traditions of
the Sardinian people in her work.[8] She has not
gained much recognition as a feminist writer potentially due to her themes of
womens pain and suffering.[9] In 1926 she won the Nobel Prize for literature,
becoming Italys first and only woman recipient.[10]
Sibilla Aleramo (1876-1960) was born in Milan as Rina Faccio. [11] Faccio
published her first novel, Una Donna (A Woman) under her pen name in
1906. Today the novel is widely acknowledged as Italys premier feminist
novel.[12] Her writing mixes together autobiographical and fictional elements.
Maria Messina was a Sicilian writer that focused heavily on Sicilian culture
with a dominant theme being the isolation and oppression of young Sicilian
women.[13] She achieved modest recognition during her life including
receiving the Medaglia Doro Prize for La Mrica.[14]
Anna Banti was born in Florence in 1895. She is most well known for her
short story Il Corraggio Delle Donne (The Courage of Women) which was
published in 1940.[15] Her autobiographical work, Un Grido Lacerante, was
published in 1981 and won the Antonio Feltrinelli prize. [16] As well as being a
successful author, Banti is recognized as a literary, cinematic, and art critic.
[17]

Elsa Morante was born in Rome in 1912. She began writing at an early age
and self-educated herself developing a love music and books. One of the
central themes in Morantes works is narcissism. She also uses love as a
metaphor in her works, saying that love can be passion and obsession and

can lead to despair and destruction.[18] She won the Premio Viareggio award
in 1948.[19]
Alba De Cspedes was a Cuban-Italian writer from Rome. [20] She was an antiFascist and was involved in the Italian Resistance. [21] Her work was greatly
influenced by the history and culture that developed around World War II. [22]
Although her books were bestsellers, Alba has been overlooked in recent
studies of Italian women writers.[23]
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 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, 19521959) 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 Tomasi 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).
Dacia Maraini is one of the most successful contemporary Italian women
writers. Her novels focus on the condition of women in Italy and in some

works she speaks to the changes women can make for themselves and for
society.[24]
Women Writers
Italian women writers have always been underrepresented in academia. In
many collections of prominent and influential Italian literature, womens
works are not included. A woman writer, Anna Banti once said, even if
successful, is marginalized. They will say that she is great among women
writers, but they will not equate her to male writers. [25] There has been an
increase in the inclusion of women in academic scholarship in recent years,
but representation is still inequitable. Italian women writers were first
acknowledged by critics in the 1960s, and numerous feminist journals began
in the 1970s, which increased readers accessibility to and awareness of their
work.[26]
The work of Italian women writers is both progressive and penetrating;
through their explorations of the feminine psyche, their critiques of womens
social and economic position in Italy, and their depiction of the persistent
struggle to achieve equality in a mans world, they have shattered
traditional representations of women in literature. [27] The page played an
important role in the rise of Italian feminism, as it provided women with a
space to express their opinions freely, and to portray their lives accurately.
Reading and writing fiction became the easiest way for women to explore
and determine their place in society.[28]
Italian war novels, such as Alba de Cspedes's Dalla parte de lei (The Best of
Husbands, 1949), trace women's awakenings to political realities of the time.
Subsequent psychological and social novels of Italian women writers
examine the difficult process of growing up for women in Italian society and
the other challenges they face, including achieving a socially satisfactory life
and using intellectual aspirations to gain equality in society. Examples
include Maria Messina's La casa nel vicolo (A House in the Shadows, 1989)
and Laura Di Falco's Paura di giorno (Fear of the Day, 1954).[29] After the
public condemnation of womens abuse in Italian literature in the in the
1970s, women writers began expressing their thoughts about sexual
difference in novels. Many Italian novels focus on facets of Italian identity,
and women writers have always been leaders in this genre.