THE ITALIAN

LITERATURE
Name: Mr. Ronel Trinidad Nipa
Instructor: Mr. Raymond L Mortel
Subject: World Literature
The Italian literature represents the rich culture of the country and depicts the
future heroic legends that lived in the country for ages. The literary language
of Italy was Latin before the 13th century. The chronicles, the historical poems
and the religious poems written in that era were all in Latin. The Sicilian was
the earliest poetry ever written in Italian.
 The other notable feature of the Italian literature is the epic
poem of the Dante The Divine Comedy. The Divine comedy is
a dramatization of the medieval theology and philosophy and is
a guided tor through the three worlds known as the paradise,
hell and purgatory. This was some basic information about the
literature in Italy.
 The main part of the Italy’s literature is that it is often
depicted in the form of plays, theaters and movies, which try to
promote the Italian culture in general and literature in
particular. The next time you visit Italy see to it that you have
knowledge about the literature of Italy to make the most out of
your Italian holiday.
 Italian literature, the body of written works produced in the 
Italian language that had its beginnings in the 13th century. Until that
time nearly all literary work composed in Europe during the Middle
Ages was written in Latin. Moreover, it was predominantly practical in
nature and produced by writers trained in ecclesiastical schools.
Literature in Italian developed later than literature in French and 
Provençal, the languages of the north and south of France, respectively.
 Only small fragments of Italian vernacular verse before the
end of the 12th century have been found (although a number of
Latin legal records contain witness testimonies in an Italian 
dialect vernacular), and surviving 12th- and 13th-century verse
reflects French and Provençal influence.
EARLY VERNACULAR
LITERATURE
 The influence of France

French prose and verse romances were popular in Italy from the 12th to the 14th century.
Stories from the Carolingian and Arthurian cycles, together with free adaptations from the
Latin narrative classics, were read by the literate, while French minstrels recited verse in
public places throughout northern Italy. By the 13th century a “Franco-Venetian” literature,
for the most part anonymous, had developed; Italians copied French stories, often adapting
and extending various episodes and sometimes creating new romances featuring characters
from the French works. In this literature, though the language used was purportedly French,
the writers often consciously or unconsciously introduced elements from their own
northern Italian dialects, thus creating a linguistic hybrid.
 Writers of important prose works, such as the Venetian Martino da Canal and the
Florentine Brunetto Latini—authors of, respectively, Les estoires de Venise (1275; “The
History of Venice”) and the encyclopaedic Livres dou trésor (c. 1260; “Books of the
Treasure”)—were much better acquainted with French, while poets such as Sordello of 
Mantua wrote lyrics in the Provençal language, revealing an exact knowledge of the
language and of Provençal versification. Provençal love lyrics were, in fact, as popular as
the French romances, and the early Italian poets carefully studied anthologies of
Provençal troubadour poetry.
 The Sicilian school

In the cultured environment of the Sicilian court of the Italian-born 

Holy Roman emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen, who ruled the Sicilian
kingdom from 1208 to 1250, lyrics modeled on Provençal forms and themes
 were written in a refined version of the local Sicilian vernacular. Poetry was
considered an embellishment of the court and an escape from serious matters
of life, and it is significant that it was the love poetry of Provence—and not
the political poetry—that was imitated by the Sicilian school.
 The most important of these poets was the notary Jacopo da Lentini,
reputed to have invented the sonnet form. By an accident of history, all of the
original Sicilian manuscripts were lost and the poetry of the Sicilian school
was handed down in later Tuscan transcriptions, which make it look much
closer to modern Italian than it really was. The first to be taken in by the
manuscript tradition and to praise its “trans-regional” qualities was 
Dante Alighieri.
 The Tuscan poets

Sicilian poetry continued to be written after the death of Frederick II, but the centre of
literary activity moved to Tuscany, where interest in the Provençal and Sicilian lyric had led
to several imitations by Guittone d’Arezzo and his followers. Although Guittone
experimented with elaborate verse forms, according to Dante in the De vulgari eloquentia,
Guittone’s language mingled dialect elements with Latinisms and Provençalisms and had
none of the beauty of the southern school. In fact, Guittone was a vigourous and complex
poet whose reputation fell victim to Dante’s anxiety of influence.
 The new style

While Guittone and his followers were still writing, a new development appeared in love
poetry, marked by a concern for precise and sincere expression and a new serious treatment
of love. It has become customary to speak of this new school of poets as the dolce stil novo
 (or nuovo; “sweet new style”), an expression used by Dante in his Commedia (Purgatorio,
Canto XXIV, line 27), in a passage where he emphasized delicacy of expression suited to the
subject of love. The major stil novo poets were Guido Guinizelli of Bologna and the Tuscan
poets Guido Cavalcanti, Dante (particularly in the poems included in La vita nuova), and 
Cino da Pistoia, together with the lesser poets Lapo Gianni, Gianni Alfani, and Dino
Frescobaldi.
 Religious poetry

The famous Laudes creaturarum o Cantico di Frate Sole (c. 1225; “Canticle of Brother

Sun”), of St. Francis of Assisi was one of the earliest Italian poems. It was written in
rhythmical prose that recalls the verses of the Bible and uses assonance in place of rhyme.
In the Umbrian dialect, God is praised through all the things of his creation. It is probable
that St. Francis also composed a musical accompaniment, and after his death the lauda
 became a common form of religious song used by the confraternities of laypeople who
gathered on holy days to sing the praises of God and the saints and to recall the life and
Passion of Christ. The one real poet of the lauda tradition was Jacopone da Todi, a 
Franciscan and a mystic.
 His laudi, in the form of ballads, were often concerned with the themes of spiritual poverty and
the corruption of the church. His most intense composition (“Donna de Paradiso”) is a dialogue
 between the mother of Christ and a messenger who graphically describes Christ’s Passion and death.
In northern Italy religious poetry was mainly moralistic and pervaded by a pessimism rooted in
heretical ideas derived from Manichaeism, which saw the world and the body as being evil and
under Satan’s control. The Milanese Bonvesin de la Riva, whose Libro delle tre scritture (1274;
“Book of the Three Scriptures”) anticipates Dante, and the Franciscan from Verona, Giacomino da
Verona, author of De Jerusalem celesti (c. 1250; “On the Heavenly Jerusalem”) and De Babilonia
civitate infernali (c. 1250; “On the Infernal City of Babylon”), were the liveliest and most
imaginative of this group.
 Prose

Literary vernacular prose began in the 13th century, though Latin continued to be used for writings on 
theology, philosophy, law, politics, and science. The founder of Italian artistic prose style, the Bolognese
professor of rhetoric Guido Faba, illustrated his teaching with examples adapted from Latin. Guittone, his
most-notable follower in epistolography, tended toward an ornate style replete with elaborate rhetorical and
metrical figures. In contrast with Guittone’s style is the clear scientific prose of Ristoro d’Arezzo’s Della
composizione del mondo (1282; “On the Composition of the World”) and the simple narrative style of the
Florentine collection of anecdotal tales distantly foreshadowing Boccaccio’s Decameron, Il novellino (written
in the late 13th century, but not published until 1525, with the title Le ciento novelle antike [“A Hundred Old
Tales”; Eng. trans. Il Novellino: The Hundred Old Tales]). The masterpiece of 13th-century prose is
Dante’s Vita nuova. Though not yet completely at ease in vernacular prose, Dante combined simplicity with
great delicacy and a poetic power that derived from the mysterious depths underlying certain key words.
The 14th century

The literature of 14th-century Italy dominated all of Europe for

centuries to come and may be regarded as the starting point of the 
Renaissance. Three names stand out: Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio.
 Dante (1265–1321)

Dante Alighieri is one of the most important and influential names in all of European literature, but it
was only after his exile from his native Florence at age 37 (1302) that he set out to write his more ambitious
works. Il convivio (c. 1304–07; The Banquet), revealing his detailed knowledge of Scholastic philosophy, is,
though incomplete, the first great example of a treatise in vernacular prose; its language avoids the
ingenuousness of popular writers and the artificiality of the translators from Latin. De vulgari
eloquentia (c. 1304–07; “Concerning Vernacular Eloquence”; Eng. trans. Literature in the Vernacular),
written about the same time but in Latin, contains the first theoretical discussion and definition of the Italian
literary language. Both these works remained unfinished. In a later doctrinal work, also in Latin, De
monarchia (written c. 1313; On Monarchy), Dante expounded his political theories, which demanded the
coordination of the two medieval powers, pope and emperor.
 Dante’s genius found its fullest development in his Commedia (written c. 1308–21; 
The Divine Comedy), an allegorical poem—though after the first canto the allegory is only
occasionally obtrusive—in terza rima, mini-stanzas of three lines each, called terzine,
rhyming aba, bcb, cdc, and so on. The middle line of each terzina rhymes with the two
outside rhymes of the next, creating a continuous metrical chain. It is the literary
masterpiece of the Middle Ages and one of the greatest products of the creative human mind.
The individual cantos vary in length between 115 and 160 lines, with most lying somewhere
in the middle. The total number of lines is 14,233.
 Boccaccio (1313–75)

The early writings of Boccaccio, almost all of which are available in

English translation, are purely literary, without any didactic implications. His
first prose work, Il filocolo (c. 1336; “The Love Afflicted”; Eng. trans. Il
Filocolo or Thirteen Most Pleasant and Delectable Questions of Love), derived
from the French romance Floire et Blancheflor, is an important literary
experiment. An inability to write on an epic scale is evident in his two narrative
poems in eight-line stanzas, Il filostrato (c. 1338; “The Love Struck”)
and Teseida delle nozze di Emilia (c. 1340; Thesiad of the Nuptials of
Emilia or The Book of Theseus).
 His Il ninfale d’Ameto, or, more properly, Commedia delle ninfe fiorentine (1341–42;
“Comedy of the Florentine Nymphs”; Eng. trans. L’Ameto), a novel written in prose and
verse, and his Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta (c. 1343; The Elegy of Lady Fiammetta or 
Amorous Fiammetta), a prose novel, show the influence of Classical literature on the
formation of his style. The Decameron (1348–53), a prose collection of 100 stories
recounted by 10 narrators—3 men and 7 women—over 10 days, is Boccaccio’s most mature
and important work. Its treatment of contemporary urban society ranges from the humorous
to the tragic. Stylistically the most perfect example of Italian classical prose, it had
enormous influence on Renaissance literature.
 As a disciple of Petrarch, Boccaccio shared the humanist interests of his age, as shown
in his Latin epistles and encyclopaedic treatises. An admirer of Dante, he also wrote
a Trattatello in laude di Dante (c. 1360; “Little Treatise in Praise of Dante”; Eng. trans. 
Life of Dante) and a commentary on the first 17 cantos of the Inferno (Esposizioni sopra la
Comedia de Dante [Boccaccio’s Expositions on Dante’s Comedy]). Boccaccio contributed
to allegorical poetry with L’amorosa visione (written 1342–43; “The Amorous Vision”).
 Popular literature and romances

During the second half of the 14th century, Florence remained a centre of culture, but its
literature developed a more popular character. The best-known representative of this
development was bellman and town crier Antonio Pucci, whose vast verse production
includes poems on local Florentine lore as well as historical and legendary verse narratives.
Florentine narrative literature is represented by the Pecorone (c. 1378; “Dullard”), stories
by Ser Giovanni Fiorentino after a pattern set by Boccaccio. In the same vein, Franco
Sacchetti’s Trecentonovelle (c. 1390; “Three Hundred Short Stories”) provides colourful
and lively descriptions of people and places.
 The recasting of the Carolingian and Arthurian cycles continued along lines established
during the 13th century. Compilations in prose and verse became more common, and
Franco-Venetian literature gained in literary value. Epic legends were turned into romantic
 stories, whose performance appealed more to their illiterate audiences in town squares and
other public places. Novels by Andrea da Barberino, cantari with legendary subjects by the
above-mentioned Pucci, and the anonymous cantari Pulzella gaia, Bel Gherardino, Donna
del Vergiù, and Liombruno were written in a popular style combining irony and common
sense.
 Religious and historical literature

The most important author of religious literature was Jacopo Passavanti,

whose Specchio di vera penitenza (“The Mirror of True Penitence”) is a
collection of sermons preached in 1354. Less polished but of greater literary
value are the translations of Latin legends concerning St. Francis and his
followers collected in the anonymous Fioretti di San Francesco (The Little
Flowers of St. Francis of Assisi).
 Vernacular historiography of this period could be described as popular
literature, with Florence as its main centre. Florence’s two principal
chroniclers were Dino Compagni and Giovanni Villani. Compagni wrote his 
chronicle between 1310 and 1312 after having taken part in the political
struggles of his town; his dramatic account of the episodes and the liveliness
of his prose made it the most original work of medieval Italian historiography.
 Villani’s Cronica (“Chronicle”), in 12 books written from 1308 to 1348, is less
personal; it follows the medieval tradition by beginning with the building of the 
Tower of Babel and includes many apocryphal tales. The last six books, which cover the
period from Charles II’s Italian expedition (1265) to the author’s own time, are of
importance to historians. Villani’s prose may lack the dramatic power of Compagni’s, but
his work can nevertheless be described as the greatest achievement of Italian vernacular
historiography during the Middle Ages. His Chronicle was versified by fellow Florentine
Antonio Pucci.
 From Boccaccio’s death to about the middle of the 15th century,
reflective Italian poetry suffered a decline. The poetry that survives is
popular in nature and written to be accompanied by music (though the music
for the most part has not survived). The following period was to be 
characterized by critical and philological activity rather than by original
creative work.
The Renaissance
 The age of humanism

The European Renaissance (the “rebirth” of the classical past) really began in 14th-

century Italy with Petrarch and Boccaccio. The 15th century, devoid as it was of major
poetic works, was nevertheless of very great importance because it was the century in
which a new vision of human life, embracing a different conception of man, as well as
more modern principles of ethics and politics, gradually found their expression. This was
the result, on the one hand, of political conditions quite different from those of previous
centuries and, on the other, of the rediscovery of classical antiquity.
 With regard to the first point, nearly all Italian princes competed with each other in the
15th century to promote culture by patronizing research, offering hospitality and financial
support to literary men of the time, and founding libraries. As a consequence, their courts
became centres of research and discussion, thus making possible the great cultural revival
of the period. The most notable courts were that of Florence, under Lorenzo de’ Medici “the
Magnificent”; that of Naples, under the Aragonese kings; that of Milan, first under the
Visconti and later the Sforza family; and finally the papal court at Rome, which gave
protection and support to a large number of Italian and Byzantine scholars.
 To return to the second point, the search for lost manuscripts of ancient
authors, begun by Petrarch in the previous century, led to an extraordinary
revival of interest in classical antiquity: in particular, much research was
devoted to ancient philosophy in general and in particular to Plato (Aristotle
 had been the dominant voice in the Middle Ages), a fact that was to have
profound influence on the thinking of the Renaissance as a whole.
 The rise of vernacular literature

Toward the middle of the 15th century Italian began to vie with Latin as the literary
language. The Certame Coronario, a public poetry competition held in Florence in 1441
with the intention of proving that the spoken Italian language was in no way inferior to
Latin, marked a definite change. In the second half of the century there were a number of
works of merit written in Italian and inspired either by the chivalric legends of the Middle
Ages or by the new humanist culture.
 The “matter of France” and the “matter of Brittany,” which had
degenerated into clichés, were given a new lease on life by two poets of very
different temperament and education: Matteo Maria Boiardo, whose Orlando
innamorato (1483; “Orlando in Love”) reflected past chivalrous ideals as well
as contemporary standards of conduct and popular passions; and Luigi Pulci,
whose broadly comic Morgante, published before 1480, was pervaded by a
new bourgeois and popular morality.
 The new ideals of the humanists were most complete in Politian, Jacopo Sannazzaro,
and Leon Battista Alberti, three outstanding figures who combined a wide knowledge of
classical antiquity with a personal and often profound inspiration. Politian’s most important
Italian work is the incomplete Stanze cominciate per la giostra del Magnifico
Giuliano de’ Medici (1475–78; “Stanzas Begun for the Joust of the Magnificent Giuliano
de’ Medici”)—dedicated to Lorenzo’s brother Giuliano de’ Medici, assassinated in 1478 in
the Pazzi conspiracy—which created a mythical world in which concepts of classical origin
were relived in a new way.
 The same could be said of Sannazzaro’s Arcadia (1504), a largely
autobiographical pastoral work in verse and prose that remained widely
influential up to the 18th century. A more balanced view of contemporary
reality was given in Alberti’s literary works, which presented a gloomy picture
of human life, dominated by man’s wickedness and the whims of fortune. As
for Lorenzo de’ Medici, statesman and patron of many men of letters, he
himself had a remarkably vast and varied poetic output.
Pietro Bembo of Venice published his Prose della volgar lingua (“Writings on
the Vulgar Tongue”) in 1525. In this work, which was one of the first
historical Italian grammars, Bembo demanded an Italian literary language
based on 14th-century Tuscan models, particularly Petrarch and Boccaccio. He
found Dante’s work stylistically uneven and insufficiently decorous. He was
opposed by those who thought that a literary language should be based on 
contemporary usage, particularly by Gian Giorgio Trissino, who developed
Dante’s theories on Italian as a literary language.
 In practice the problem was both linguistic and stylistic, and there were in
the first half of the 16th century a great number of other contributors to the
question, though it was Bembo’s theories that finally triumphed in the second
part of the century. This was largely due to the activities of the Florentine 
Accademia della Crusca, and this more scientific approach to the language
question resulted in the academy’s first edition of an Italian dictionary in 1612.
 Political, historical, biographical, and moral
literature

Niccolò Machiavelli’s works reflected Renaissance thought in its most original aspects,
particularly in the objective analysis of human nature. Machiavelli has been described as
the founder of a new political science: politics divorced from ethics. His own political
experience was at the basis of his ideas, which he developed according to such general
principles as the concepts of virtù (“individual initiative”) and fortuna (“chance”). A man’s
ability to control his destiny through the exercise of virtù is contested by forces beyond his
control, summed up in the concept of fortuna. His famous treatise Il principe (The Prince),
composed in 1513, in which he states his conviction of the superiority of virtù, revealed the
author’s prophetic attitude, based on his reading of history and his observation of
contemporary political affairs. I
 Drama

Trissino’s Sofonisba (written 1514–15; the title is the name of the female protagonist)

was the first tragedy of Italian vernacular literature to follow classical precedent; its
structure derived from Greek models, but its poetic qualities were somewhat mediocre.
Toward the middle of the 16th century Giambattista Giraldi (Cinzio) reacted against
imitation of Greek drama by proposing the Roman tragedian Seneca as a new model, and
in nine tragedies and tragicomedies—written between 1541 and 1549—he showed some
independence from Aristotelian rules. He greatly influenced European drama, particularly
the English theatre of the Elizabethan period. Perhaps the most successful tragedy of the
century is Torquato Tasso’s Re Torrismondo (“King Torrismondo”).
 The Italian comedies of the century, inspired by Latin models but also by the tradition
of the novella, possessed greater artistic value than the tragedies, and they reflected
contemporary life more fully: they could be considered as the starting point for modern
European drama. To the comedies of Ariosto and Machiavelli should be added a lively
play, La Calandria (first performed 1513; The Follies of Calandro), by Cardinal Bernardo
Dovizi da Bibbiena, and the five racy comedies written by Pietro Aretino. 
Giordano Bruno, a great Italian philosopher who wrote dialogues in Italian on his new
cosmology and antihumanist ideas, also wrote a comedy, Il candelaio (1582; The
Candlemaker).
 Narrative

The classicist trend established by Pietro Bembo also affected narrative literature, for
which the obvious model was Boccaccio’s Decameron. Originality and liveliness of
expression were to be found in the 22 stories called Le cene (written after 1549; “The
Suppers”) of the Florentine apothecary Anton Francesco Grazzini. The worldly monk Agnolo
Firenzuola produced several stories, including the fable Asino d’oro (1550), a free adaptation
 of Apuleius’s Golden Ass. The cleric and short-story writer Matteo Bandello started a new
trend in 16th-century narrative with 214 stories that were rich in dramatic and romantic
 elements while not aiming at classical dignity. This trend was partially followed also by 
Giambattista Giraldi in his collection of 112 stories called (with a Greek etymology) Gli
ecatommiti (1565; “The Hundred Stories”).
 17th-century literature

The 17th century in Italian literature was traditionally described as a period

of “decadence” in which writers who were devoid of sentiment resorted to
exaggeration and tried to cloak the poverty of their subject matter beneath an
exuberance of form. (In this period, it is said, freedom of thought and
expression was fettered by the Counter-Reformation, by the political
supremacy of Spain, and by the conservatism of the Accademia della Crusca,
whose aim it was to ensure the hegemony of Florence by promoting the
“purity” of the Tuscan language.
 The “baroque” style of writing was not, however, simply an Italian
phenomenon. It was at this time that Gongorism (the ingenious metaphorical
style of the poet Luis de Góngora) flourished in Spain and the witty “conceits”
of the Metaphysical poets were popular in England. Far from being exhausted,
indeed, this was an extremely vital period, so much so that in the last decades
of the 20th century a new and more comprehensive understanding of the
literature of the Italian Baroque has been formulated by scholars conversant
 with the changing attitude toward this phase of civilization in Germany, 
France, and England.
 Poetry and prose

The popularity of satire was a reaction against prevailing conditions. Prominent in this 

genre was the Neapolitan Salvator Rosa, who attacked in seven satires the vices and
shortcomings of the age. The Modenese Alessandro Tassoni acquired great fame with La
secchia rapita (1622; The Rape of the Bucket), a mock-heroic poem that is both an epic and a
personal satire. The most serious poet of the period was Tommaso Campanella, a
Dominican friar, who spent most of his adult life in prison as a subversive. Campanella is
perhaps less well known for his rough-hewn philosophical verse than for the Città del
sole (1602; Campanella’s City of the Sun), a vision of political utopia, in which he advocated
the uniting of humanity under a theocracy based on natural religion.
Developments in the 18th century
 Reform of the tragic theatre

In 1713 Scipione Maffei, a Veronese nobleman and later author of the archaeological

and antiquarian guide Verona illustrata (1731–32), produced Merope—a tragedy that met
with great success and pointed the way toward reform of the Italian tragic theatre. (Merope
 was subsequently adapted into French by Voltaire.) Between 1726 and 1747 Antonio Conti
—an admirer of William Shakespeare—wrote four Roman tragedies in blank verse. It was
not until 1775, however, with the success of Vittorio Alfieri’s Cleopatra, that an important
Italian tragedian finally emerged. In strong contrast with the melodrammi, or musical
dramas, of Pietro Metastasio and the librettist Paolo Rolli, Alfieri’s tragedies are harsh,
bitter, and unmelodious.
 He chose classical and biblical themes, and, through his hatred of tyranny
 and love of liberty, he aspired to move his audience with magnanimous 
sentiments and patriotic fervour. He is at his most profound in Saul (1782)
and Mirra (1786). Alfieri’s influence in the Romantic period and the 
Risorgimento was immense, and, like Carlo Goldoni, he wrote an important
autobiography, which gives a revealing account of his struggles to provide 
Italy with a corpus of drama comparable to that of other European nations.
 Goldoni’s reform of comedy

Metastasio’s reform of the operatic libretto was paralleled in the mid-18th century by
Goldoni’s reform of comedy. Throughout the 17th century the commedia dell’arte—a
colourful pantomime of improvisation, singing, mime, and acrobatics, often performed by
actors of great virtuosity—had gradually replaced regular comedy, but by the early 18th
century it had degenerated into mere buffoonery and obscenity with stereotyped characters
(maschere, “masks”) and stale mannerisms. The dialogue was mostly improvised, and the
plot—a complicated series of stage directions, known as the scenario—dealt mainly with
forced marriages, star-crossed lovers, and the intrigues of servants and masters. Goldoni
succeeded in replacing this traditional type of theatre with written works in which wit and
vigour are especially evident when the Venetian scene is portrayed in a refined form of the
local dialect.
 The world of learning

Giambattista Vico, Ludovico Antonio Muratori, Apostolo Zeno, and the already mentioned Scipione
Maffei were writers who reflected the awakening of historical consciousness in Italy. Muratori
collected primary sources for the study of the Italian Middle Ages. Vico, in his Scienza nuova (1725–
44; The New Science), investigated the laws governing the progress of the human race and from the
psychological study of man endeavoured to infer the laws by which civilizations rise, flourish, and
fall. Giovanni Maria Mazzuchelli and Gerolamo Tiraboschi devoted themselves to literary history.
Literary criticism also attracted attention; Gian Vincenzo Gravina, Vico, Maffei, Muratori, and
several others, while continuing to advocate the imitation of the classics, realized that such imitation
should be cautious and thus anticipated critical standpoints that were later to come into favour.
 The Enlightenment (Illuminismo)

With the end of Spanish domination and the spread of the ideas of the Enlightenment
from France, political reforms were gradually introduced in various parts of Italy. The new
spirit of the times led people—mainly of the upper middle class—to enquire into the
mechanics of economic and social laws. The ideas and aspirations of the Enlightenment as a
whole were effectively voiced in such organs of the new journalism as Pietro Verri’s
periodical Il Caffè (1764–66; “The Coffeehouse”). A notable contributor to Il Caffè was the
philosopher and economist Cesare Beccaria, who in his pioneering book Dei delitti e delle
pene (1764; On Crimes and Punishments) made an eloquent plea for the abolition of torture
 and the death penalty.
 Romanticism

Foremost among writers in the early struggles for his country’s unity and freedom from
foreign domination was Ugo Foscolo, who reconciled passionate feeling with a formal
perfection inspired by classical models. His Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis (1802; 
The Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis) was an epistolary story, reminiscent of Goethe’s Werther,
of a young man forced to suicide by frustrated love for both a woman and his fatherland. It
was extremely moving and popular, as was a poem, “Dei sepolcri” (1807; “On Sepulchres”
), in which, in fewer than 300 lines, he wrote lyrically on the theme of the inspiration to be
had from contemplating the tombs of the great, exhorting Italians to be worthy of their
heritage.
 This poem influenced the Italian Risorgimento, or national revival, and a
passage in which Florence was praised because it preserved in the church of 
Santa Croce the ashes of Michelangelo, Machiavelli, and Galileo is still very
popular in Italy. Two odes celebrating the divine quality of beauty, 12 sonnets
ranking with the best of Petrarch’s and Tasso’s, and an unfinished poem, “Le
grazie” (“The Graces”), also testified to Foscolo’s outstanding poetic merit. As
an exile in England from 1816 until his death in 1827, he wrote remarkable
critical essays on Italian literature for English readers.
 Opposing movements

Melchiorre Cesarotti occupied a prominent position in the world of learning at the end of the 18th century, and
his translations of James Macpherson’s Ossian poetry, Poesie di Ossian (1763–72), influenced Foscolo, 
Giacomo Leopardi, and others by their mysterious and gloomy fantasy, so alien to the classical inspiration; 
Saggio sulla filosofia delle lingue (1785; “Essay on the Philosophy of Languages”) was an important essay in
the dispute on the Italian language. The trend was toward pedantic classicism as a reaction against an excessive
Gallicism favoured by some 18th-century writers. Among the purists was Antonio Cesari, who brought out a
new enlarged edition of the Vocabolario della Crusca (the first Italian dictionary, published by the Accademia
della Crusca in 1612). He wrote Sopra lo stato presente della lingua italiana (1810; “On the Present State of
the Italian Language”) and endeavoured to establish the supremacy of Tuscan and of Dante, Petrarch, and
Boccaccio as models.
 The veristi and other narrative writers

The patriotic niceties and sentimental Romanticism of much Risorgimento writing

inevitably provoked a reaction. The first serious opposition came from the scapigliati
 (literally, “disheveled,” or “bohemians”), adherents of an antibourgeois literary and artistic
movement that flourished in the northern metropolises of Milan and Turin during the last
four decades of the 19th century and whose declared aim was to link up with the most
advanced Romantic currents from abroad. Unfortunately the movement—perhaps by its
very nature—lacked intellectual cohesion and tended to cultivate the eccentric as an end in
itself.
THANK YOU AND GOD BLESS

Any Question? Because if you do, meaning you

didn’t listen to the report.