Italian Poetry to 1800

Introduction

Poetry and literature in the Italian vernacular, the common language that sprang from the ashes of Latin, arose in Italy around the beginning of the thirteenth century and soon displayed itself in literary works of major importance. This linguistic success is so extraordinary that one wonders how it was possible that such a literary phenomenon could take place in a language whose written tradition is so recent. The spoken language, however, had a long history, which is represented by the development of Latin into several vernaculars. The heritage and cultured structures of Italian have roots that are deep and extensive, developing from the culture and literature of the medieval period, the time from the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the beginning of the thirteenth century.

From Latin to Italian

During that long period of time, Italy developed a literature that, on one hand, was no longer in Latin but, on the other, was not yet in Italian. This language maintained the appearance of Latin but was quite different from classic Latin; it was the Latin used by the Roman Catholic Church and by educated people, a language that, after the fall of the Roman Empire, spread throughout Europe as the cultured language and remained as the official language of science until the modern age. Medieval literature, however, was not developed extensively, and its quality, from an artistic point of view, was rather limited.

During the Middle Ages, the Church had become the major source of knowledge and culture, and it had inherited from Rome its characteristic of universality. The major documents of medieval Christian thought profoundly shaped the values of the new vernacular literature; particularly influential were the works of the Scholastic philosophers, among whom towers Saint Thomas Aquinas and in which one can find the vital roots of Dante’s writings.

Italian vernacular poetry began in the thirteenth century with the simultaneous flowering of written literature in several of Italy’s competing dialects. In the twelfth century, it had appeared that the Sicilian dialect was going to acquire the status of a national language; Sicily, at the time of Emperor Frederick II (1194-1250), had become an important center of cultural life and art. This Sicilian superiority was ephemeral, however, vanishing after the death of the emperor. It was instead the Florentine tongue that, for several reasons, became the national language. The Florentine dialect prevailed primarily because, during the period of assertion of the vernacular, some of the greatest masterpieces of Italian literature were written in that dialect.

Early vernacular works

The earliest extant poetic compositions in the vernacular are religious works intended for doctrinal instruction; typical examples of this genre are Bonavesin della Riva’s Libro delle tre scritture (c. 1300; book of the three scriptures) and Fra Giacomino da Verona’s De Jerusalem celesti (c. 1230) and De Babilonia civitate infernali (c. 1230). In the field of specifically religious poetry, which contains a clear and pure effusion of spiritual feelings, there is the Laudes creaturarum (c. 1225), by Saint Francis of Assisi, and the oeuvre of Jacopone da Todi, which includes 102 laudes. Though the majority of these religious poems narrate the deep mystical experience of the author, there are also several that are of a moral and satiric nature.

Of greater importance from an artistic and cultural point of view is the development in Italy of alyric poetry of Provençal origin, which reflected a courtly concept of love that was conceived as an homage to “the lady” according to the principles dictated by the codes and rules of feudal society. The courtly content of this poetry and the very elaborate style rarely offered the possibility of expressing truly sincere and deep feelings. The poetry created by this style gave more importance to the artifice of the form than to the originality of the inspiration and was therefore characterized by a certain coldness.

The poetic genre had some success in northern Italy as a result of the troubadours, who traveled from court to court from Provence into northern Italy. The most consistent achievement of this lyric style, however, took place in Sicily at the court of Frederick II, where it assumed the status of a school. Among its most celebrated poets were Frederick himself and his sons, Enzo and Manfredi. In addition, there were resident courtiers such as Jacopo da Lentini and Giacomino Pugliese. The aesthetic value of the poetry of theSicilian school is minimal; there, the worst traits of Provençal poetry were accentuated. Nevertheless, the historical significance of the Sicilian school is great: It constituted the first attempt to use the vernacular with a clear artistic intention. At this historical moment, as earlier mentioned, Sicilian could have become the national language. Historical events, however, prevented that. Frederick II died in 1250, and with his demise the power of his court soon disappeared and the cultural and literary effort which he so strongly supported collapsed.

Dolce stil nuovo

The poetry of the Sicilian school had, nevertheless, already found a fruitful development in Tuscany, where its poetic themes were enriched with political and religious elements—particularly in the works of Guittone d’Arezzo and in the amorous poetry of Chiaro Davanzati. Furthermore, the Sicilian experience was instrumental in suggesting a new development, a new conception of love poetry that was proposed by the advocates of the dolce stil nuovo (“sweet new style”). In this new style, feelings are based on a bourgeois experience—the culture of the communes—not on a feudal one as was the case with Provençal poetry. Supported by a mystical consciousness, the new poetry exemplified a greater sincerity of expression and was supported by deeper sensitivity and more ardent feelings. Guido Guinizzelli’s lyric poem “A cor gentile ripara sempre amore” (“Love Seeks Its Dwelling Always in a Gentle Heart”) established what could be considered the schematic structure of the new school. Originating in Bologna, this innovative way of creating verses reached Florence, where Guido Cavalcanti further developed it in his poem “Donna mi prega” (“A Lady Asks Me”). Cino da Pistoia brought to the dolce stil nuovo a new psychological concept of love, substantively humane, with a potential that Dante was to explore in La vita nuova (c. 1292; Vita Nuova, 1861; better known as The New Life), written shortly after 1292. The New Life narrates the spiritual unfolding of his pure love for Beatrice, a girl whom he met early in his life and who died young in 1290, leaving the poet grief-stricken. Under the influence of the stilnovisti, Dante cultivated his love for Beatrice as a pure—almost religious—feeling through which he might be led to spiritual perfection. This concept would be developed extensively in his masterpiece.

Dante

Dante (1265-1321) was born in Florence into a Guelph family that claimed ancient noble origins. He received his early education from the Franciscan friars of Santa Croce Church in his native town and, from the poetry of the Sicilian school that had spread into central Italy, he learned to write verses in the vernacular. Like many other citizens of Florence in his social condition, Dante participated in the tumultuous political life of the commune. As a consequence of these activities, he was exiled when the Black faction of the Guelph party, which was supported by Pope Boniface VIII, won political dominance over the White faction, to which Dante belonged. The Blacks banished the leaders of the Whites from Florence and its territory. Military attempts to regain power organized by the White faction failed. Dante resigned himself to the life of an exile and stayed at several courts in northern Italy, finally settling down in Ravenna at the court of Guido da Polenta. In Ravenna, he devoted his attention to completing his sacred epic, La divina commedia (c. 1320; The Divine Comedy, 1802). He died in Ravenna in 1321.

It is significant that Dante composed his masterpiece in exile. After a long period of tumultuous events, the moment for deliberation had come. On the one hand, the recent past appeared to him as a forest of mistakes; on the other hand, he could visualize the possibility of a transcending order, embracing Heaven and Earth. Dante believed that the misled and corrupt humanity of his time could organize itself into a new order which could reach the goal of temporal and eternal happiness. This empire would be universal and divinely ordained, and the emperor would be independent in his temporal power, his authority granted directly to him by God and not by the pope. Other motives that certainly influenced the composition of the poem were Dante’s love for Beatrice and the desire to glorify her, his desire for justice, and his need to express his aesthetic insight and creative imagination.

In The Divine Comedy, Dante describes being lost in “una foresta oscura,” a dark forest which represents the confusion of life. As a result of his experience, he acquires a consciousness of the sad condition of his spirit. He wants to free himself from this anguished state, but with human resources alone the soul cannot save itself. If a man with a soul in distress shows good intentions, however, he deserves the help of God; the Holy Virgin, representing “Divine Mercy,” comes to his aid. She calls on Lucia (Saint Lucy), the “Enlightened Grace,” who, in turn, goes to Beatrice, the symbol of knowledge in divine matters. Beatrice—who is also the human woman loved by Dante—descends into Limbo and begs Vergil, who represents “right reason,” to bring help to Dante. Reason tells Dante that he cannot go suddenly from a sinful life to one of perfection; he must first face the dreadful consequence of sin by visiting Hell. He must then continue to Purgatory to make amends for his sins. Only then, after having reached the condition of natural perfection (the Terrestrial Paradise), will Dante be able to go to the Celestial Paradise and therefore reach the supreme reward, undergoing the beatific Vision of God. In this last part of Dante’s mythical voyage, Vergil, “right reason,” will not be a sufficient guide, and Dante will visit Paradise with the help of Beatrice.

The Divine Comedy is an epic poem of one hundred cantos. These cantos are collected into three parts, each of which is dedicated to one of the kingdoms of the life beyond: Inferno, Purgatorio (Purgatory), and Paradiso (Paradise). The Inferno is described in strong and vivid terms: the terrible heat and fires of the underworld, the agonies of the suffering, the terrors of the devils. In Purgatory, where the passions are appeased, there predominates a condition of melancholy generated by the recollection of the flawed past life and the interminable waiting for the state of eternal beatitude. In Paradise, Dante acknowledges the impossibility of conveying absolute happiness and holiness in earthly terms.

Although The Divine Comedy is Dante’s masterpiece, he left other notable works as well. In addition to the poems that are included in The New Life, pervaded by mystical love, he composed a collection of canzoniere (lyric poetry) that documents the further artistic development that the poet had to undergo in order to reach the richness of motive that characterizes The Divine Comedy.

Dante’s achievements mark a moment of great cultural change in the history of Italy. On the one hand, he summarizes the thought, life, and aspirations of the Middle Ages; on the other hand, he opens the door to a modern conception of life and culture. If Dante’s gaze is fixed toward Heaven, he is not blind to temporal happenings, and he observes the Earth in all of its aspects and details. He does not ignore the mystery of the human soul. Rather, as exemplified in one of the cantos of The Divine Comedy, he embraces the courage of Ulysses, who ventured to discover new worlds. Thus, Dante anticipates the questing spirit of the Renaissance.

Petrarch

The political ideas of Petrarch (1304-1374), the other major poet of the thirteenth century and one of the major figures of Italian literature, present a historical ambience quite different from that of Dante. Politically, Petrarch is far removed from the conception of a universal empire. His interest is clearly concentrated on Italy seen as a country geographically and ethnically different from any other country beyond the mountain chain of the Alps. Culturally, Petrarch departs from the medieval worldview; for him, the classical world acquires a new interest. Thus, Petrarch could be considered a precursor of Humanism.

From a psychological point of view, Petrarch does not possess the self-assurance that is typical of Dante. He appears to be more introspective, with a tendency toward self-analysis, which may have accounted for his uncertainty and unhappiness—elements that constitute the essence of his poetry. The conflict between his religious desires and his worldly attitudes is never fully resolved. There is no serenity or dramatic resolution for him, only the constant melancholy that is characteristic of the modern spirit.

Petrarch was born Francesco Petrarca in Arezzo, the son of Pietro di Parenzo (commonly known as Ser Petracco), a Florentine notary who belonged to the White political faction and was exiled in 1302, the same year in which Dante was exiled. In 1312, the family moved to near Avignon, in France, where Petrarch’s father had found employment with the papal court. Petrarch studied law at the universities of Montpellier and Bologna, but his interest was oriented more toward literature than law. In 1327, in the Church of Santa Chiara in Avignon, he first saw Laura, the woman who was the major source of inspiration for his poetry. Petrarch served several lords in Italy, especially those of Colonna, a powerful Roman family that contributed several popes to the Church. Petrarch traveled through the many regions of Italy as well as in France, Flanders, and Germany. Later, he returned to Provence and retired to Vaucluse, a small town not far from Avignon. He spent his time writing a long epic poem in Latin, Africa (1396; English translation, 1977), his most extended work in that language. The poem was inspired by Vergil’s Aeneid (c. 29-19 b.c.e.; English translation, 1553) and was written in hexameter and subdivided into nine cantos. Petrarch felt this epic to be his major contribution to the literature of his time. It was successful during his lifetime, and in 1340, Petrarch was rewarded with the title of poet laureate by the Senate in Rome. During this period, he continued his activities as a diplomat at the service of various courts in Italy. He also continued with his literary endeavors, which included collecting ancient texts by Latin authors. Later, he went to live in the territories of the Republic of Venice and died in 1374 in Arquà, a small town near Padua, where he had gone into seclusion.

The true poetic glory of Petrarch, however, derives almost exclusively from the lyrics he wrote in the vulgar tongue, Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (1470, also known as Canzoniere; Rhymes, 1976). Though he dismissed these lyrics as nugellae (“little things”), he refined and edited them throughout most of his life. Rhymes consists of 366 poems, most of them sonnets recounting the melancholy story of his love for Laura, a love that did not cease even with Laura’s death, which occurred in 1340 during the plague. Well acquainted with the love poetry of the Provençal troubadours, the Sicilian school, and the stilnovisti, Petrarch derived from these traditions elements that became vital and inseparable parts of his own poetic world. Nevertheless, the imprint, the essence of Rhymes, stems from his passion for Laura, the focus of an intense conflict between the seductions of the world and the enduring values of spiritual love.

The work is divided into two parts, usually designated “In vita di madonna Laura” (in the lifetime of Laura) and “In morte di madonna Laura” (after the death of Laura). In the first part, Petrarch’s love has great impulses, prostrations, enthusiasms, and a gloomy bitterness. The poet blesses the moment of his falling in love and swears eternal fidelity to his feelings for Laura. Only rarely does sensuality appear in his verses, but at the same time the poet does not attempt to transform his feelings into a mystical thought that will raise him—through his love of the woman—to love of God. In the second part, those poems written after Laura’s death, there is at first an expression of grief, the torture of separation, the tormenting thought that Laura’s beautiful face, the “dolce sguardo,” the endearing glance, are gone forever. Then, the image of Laura begins to live a new life in the soul of the faithful lover; she is no longer a temptress. Instead, Laura becomes a maternal figure and the consoler of Petrarch’s sufferings. Also, with this new vision, Petrarch believes that his love, even if spiritualized, is still love for a human creature and therefore a distraction from the love for the Creator. Petrarch’s Rhymes has been among the most influential poetic works not only of Italian literature but also of world literature. With a psychological acuity that anticipates the modern discovery of the self, Petrarch describes refined and sophisticated feelings, spellbinding in their perplexity but at the same time never completely detached from a lived human experience.

Giovanni Boccaccio

The third of the great Italian writers of this period is Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), whose fame is founded on Decameron: O, Prencipe Galetto (1349-1351; The Decameron, 1620). A literary work in prose, it is a collection of one hundred short stories related to one another by a frame story.

Of limited artistic value, Boccaccio’s poetry is nevertheless of historical interest. For the most part, it is allegorical, reflecting Dante’s model and the general pattern of the medieval literary tradition. His most significant early works include Il filostrato (c. 1335; The Filostrato, 1873), a lyric composition somewhat biographical in style, which was followed by Teseida delle nozze d’Emilia (1339-1341; The Book of Theseus, 1974), an epic poem imitating the style of Vergil’s Aeneid and Statius’s Thebais (c. 92 c.e.; English translation, 1766). There is also La caccia di Diana (c. 1334; Diana’s hunt), a mythological poem describing the life at the court of Naples where Boccaccio spent some time during his youth. Other works written before the Decameron are Il ninfale d’Ameto (1341-1342; also known as Commedia delle ninfe), an idyllic poem of popular love, and L’amorosa visione (1342-1343; English translation, 1986), an allegorical poem inspired by Dante’s The Divine Comedy.

Italian Renaissance

Between the end of the fourteenth century and the beginning of the fifteenth century, there appeared in Italy the first signs of a profound change in Western culture. The typical representative of this period, which would be later called the Renaissance, sought above all the full and balanced development and enjoyment of his human potential. Transcendence was not explicitly denied but was simply neglected. The Renaissance person did not feel the need of divine grace to achieve these goals, and the ideal of the ascetic, who runs away from the world so that the spirit will thrive, was completely foreign—indeed, almost incomprehensible.

At the beginning of this period, there was a great interest in the studies of classical languages and literature. This interest in classical culture and the new critical sense with which these cultures were analyzed bred a large cultural movement called Humanism. In the infancy of the new movement, in the first part of the fourteenth century, there was little interest in the vernacular, since the aspirations of learned individuals were oriented toward classical languages. Among the Humanists who distinguished themselves as poets in this first part of the century, Giovanni Pontano entrusted all of his creative literary efforts to the Latin language; his works include an astrological poem, Urania (1505); an epic poem, Lepidina (1505); and three books of elegies, De amore coniugalis (1480-1484; conjugal love), which are dedicated to his wife.

Lorenzo de’ Medici

At this historical moment, Tuscany no longer held predominance in the national literature but nevertheless was, along with Florence, a very active cultural center because of the patronage of Cosimo de’ Medici and of his grandson Lorenzo the Magnificent (1449-1492). Lorenzo has a place in the history of Florence and Italy because of his great abilities as a politician and administrator and his munificent and intelligent patronage of the arts; in addition, he distinguished himself as a man of letters.

In Lorenzo’s oeuvre one finds the influence of the most contrasting poetic currents of his time. His L’altercazione (after 1473) reveals the influence of the Platonist Center founded in Florence by the renowned Humanist Marsilio Ficino. In Selve (1515), Lorenzo narrates an allegorical love story which, as in Petrarch’s Trionfi (1470; Tryumphs, 1565; also known as Triumphs, 1962), goes through several stages—jealousy, hope, despair—to conclude finally in the contemplation of the eternal beauty, God. In his Rime (1680), dedicated to Lucrezia Donati, he was inspired by the stilnovisti, whose philosophical ideas were close to Platonism. Also deserving of special consideration are Nencia da Barberino (c. 1474), a short lyric poem in which the peasant Vallera gives vent to his passionate love for the beautiful shepherdess Nencia, and Canto trionfale di Bacco e Arianna (c. 1490), a work in which Lorenzo becomes the interpreter of the soul and spirit of the Renaissance with the accomplished skill of a highly developed artist.

Poliziano

The most eminent poet of his century, Poliziano (1454-1494), was born in the Tuscan town of Montepulciano. Although born into a family of humble condition, Poliziano was able to educate himself at the school of noted Humanists in Florence. He also attracted the attention of Lorenzo the Magnificent, who took him into his house as the tutor of his children.

Poliziano was a brilliant Humanist and wrote verses both in Latin and in Greek. Some of his poems in classical languages have remarkable taste and artistic value, but his reputation as a poet is based on his vernacular poetry, especially on Stanze cominciate per la giostra del magnifico Giuliano de’ Medici (1518; The Stanze of Angelo Poliziano, 1979; commonly known as Stanze), Orfeo (pr. 1480; English translation, 1879; also known as Orpheus), and Rime (wr. 1498, pb. 1814).

Stanze is an incomplete lyric poem, of which Poliziano wrote only the first book and part of the second. This work was supposed to celebrate the joust won in Florence in 1475 by Lorenzo’s brother Giuliano, who was later killed during Pazzi’s conspiracy in 1478. The poem describes how Giuliano, a handsome and vigorous young man, is living an intense and happy life in close contact with nature, spending most of his time riding and hunting and giving little attention to love and sentiment. Cupid is offended by this young man’s attitude and plans to take revenge by making Giuliano fall in love with a beautiful nymph, Simonetta. In the second book of the poem, Venus and Cupid send Giuliano a dream that instills in him the desire for warlike glory, which is necessary in order that he be deserving of Simonetta’s love. He prepares to organize a joust, and it is at this point that the poem is interrupted. The poem interprets with admirable grace that moment in which the sentimentally immature young man, who is completely involved with the exterior world, withdraws into himself and achieves for the first time a new awareness, noticing the rise of unsuspected love feelings.

Poliziano wrote Orfeo, his second major literary work, during his stay at the Gonzagas’ court in Mantua. The tone of this composition is dramatic, but it lacks a true conflict of passions. The poem places instead a greater importance on the lyric and elegiac motives, but they seldom reach the expressive intensity of Stanze. Of more significant artistic value, from the lyric point of view, is Rime, a collection of love poems that also includes the famous “I’ mi trovai fanciulle un bel mattino” (“I Went A-Roaming, Maidens, One Bright Day”). This poem ends with an invitation to capture the fleeting moment and to “gather ye therefore roses…ere their perfume pass away”—a topos which was to become one of the most pervasive in Renaissance poetry throughout Europe.

Jacopo Sannazzaro

The same accents are found in the poetry of the Neapolitan author Jacopo Sannazzaro (1458-1530), who, lacking the depth of inspiration, the vitality, and the human understanding of Poliziano, succeeds nevertheless in reaching a respectable artistic sophistication. Sannazzaro’s reputation rests on Arcadia (Arcadia and Piscutorial Eclogues, 1966), a pastoral poem published in 1504. To his contemporaries, Arcadia appeared to be a unique combination of all the various motives of pastoral poetry, deriving its inspiration from classical poets such as Vergil, Ovid, and Theocritus.

Luigi Pulci

Another author of the fifteenth century, Luigi Pulci (1432-1484), profited from the enlightened patronage of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Pulci tried several forms of traditional poetry without great success, achieving fame only when he turned to an epic poem, Morgante, which he started almost as a joke. Instead, it introduced a genre that acquired a large popularity in Italy. The poem took up the subject matter of the Chanson de Roland (twelfth century; The Song of Roland, 1880) and the legend of Charlemagne—a theme that had found an unusual popularity among the simple people in Italy and had created a rich florescence of epic poems, none of which had arrived at any reputable artistic level. These epic poems had gradually taken a very definite structure, a structure that was monotonously repeated. The plot usually revealed the treacheries and evil deeds of the members of the House of Maganza, which had expelled from France the members of the House of Chiaromonte and called the Saracens to fight against Charlemagne, the leader of the Chiaromonte. These same adventures, usually narrated by storytellers in the streets, reappear in Pulci’s Morgante. Pulci, however, succeeds in bringing the story to a level that is artistically moving and epic in scope.

Pulci ended his poem at the twenty-third canto, and his work was published as it was, incomplete, as Morgante (1481). Later, urged by a friend to complete it, the poet added another five cantos that tell of the defeat at Roncesvalles, where the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army, returning from Spain and being led by the Paladin Roland, is destroyed by the Saracens. Thus completed, the epic poem was titled the Morgante maggiore (1483).

Matteo Maria Boiardo

This new literary genre was continued by Matteo Maria Boiardo (1440 or 1441-1494), who freed it from the popular tradition that still existed in Pulci’s work and initiated with refined artistic awareness the poetic theme of the old chivalry, or Romantic epic. His major work, the Orlando innamorato (1483-1495; English translation, 1823), a grandiose enterprise originally planned to include 120 cantos divided into four parts (though interrupted after the second part), merges the two major themes of chivalric poetry: the events narrating the story of Charlemagne, from which Boiardo obtained his major characters and the plot of the Christian world fighting the Saracens, and the Arthurian legend, from which he deducted the individualistic spirit of love and adventure as well as the fair land aspect.

Love and adventure are evident in the Morgante maggiore, but both seem somewhat incidental to the story, lacking the well-organized and well-planned structure found in this new poem. In the Orlando Innamorato, love and adventure are closely connected, and it is indeed love that drives the restless knights to undertake the most unusual and risky endeavors. Boiardo is also credited with having created numerous characters with well-defined personalities; in turn, these characters were taken up by Ludovico Ariosto.

Several parts of Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato have a high poetic value, but the poem is not considered a true masterpiece: It lacks a unifying spirit that would give life to all parts of the story. There is, however, in Boiardo’s poem an interesting taste for the primitive, from which stems a grandiosity that is not handicapped by exceptional or complicated psychological depth. One also perceives in his stories a fascinating and uncontrolled indulgence in the simple and powerful passions of love, vengeance, and a desire to conquer that is clearly an asset to his work and poetic conception. This raw energy, however, cannot be sustained throughout the poem. Little by little, the rich vein of inspiration exhausts itself, and the episodes of the story monotonously repeat themselves until the reader’s interest in the adventure weakens and disappears. The spirit of the Renaissance, so deeply different from the one of the Middle Ages, demanded an entirely new vision of the world of the chanson de geste, and it was Ariosto who met this demand.

Ludovico Ariosto

Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533) was born in Reggio Emilia. His father was in the service of the lords of that region, the Este family, and Ludovico inherited the position when his father died. He worked at first for the Cardinal Ippolito d’Este and then for the Cardinal’s brother, the duke Alfonso d’Este, who had his court in the city of Ferrara. Often, however, the poet had to leave his favored city, sent by his patrons on missions to various parts of the duchy and Italy. Later in life, he was able to live in a house that he bought on the outskirts of Ferrara, where he could dedicate himself completely to writing, the greatest passion in his life.

In his youth, under the Humanistic influence, Ariosto wrote only in Latin, imitating Catullus and Tibullus. Ariosto first published a Latin ode, “Ad Philiroen” (“To Philiroe”), in 1494. After 1503, however, the poet rarely wrote in Latin; his lyric poetry was composed primarily in the vulgar tongue.

Ariosto began writing his masterpiece Orlando furioso (1516, 1521, 1532; English translation, 1591) around 1503 and published a first edition of sixteen cantos in 1516. After extensive revision, he published a second edition in 1521. Finally, yet another version, with several cantos added, was published in 1532. This careful revision produced a poem that for its excellent style could be compared to Petrarch’s Rhymes. Moreover, the form in which the poem is written, the ottava rima, gave such musicality to Ariosto’s verses that it was called the “golden octave.”

Orlando Furioso is a continuation of the Orlando Innamorato; Ariosto’s poem more or less begins where Boiardo concluded his story. Although the Orlando Furioso has an extraordinary number of episodes, its plot is based solidly and clearly on a few fundamental events. The multiplicity of the facts narrated does not create confusion or boredom but unfold in harmonious and orderly ways. All the characters, who may at times appear scattered, are intermittently collected at a specific point, be it the palace of the sorcerer Atlante or under the walls of Paris, walls from which they subsequently depart in search of new, wonderful adventures.

The spirit of the poem should be sought in the vision of life as a changing scene, a continuously changing spectacle, a vision that Ariosto had obtained from the Renaissance conception at its highest and most balanced stage of development. According to this conception, life should be observed with a certain detachment, without bitterness and without moralizing.

Late sixteenth century

In the second part of the sixteenth century, the great magnificence of the Renaissance faded, perhaps because of the natural exhaustion of the intense fervor of life, both elegant and merry, that had charmed the Italian courts. Politically, the change was particularly severe. The Spanish domination of Italy drastically changed life in the courts of several states. From a literary point of view, artistic production was tightly controlled and dominated by the rules and suggestions of several learned societies, especially the Accademia della Crusca (“academy of the chaff”), founded in 1583 with the intention of purifying the literary language.

There was, however, in the late sixteenth century an interesting ferment of new ideas. The theoretical elements implicit in the Renaissance conception of life became explicit only during this period. They were expressed in organized philosophical thought by thinkers such as Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), Bernardino Telesio (1509-1588), and Tommaso Campanella (1568-1639), a prolific author whose masterpiece is La città del sole (1623; City of the Sun, 1880). Inspired by Plato’s philosophy, Campanella describes a utopian, egalitarian society ruled by a priest-philosopher in City of the Sun.

An important influence on Italian literary development after the Renaissance was exercised by the sweeping religious movement known as the Counter-Reformation. This Catholic movement tried to contain the spread of the Protestant revolution while renewing the life of the Catholic Church. In this period, literature followed the natural consequence of the exhaustion of the Renaissance, and the Counter-Reformation ideals succeeded from time to time in animating literary production with renewed religious spirit. Included among these works is the oeuvre of Torquato Tasso, who closed the Renaissance that Petrarch had opened.

Torquato Tasso

Torquato Tasso (1544-1595) was born in Sorrento, near Naples. His father, Bernardo, was an accomplished man of letters and had written a lyric poem, the Amadigi (1560), which had been somewhat successful. Bernardo Tasso was the secretary to the prince of Salerno, Ferrante di San Severino, and when the prince was forced to leave his state and go into exile for political reasons, Bernardo, accompanied by his son, followed his patron. This exile brought the Tassos to the courts of several Italian princes, and young Torquato pursued his studies in different universities, finally graduating from the University of Padua with a degree in literature. He was soon admitted to the retinue of Cardinal Luigi d’Este, to whom he had dedicated his pastoral drama Aminta (pr. 1573; English translation, 1591), a work that showed artistic maturity and that expressed in lovely forms the serenity of Tasso’s spirit at that time in his life. Distinguished by this serenity and by its lighthearted sensuality, Aminta is the culmination of the Renaissance pastoral tradition.

Aminta was followed by Gerusalemme liberata (1581; Jerusalem Delivered, 1600), Tasso’s major work. This period was not only the most prolific for the poet but also the happiest in his life. After 1575, the year in which Jerusalem Delivered was read publicly to the duke of Ferrara and his court, Tasso’s mental health began to deteriorate. His sensitive mind was racked by doubts about the critical and religious soundness of his poem. He also became very suspicious of his friends and benefactors, and after some irrational episodes, the duke of Ferrara was compelled to confine Tasso to an asylum, where he remained for seven years. When he was released in 1586, the poet went to live at the court of the Gonzagas in Mantua, but only for a short time. He soon returned to his wanderings: Naples, Florence, back to Mantua, and Rome, where Pope Clement VIII planned to crown him with laurel. Tasso, however, could not manage to extend his life to the day of the coronation. Exhausted, he found shelter in the convent of Sant’ Onofrio of the Giannicolo and there he died, on April 25, 1595.

Tasso had begun to work on his masterpiece, Jerusalem Delivered, with a greater concern than had characterized his earlier works. At the end of the sixteenth century, it was not conceivable that a poet would be starting to work on what was considered the most noble of the literary genre, the poema epico (the romantic poem), so much discussed by the supercilious academicians, yet without an adequate critical preparation. Tasso, therefore, expressed his ideas about the romantic poem in a short treatise, Discorsi dell’arte poetica (1587; discourses on the poetic art). The poet believed that the purpose of literature was more to entertain than to instruct and that in the romantic poem one should strive for credibility. For this reason, the poet should turn to history; tales of marvels and miracles should be religious in inspiration, it being undesirable for Christian people to believe in the prodigies of pagan divinities. Finally, Tasso asserted that the poet should seek greatness and nobility in the characters and the events, excluding ridiculous, comical, and vulgar facts and creatures.

During his youth, Tasso had conceived a romantic poem on the Crusades and had written the first book of a work titled “Il Goffredo.” Later he undertook the project again and, working intensively, completed it in twenty cantos of ottava rima in 1575, publishing it in the final form in 1581 as Jerusalem Delivered. In this literary composition, the poetic world of Tasso manifests itself in all of its richness and depth. At first it appears that, from an artistic point of view, one is confronted again by the world of the Renaissance with major elements including glory, expectation, anticipation, anxiety, heroic efforts, idyllic visions, pleasure, power, and melancholy. Moralistic and religious elements are present only in rhetorical and artificial forms, and there are only a few passages of sincerely felt spirituality and mysticism. If one observes the essence and the structure of the poem with greater care, however, one realizes that in those Renaissance motives there is hidden a new spirit, a new feeling that, without dissolving them, without transforming anything, gives to these realities a new expression, a new and deeper significance. Desire, expectation, enthusiasm, and heroic efforts are no longer an end in themselves, a pure expression of exuberant energies; they need now an ideal that will support and fulfill them. Force, power, has lost its barbaric beauty and opens itself to human feelings. Melancholy is not regret for the fleeting, transitory aspect of happiness, but rather an anxious desire for a more spiritual happiness and fulfillment, a fulfillment that Tasso’s religiosity circumscribes. In this correct merging and balancing of the two opposing and contrasting forces—the love for the world and the attraction toward spirituality—Tasso supersedes his mentor, Petrarch.

After Tasso completed Jerusalem Delivered, his instability worsened. He began a new version of his epic, titled Gerusalemme Conquistata (1593; Jerusalem Conquered, 1907), an artistic failure on which he expended enormous labors. He also wrote a tragedy, Il re Torrismondo (pb. 1587; the King Torrismondo), inspired by Sophocles’ Oidipous Tyrannos (c. 429 b.c.e.; Oedipus Tyrannus, 1715), as well as a poem of religious inspiration, Le sette giornate del mondo creato, published posthumously in 1607. None of these works could duplicate the intensity and the artistic fervor of his masterpiece.

Battista Guarini

Another work deserving of recognition and written in the same period is the pastoral tragicomedy Il pastor fido (pb. 1590; The Faithful Shepherd, 1602; translation by John Fletcher), by Battista Guarini (1538-1612), a poet from Ferrara who was for several years at the court in his own town and then in Florence and Urbino. More than for its dramatic qualities or artistic prominence of the protagonist, The Faithful Shepherd is famous for its musicality of expression, which brings Guarini’s characters closer to those of the melodrama, a genre that had tremendous success in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The melodrama, as an artistic form, was created at the end of the sixteenth century by the Camerata dei Bardi, a group of literati and musicians who gathered at the Bardi’s palace in Florence. Their intention was to effect a closer relationship between music and poetry, following the example of classical Greek authors. The first melodrama (or favola per musica) produced was Dafne (1600), written by Ottavio Rinuccini (1562-1621) with music by Jacopo Corsi and Jacopo Peri. In 1600, Rinuccini wrote Euridice, also with music by Peri, for the marriage of the king of France, Henry IV, and Marie de Médicis. A few years later, in 1608, he wrote the libretto for the opera Arianna (1608), by Monteverdi, which was performed at the court of the duke of Mantua.

Considerable success was enjoyed in the sixteenth century by lyric poetry that imitated Petrarch (petrarchismo), and among the numerous poets who wrote verses in this style, several are notable: Luigi Tansillo (1510-1568), Annibal Caro (1507-1566), Giovanni Della Casa (1503-1555), and Galeazzo di Tarsia (1520-1553), who is perhaps the best in this group. In addition, two women poets achieved artistic renown in this period: Vittoria Colonna (1492-1547), a member of the Roman aristocracy and a good friend of Michelangelo (1475-1564), the great sculptor and painter (who also wrote noteworthy poetry), and Gaspara Stampa (1523-1554), from Padua, whose powerful and passionate verses are regarded by many modern readers as among the finest in European literature of her time.

Seventeenth century mannerism

Poetry in seventeenth century Italy was characterized by a phenomenon that is usually identified as secentismo or Marinismo, from the name of the poet Giambattista Marino (1569-1625), who, more than anyone, was responsible for the vogue of this new poetic style throughout Europe. This new poetry gave an extraordinary importance to form, partly in consequence of slavish imitation of classical authors, a practice that gradually gave the impression that form was something detached from content. Artists used style as a means of attracting the attention of the reader. To generate a sense of wonder and amazement, poets tended to emphasize oddity, a characteristic that typified the literary production of the seventeenth century.

The most daring and applauded representative of this style was Marino himself, who was born in Naples. After a restless and adventurous youth, Marino, who had distinguished himself as a gifted and brilliant writer of verses, spent some time at the pontifical court in Rome and then was a guest in Turin at the court of Duke Carlo Emanuele I of Savoy, where he found glory and honor. Soon, however, he fell out of favor and was imprisoned. As soon as Marino was free, he left Italy for France, where he resided for many years in Paris, honored and admired at the court of Marie de Médicis. His reputation, especially after the publication of his major work the L’Adone (1623), was immense. When Marino returned to Italy, he was received with great celebration in Rome and Naples. He died in Naples shortly after his return in 1625.

Marino’s lyric poems, which present various subjects, are collected in a book titled La lira (1615). Other compositions are La galeria (1619), a group of iconographic poems; La sampogna (1620), a pastoral idyll; and the sacred epic La strage degli innocenti (1632; The Slaughter of the Innocents, 1675), which enjoyed widespread and popular success.

L’Adone is by far Marino’s most important work. It embodies both the strengths and the shortcomings of his art, and it stands as the most representative expression of the spirit of its epoch. L’Adone is a mythological poem, conceived at first as a short idyllic poem and then enlarged, with extraordinary richness of digressions and episodes, to reach the impressive size of five thousand verses. These five thousand verses were then subdivided into twenty long cantos which center on the love of Venus and Adonis.

Other poets

Although secentismo was predominant in this period, a number of other poets wrote according to the principles of more orthodox forms, those classical writers who opposed the group represented by Marino and his followers. They cannot, however, be separated from the previous group, because they, too, followed the same abstract conception that form and style are completely separate from content.

Among these poets, the best known is Gabriello Chiabrera (1552-1638), who lived at the courts of the Medici in Florence, the Gonzagas in Mantua, and the Savoias in Turin, and who was rewarded for his services and his art with honors and generous stipends. Chiabrera acquired his reputation through his canzonette, the pastoral poem “Alcippo,” and his several odes imitating Horace, Anacreon, and particularly Pindar. His fame did not reach the heights of Marino’s, but it was more constant, even if his artistic achievement was by far inferior.

Another poet who was also inspired by the classic tradition was Fulvio Testi (1593-1646), a courtier of the Estes in Ferrara. His artistic model was the lyric poetry of Horace, from which he drew erotic inspiration and moralistic reflections. Testi’s poems have survived not because of their artistic achievement, but rather for their political significance: denouncing the political dominance of Spain over Italy during that historical period.

Among the minor poets of this century one could mention Francesco Redi (1626-1698), a poet who gained some reputation for a dithyrambic poem, Bacco in Toscana (1685; Bacchus in Tuscany: A Dithyrambic Poem, 1825), written in praise of the wines of his region.

To the creation of a new literary genre—the mock heroic or heroicomic—the poet Alessandro Tassoni (1565-1635) contributed La secchia rapita (1622, 1630; The Rape of the Bucket, 1825). A poem written in ottava rima, subdivided into twelve cantos, it narrates in epic style the struggle between the towns of Modena and Bologna over the possession of a bucket, which is a caricature of some of the trivial aspects of the life of his times. The poem is fragmentary and, with the exception of some shorter parts, is of rather limited importance.

Among the writers of dramatic poetry in this century was Federico Della Valle (1565-1628), author of several tragedies of substantial value. The Reina di Scotia (wr. 1590-1600, pb. 1628) projects the powerful figure of Mary Stuart, human in her grief and elevated in her dignity as queen. A second tragedy that had a good success is Judit (wr. 1590-1600, pb. 1627), in which the Jewish heroine hides in her heart the austere and dreadful duty that she must carry out against the savage figure of Holofernes, a primitive man dominated by his instincts. The pair tower over a background of Oriental splendor. Both of these works are of remarkable artistic quality; they are superb as dramatic works and could be considered comparable to some of the best tragedies of Vittorio Alfieri, who is, perhaps, the most outstanding Italian tragedian.

Eighteenth century neoclassicism

Toward the end of the seventeenth century, fourteen scholars and men of letters in the circle of Christina, queen of Sweden—who, after her abdication and conversion to Catholicism, resided in Rome—founded a literary academy, the Accademia dell’Arcadia, whose purpose was to exterminate the bad taste of secentismo and to return to Italian poetry the qualities of natural candor, simplicity, and classical purity. The members of the Accademia dell’Arcadia took names that were supposed to be of pastoral inspiration, and branches of the academy were soon established in every major Italian town.

The simplicity which the Accademia dell’Arcadia was planning to set against the despised mannerisms of secentismo was itself, however, a purely literary convention, and new affectations substituted for the old: Poetry remained imprisoned by the entanglements of rhetoric. Nevertheless, there were some positive aspects to this new literary movement. The Accademia dell’Arcadia represented a return to the pure classicism of the sixteenth century, and classical poets, both Greek and Latin, were once again the object of the attention that had been usurped by the dazzling Mannerist poets of the seventeenth century. Style and structure meant the reassumption of a composed and dignified form in poetry. The ideal of beauty was no longer confined to the expression of the unusual or the surprising, and poets were once again under the influence of the logic that had already guided men of letters during the sixteenth century, a logic that elaborated on the concepts of Aristotle’s De poetica (334-323 b.c.e.; Poetics, 1705).

The only true poet produced by the Accademia dell’Arcadia was Pietro Metastasio, whose works constitute the fullest poetic expression of the Italian society of his time. Metastasio was born Pietro Trapassi in Rome in 1698. At a very young age, he showed an exceptional ability in improvising verses. This dexterity attracted the attention of G. V. Gravina, who was one of the founders of the Accademia dell’Arcadia. Gravina was convinced that the renovation of poetry had to take place through the restoration of the concept of classical art. He thought that the young Trapassi, properly educated, could achieve what he, Gravina—who was a theoretician, not a poet—would never be able to do. Gravina then took the young poet to live with him, changed his last name to the Greek-sounding Metastasio, and saw that he was instructed in the philosophy of René Descartes and in Latin and Greek literature and language. Gravina never imagined that with that kind of education his pupil could have brought to the maximum height a dramatic genre that any true follower of Aristotle’s poetic theories should have considered at least spurious.

At the death of his mentor, Metastasio almost abandoned his art, but a dramatic sketch, Gli orti esperidi, which he had written in 1721 for a festivity at the court of Naples, opened the gates to his fortune as a dramatist and a poet. Diva “La Romanina” (Marianna Bulgarelli) took a liking to the young Metastasio; she saw that he was educated in the art of music and introduced him to the melodramatic genre. In 1724, Metastasio completed his first melodrama, the Didone abbandonata (Dido Forsaken, 1952), which was received with great favor and was followed by Catone in Utica (pr. 1727-1728; Cato in Utica, 1767) and Semiramide (pr. 1729; Semiramis Recognized, 1767), all of them works of unusual mastery.

During the second part of the seventeenth century, the poetic aspect of the melodrama had been completely overwhelmed by musical and choreographic dramas. Early in the 1700’s, Apostolo Zeno, a learned Venetian who was the official poet at the court of Vienna, attempted a reform of the melodrama and tried to make the plots less absurd in order to bring them closer to historical truth. Zeno was not a gifted poet, and he believed that what he himself had not been able to accomplish could be done by Metastasio, who was an extremely talented writer of verse. Zeno, therefore, recommended Metastasio as his successor at the Viennese court, where, free from financial concerns, the latter would be able to continue his artistic pursuits. After some hesitation, Metastasio went to Vienna in 1730. The decade that followed was the most prolific in the career of the poet. Besides oratori and other short dramatic compositions, Metastasio wrote eleven melodramas, among them some of his best: the Olimpiade (pr. 1733; The Olympiad, 1767), Demofoonte (pr. 1733; Demofoone, 1767), La clemenza di Tito (pr. 1734; The Mercy of Titus, 1767), Temistocle (pr. 1736; Themostocles, 1767), and Attilio regolo (pr. 1750; Atilius Regulus, 1767). Though his poetic inspiration weakened, his reputation remained unchanged for the rest of his life, and when he died in 1782, he was honored and remembered as the Italian Sophocles.

In spite of the dramatic and serious subjects with which Metastasio’s melodramas dealt, it could be said that in reality they are lacking in the heroic and dramatic spirit that they presuppose; the protagonist on whom the action is centered never acquires the warm personality of a real character, because Metastasio has for these heroes an admiration that he has learned through books rather than an attraction that grows from an innermost conviction of feeling. The elegiac elements of his plays have instead a singular poetic consistency and find their most complete realization in the ariette (usually two stanzas that are supposed to be sung). In these brief compositions of crystalline clarity, the poet is free from any obstacle of heroic travesty, and he finds the way to convey the best expression of the Arcadian spirit.

The Enlightenment

In the second part of the eighteenth century, a crisis began in Europe that would eventually find its resolution in the French Revolution. In only a few years, this revolution would cause a deep transformation in people’s ways of thinking, of living, and of expressing themselves, through the demolition of all the surviving forms of the Renaissance and of the period that followed. A new philosophy developed that had its precedents in the works of the Frenchman René Descartes, the German Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and the Englishman John Locke—a philosophy that placed humans at the center of the universe. Humans were regarded as the supreme judge of reality, capable of subjecting any question to strictly rational analysis.

This movement was known as the Enlightenment; its spirit was epitomized by the Frenchman who created L’Encyclopédie (1751-1780), a rational and scientific dictionary of all the sciences and arts. This encyclopedia was published in France under the direction of Denis Diderot (1713-1784) and Jean le Rond d’Alembert (1717-1783), with the precise design of divulging new ideas and illustrating through the light of reason all the theoretical, moral, artistic, economic, and practical problems with which humans could be confronted. The representative members of this movement, even if they moved intellectually in different directions and carried different points of view, were other intellectuals and artists such as Charles de Montesquieu (1689-1755), Voltaire (1694-1778), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). This movement, which affected all the ways of life and thought of European society, had a significant effect on literature as well.

Giuseppe Parini

In Italy, the highest poetic expression of the moral and spiritual renewal proposed by the Enlightenment was the work of Giuseppe Parini (1729-1799). Parini was born into a humble family in Bosisio, a small rural town near Milan. He appeared to be a very intelligent boy and was brought to Milan to study. In Parini’s time, for a bright but poor youngster who wanted to acquire an education, the best course was to undertake a religious career. Parini entered a seminary and became a priest. He was very interested in literature and published, when still very young, a collection of poems. As was then fashionable for a poet, he became a member of the Accademia dell’Arcadia. From 1754 to 1762, he was a tutor in the house of Duke Serbelloni. He left his job and was for several months in severe financial difficulties. The publication of the first part of what is considered his major work, Il giorno (1763-1801; The Day: Morning, Midday, Evening, Night, 1927), a satiric poem in which he criticizes the sterile life of the aristocracy, brought him to the attention of the public and also of Count Firmian, who was the minister of Maria Theresa in Milan. Firmian was glad that Parini, with his writings, was calling on the aristocracy to assume more responsibility in their position in society. Firmian made Parini director of the Gazzetta di Milano for a year, and in 1769, Firmian appointed Parini as professor of literature at the Scuole Palatine.

When Napoleonic troops occupied Milan in 1796, Parini was called to be part of the new government; mistrusting any demagogic excess, he refused the offer and retired to private life. When the Austrians returned to Milan in 1799, he greeted them with joy. He died, on August 15, 1799.

Parini wrote several odes that reflect the credo of the Enlightenment and are of didactic and moralistic inspiration. Some of his poems expressing deep moral emotions include La caduta (1766), A Silvia (1795), and Alla Musa (1795). Others such as Il pericolo (1787), Il dono (1790), and Il messaggio (1793), are written in flattery of women; they are sparkling in their courtly, gallant fashion and full of aesthetic admiration for feminine beauty.

Parini’s moral spirit and his conception of poetry are more fully expressed in The Day, the satiric and didactic poem in which he describes the futile day of a young lord of the Milanese aristocracy. The same Arcadian touches that are present in the odi are also part of the structure of The Day. A masterpiece that foretells the French Revolution, it nevertheless reflects Parini’s excessive dependence on the conventions of his time. Proceeding with a slow documentary style, it is encumbered with too many details, and it has not aged well.

Vittorio Alfieri

The renewal of Italian moral consciousness in the eighteenth century had its first suggestive poetic expression in the works of Parini, but it was the work of Vittori Alfieri (1749-1803) that unambiguously announced the political renewal of the country. Vittorio Alfieri was born in Asti, into a family of the Piedmontese aristocracy. His father died when he was only a year old, and his mother soon remarried. As a child, Alfieri was withdrawn, dominated by a melancholy unusual in one so young. In 1758, he entered the Royal Military Academy of Turin, from which he was graduated after eight years of ineducazione (ineducation) with the rank of portainsegna (lieutenant) in the regiment of his own town. Military life did not attract him, since he was intolerant of any discipline. He was very fond of traveling, and between 1766 and 1772, he made three trips, the first within Italy, the other two through Europe, visiting all the major countries from Spain to Russia. When he returned to Turin, he allowed himself to luxuriate in a life of idleness and passion for horses. Even this rootless life, however, left him restless and dissatisfied, as reflected in the pages of his diary. Actually, his continuous discontent, his furious search without any apparent goal or purpose, was in reality caused by the clash of spiritual energies as he looked for a way of expressing his talents.

This expression he finally found in 1744 while assisting a sick friend. Alfieri scribbled down the sketch of a tragedy, Antonio e Cleopatra (pr. 1775; Anthony and Cleopatra, 1876), which after going through a process of painstaking revision, was staged with success at the Carignano Theater in Turin. This success did not make Alfieri vainly proud, but it made him conscious of his literary and moral mission and of the tremendous effort that he had to make in order to become worthy of his success. Until that moment, his education had been rather modest and fragmented, and he decided therefore to put aside horses, friends, and other pleasures and immerse himself in the study of letters. To improve his knowledge of the literary language, he went to live in Tuscany, and, to be more free in his pursuit, he renounced his aristocratic rights in favor of his sister and kept for himself a life annuity that would allow him to live comfortably. His tragedies were written one after the other, interspersed with other literary works, and all of them were pervaded by the burning ideal of freedom.

Alfieri was supported in his effort, which he thought was an artistic as well as a political mission, by a great love: his love for the countess Maria Luisa Stolberg of Albany, whom he met in Florence. In 1785, Alfieri went to live in France with Stolberg, whose husband, Charles Eduard Stuart, had died. There he had the opportunity to witness the outbreak of the French Revolution, which he greeted with a panegyric poem, Parigi sbastigliata (1789). He also had welcomed the American Revolution with a collection of five poems, L’America libera (1784; Alfieri’s Ode to America’s Independence, 1976). When the French Revolution degenerated into anarchy and terror, Alfieri left Paris and returned to Florence with Stolberg, living a quiet life while concentrating on his studies, until his death in 1803.

During the last years of his life, Alfieri wrote an autobiography in which he presented an interesting artistic version of his life and of the evolution of his personality. The same autobiographical spirit is present in his Rime (1789, 1804), which often is an analysis of his feelings and of his moods.

Alfieri’s vocation as a tragedian was dictated by his desire to contribute to the Italian culture in a literary field that was not developed as it had been in France and other countries. The poet, in planning the structure of his tragedies, considered both the classical tragedy and the French tragedy as it had been developed by Corneille and Racine. He maintained in his work the three dramatic unities of time, place, and action, which had been imposed by the Renaissance interpreters of Aristotle’s Poetics, as well as the division of each play into five acts. He did not continue the tradition of chorus and messengers, and he excluded the confidants that, in the French tragedy, through complicated introductory scenes, informed the public about the preceding action. Alfieri also minimized the love scenes and limited the number of characters so that he could concentrate the action on one or, at most, two of them. In Alfieri’s tragedies, there is no description of the development of passion and spiritual tension. When the scene opens, these emotions have already reached the limits of human tolerance, and the tragic consequence cannot be avoided.

Because of these structures, the tragedies of Alfieri appear to be very close to the classical example and definitely classical in the precise clarity of his psychological implications as well as the precise separation between good and evil and the monolithic representation of the protagonist in his moral and spiritual composition. It is apparent, however, that all of these characters of unusual and solitary stature do not belong to the measured correctness of the neoclassical art at the end of the eighteenth century. Instead they predict the burgeoning Romantic movement, which established a drastically changed and renewed physiognomy of European art. This unusual aspect of Alfieri’s tragedies is even more evident in those plays in which the protagonists have complex personalities full of contradictions and whose actions are projected on an anxious background which is threatened by obscure forces. Most representative of these dark plays are Oreste (pr. 1781; Orestes, 1815), Rosmunda (pr. 1784; English translation, 1815), Agamennone (pb. 1784; Agamemnon, 1815), Saul (pb. 1788; English translation, 1815), and Mirra (pr. 1789; Myrrha, 1815), which also represent some of his best works.

Vincenzo Monti

Both Romantic and neoclassical elements are present in the poetry of Vincenzo Monti (1754-1828), a poet who in many respects concludes the literary activities of the eighteenth century and opens those of the nineteenth century and Romanticism. Monti was born in Fusignano, near Ferrara. As a young man, he received an education strongly based on classical culture, and since he had the unusual ability to write poetry, he captured the attention of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, who brought him to Rome to the papal court in 1778. There, Monti was soon involved with the dramatic political events of his times. At first he condemned the horrors and the excesses of the French Revolution in his poetic work In morte di Ugo Bassville (1793; The Penance of Hugo: A Vision on the French Revolution, 1805), commonly known as Basvilliana; subsequently, as a result of Napoleon’s successful military campaign in Italy, he became a supporter of the new hero and wrote several panegyric poems in his honor. With the end of the Napoleonic Empire and the return of Austrian influence in Italy, Monti returned his support to the old master with new poems and other writings.

Among Monti’s best-known work of his Roman period is “Presopopea di Pericle,” which celebrates the finding of an ancient bust of the famous Athenian statesman. In Al Signor di Montgolfier (1784), he honors, according to the fashion of the Enlightenment, the greatness of the human mind. The Penance of Hugo is his best-known political work, and during the Napoleonic period, Monti’s most noted works were Il prometeo, Il bardo della Selva Nera (1806), and La spada di Federico II (1806). This latter poem celebrates the victory of Napoleon over Prussia and has strong Romantic characteristics. After the fall of Napoleon, Monti celebrated the Austrian return with Il ritorno di Astrea (1816).

Unusually powerful and emotionally direct is his canzone “Per il giorno onomastico della sua donna” (for his lady’s name day). Later in life, Monti resumed work on an earlier poem, “Feroniade,” which was left unfinished; in it, he narrates the activities surrounding the draining and reclamation of the Pontine Marshes. This theme was dear to the hearts of the followers of the Enlightenment. Monti was not quite capable of creating the vital and complex structure of an extended or more engaging poem, although he had exceptional technical abilities in the composition of verses and therefore was greatly successful in his translations. Particularly masterful were his translations from classical languages, of which his translation of Homer’s the Iliad (c. 750 b.c.e.; English translation, 1611) is considered his masterpiece.

Neoclassicism

Monti’s oeuvre is characteristic of the period during which the ground was being prepared for Romanticism. At this time, art, literature, and public life in Italy were inspired by classical culture to a degree unprecedented even in the Renaissance. For the most part, this was a rather superficial and gaudy phenomenon fostered by the caesarism of the Napoleonic age and, perhaps, by an instinctive reaction of the Latin world against the surging German Romanticism. Thus, Italian neoclassicism, as this movement was called, bore the seeds of a Romantic sensibility. There was in Romanticism a torment and restlessness, an unsatisfied aspiration toward a perfected beauty—an unreachable region symbolized for the Romantics by classical Greece. This myth of Greece, present in all the best-known national literary compositions of the early nineteenth century, was the Romantic aspect of neoclassicism.

Monti is the most representative poet of this period, for his poetry is by nature oriented toward external forms. The new Romantic sensibility, preoccupied with the content of artistic reality, is not well assimilated in his art. This assimilation was to be the task of the poets who followed him, from Ugo Foscolo to Giacomo Leopardi, from Giosuè Carducci to Gabriele D’Annunzio. In D’Annunzio’s poetry, the myth of the ancient world is no longer a serene and somehow superficial vision, but rather an island dreamed of and lost, a land of perfect beauty sought without hope.

Bibliography

Barnes, John C., and Jennifer Petrie, eds. Dante and His Literary Precursors: Twelve Essays. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007. A publication of the Foundation for Italian Studies, University College, Dublin. Scholarly essays on Dante’s political and intellectual environment and on new ways of reading his works. Bibliography and indices.

Brand, Peter, and Lino Pertile, eds. The Cambridge History of Italian Literature. 2d ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. In this new, definitive volume, the first of its kind in four decades, leading scholars provide information about a wide range of writers, their works, and their significance. Translations are included. Maps, chronological charts, and bibliographical references.

Cavallo, Jo Ann. The Romance Epics of Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso: From Public Duty to Private Pleasure. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. The author combines analyses of the three poets, discussion of the literary tradition, comments on their social and intellectual environments, and summaries of previous criticism in order to provide the basis for a persuasive new theory about the relationship between them. An impressive achievement. Bibliography and index.

Everson, Jane E. The Italian Romance Epic in the Age of Humanism: The Matter of Italy and the World of Rome. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Demonstrates how the romance, or chivalric epic, owed its appeal to a successful fusion of traditional, medieval tales of Charlemagne and Arthur with the newer cultural themes developed by the revival in classical antiquity that constitutes the key to Renaissance culture.

Holmes, Olivia. Assembling the Lyric Self: Authorship from Troubador Song to Italian Poetry Book. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. Examines the change in the concept of authorship that occurred in the thirteenth century when, because of the increase in literacy, poetic expression changed from oral to written form. Notes, bibliography, and index.

Jacoff, Rachel, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Dante. 2d ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. An updated edition of the standard introduction to Dante. Contains three new essays on The Divine Comedy, a current bibliography, and references to online resources.

Mallette, Karla. The Kingdom of Sicily, 1100-1250: A Literary History. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. Applies postcolonial theory to the period when Sicily was a multilingual, multicultural country, producing literature in Arabic, Latin, Greek, and Romance dialects. Contains an extensive selection of poems in translation. Bibliography and index.

Stortoni, Laura A., and Mary P. Lillie, eds. Women Poets of the Italian Renaissance: Courtly Ladies and Courtesans. New York: Italica, 1997. This bilingual anthology contains eighty poems by nineteen poets, ranging from love lyrics to spiritual meditations. Includes introductory essay, biographies, first-line index, notes, and bibliographies.

Zatti, Sergio. The Quest for Epic: From Ariosto to Tasso. Translated by Sally Hill with Dennis Looney. Edited by Looney. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. Introduction by Albert Russell Ascoli. In this work, translated into English for the first time, one of Italy’s most important critics traces the development of the narrative genre from chivalric romance to the epic and points out how that form, in turn, predates the modern novel. Notes, bibliography, and index.