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Italian literature is literature written in the Italian language, particularly within Italy. It may also refer to literature written by Italians or in Italy in other languages spoken in Italy, often languages that are closely related to modern Italian. [edit] Early medieval Latin literature
As the Western Roman Empire declined, the Latin tradition was kept alive by writers such as Cassiodorus, Boethius, and Symmachus. The liberal arts flourished at Ravenna under Theodoric, and the Gothic kings surrounded themselves with masters of rhetoric and of grammar. Some lay schools remained in Italy, and noted scholars included Magnus Felix Ennodius (a pagan poet), Arator, Venantius Fortunatus, Felix the Grammarian, Peter of Pisa, Paulinus of Aquileia, and many others. Italians who were interested in theology gravitated towards Paris. Those who remained were typically attracted by the study of Roman law. This furthered the later establishment of the medieval universities of Bologna, Padua, Vicenza, Naples, Salerno, Modena and Parma. These helped to spread culture, and prepared the ground in which the new vernacular literature would develop. Classical traditions did not disappear, and affection for the memory of Rome, a preoccupation with politics, and a preference for practice over theory combined to influence the development of Italian literature. [edit] High medieval literature[edit] TrovatoriThe earliest vernacular literary tradition in Italy was not in the Italian language but rather in Occitan, a language which was spoken in parts of northwest Italy. A tradition of vernacular lyric poetry had arisen in Poitou in the early twelfth century and spread south and east eventually reaching Italy by the end of the century. The first troubadours (trovatori in Italian), as these Occitan lyric poets were called, to practise in Italy were from elsewhere, but the high aristocracy of Lombardy was ready to patronise them. It was not long before native Italians adopted Occitan as a vehicle for poetic expression. Among the early patrons of foreign troubadours were especially the House of Este, the Da Romano, House of Savoy, and the Malaspina. Azzo VI of Este entertained the troubadours Aimeric de Belenoi, Aimeric de Peguilhan, Albertet de Sestaro, and Peire Raimon de Tolosa from Occitania and Rambertino Buvalelli from Bologna, one of the earliest Italian troubadours. The influence of these poets on the native Italians got the attention of Aimeric de Peguilhan in 1220. Then at the Malaspina court, he penned a poem attacking a quintet of Occitan poets at the court of Manfred III of Saluzzo: Peire Guilhem de Luserna, Perceval Doria, Nicoletto da Torino, Chantarel, and Trufarel. Aimeric apparently feared the rise of native competitors. The margraves of Montferrat—Boniface I, William VI, and Boniface II—were patrons of Occitan poetry. Peire de la Mula stayed at the Montferrat court around 1200 and Raimbaut de Vaqueiras spent most of his career as court poet and close friend of Boniface I. Raimbaut, along with several other troubadours, including Elias Cairel, followed Boniface on the Fourth Crusade and established, however briefly, Italo-Occitan literature in Thessalonica. Azzo VI's daughter, Beatrice, was an object of the early poets "courtly love". Azzo's son, Azzo VII, hosted Elias Cairel and Arnaut Catalan. Rambertino was named podestà of Genoa between in 1218 and it was probably during his three-year tenure there that he introduced Occitan lyric poetry to the city, which was later to develop a flourishing Occitan literary culture. Among the Genoese troubadours were Lanfranc Cigala, a judge; Calega Panzan, a merchant; Jacme Grils, also a judge; and Bonifaci Calvo, a knight. Genoa was also the place of genesis of the podestà-troubadour phenomenon: men who served in several cities as podestàs on behalf of either the Guelph or Ghibelline party and who wrote political poetry in Occitan. Rambertino Buvalelli was the first podestà-troubadour and in Genoa there were the Guelphs Luca Grimaldi and Luchetto Gattilusio and the Ghibellines Perceval and Simon Doria. The Occitan tradition in Italy was more broad than simply Genoa or even Lombardy. Bertolome Zorzi was from Venice. Girardo Cavallazzi was a Ghibelline from Novara. Nicoletto da Torino was probably from Turin. In Ferrara the Duecento was represented by Ferrari Trogni. Terramagnino da Pisa, from Pisa, wrote the Doctrina de cort as a manual of courtly love. He was one of the late 13th-century figures who wrote in both Occitan and Italian. Paolo Lanfranchi da Pistoia, from Pistoia, was another. Both wrote sonnets, but while Terramagnino was a critic of the Tuscan school, Paolo has been alleged as a member. On the other hand, he has much in common with the Sicilians and the Dolce Stil Novo. Perhaps the most important aspect of the Italian troubadour phenomenon was the production of chansonniers and the composition of vidas and razos. Uc de Saint Circ, who was associated with the Da Romano and Malaspina families, spent the last forty years of his life in Italy. He undertook to author the entire razo corpus and a great many of the vidas. The most famous and influential Italian troubadour, however, was from the small town of Goito near Mantua. Sordello (1220s–1230s) has been praised by such later poets as Dante Alighieri, Robert Browning, Oscar Wilde, and Ezra Pound. He was the inventor of the hybrid genre of the sirventes-planh in 1237. The troubadours had a connexion with the rise of a school of poetry in the Kingdom of Sicily. In 1220 Obs de Biguli was present as a "singer" at the coronation of the Emperor Frederick II, already King of Sicily. Guillem Augier Novella before 1230 and Guilhem Figueira thereafter were important Occitan poets at Frederick's court. Both had fled the Albigensian Crusade, like Aimeric de Peguilhan. The Crusade had devastated Languedoc and forced many troubadours of the area, whose poetry had not always been kind to the Church hierarchy, to flee to Italy, where an Italian tradition of papal criticism was begun. Protected by the emperor and the Ghibelline faction criticism of the Church establishment flourished. [edit] Chivalric romanceThe Historia de excidio Trojae, attributed to Dares Phrygius, claimed to be an eyewitness account of the Trojan war. It provided inspiration for writers in other countries such as Benoît de Sainte-Maure, Herbort von Fritzlar, and Konrad von Würzburg. While Benoît wrote in French, he took his material from a Latin history. Herbort and Konrad used a French source to make an almost original work in their own language. Guido delle Colonne of Messina, one of the vernacular poets of the Sicilian school, composed the Historia destructionis Troiae. In his poetry Guido was an imitator of the Provençals, but in this book he converted Benoît's French romance into what sounded like serious Latin history. Much the same thing occurred with other great legends. Qualichino of Arezzo wrote couplets about the legend of Alexander the Great. Europe was full of the legend of King Arthur, but the Italians contented themselves with translating and abridging French romances. Jacobus de Voragine, while collecting his Golden Legend (1260), remained a historian. He seemed doubtful of the truthfulness of the stories he told. The intellectual life of Italy showed itself in an altogether special, positive, almost scientific form in the study of Roman law. Farfa, Marsicano, and other scholars translated Aristotle, the precepts of the school of Salerno, and the travels of Marco Polo, linking the classics and the Renaissance. At the same time, epic poetry was written in a mixed language, a dialect of Italian based on French: hybrid words exhibited a treatment of sounds according to the rules of both languages, had French roots with Italian endings, and were pronounced according to Italian or Latin rules. In short, the language of the epic poetry belonged to both tongues. Examples include the chansons de geste, Macaire, the Entre en Espagne written by Niccola of Padua, the Prise de Pampelune, and others. All this preceded the appearance of a purely Italian literature. [edit] Emergence of native vernacular literatureThe French and Occitan languages gradually gave way to the native Italian. Hybridism recurred, but it no longer predominated. In the Bovo d'Antona and the Rainaldo e Lesengrino the Venetian dialect is clearly felt, although the language is influenced by French forms. These writings, which Graziadio Isaia Ascoli has called miste (mixed), immediately preceded the appearance of purely Italian works. There is evidence that a kind of literature already existed before the 13th century: The Ritmo cassinese, Ritmo su Sant'Alessio, Laudes creaturarum, Ritmo Lucchese, Ritmo laurenziano, Ritmo bellunese are classified by Cesare Segre, et al. as "Archaic Works" (Componimenti Arcaici): "such are labeled the first literary works in the Italian vernacular, their dates ranging from the last decades of the 12th century to the early decades of the 13th" (Segre: 1997). However, as he points out, such early literature does not yet present any uniform stylistic or linguistic traits. This early development, however, was simultaneous in the whole peninsula, varying only in the subject matter of the art. In the north, the poems of Giacomino da Verona and Bonvicino da Riva were specially religious, and were intended to be recited to the people. They were written in a dialect of Milanese and Venetian; their style bore the influence of French narrative poetry. They may be considered as belonging to the "popular" kind of poetry, taking the word, however, in a broad sense. This sort of composition may have been encouraged by the old custom in the north of Italy of listening in the piazzas and on the highways to the songs of the jongleurs. The crowds were delighted with the stories of romances, the wickedness of Macaire, and the misfortunes of Blanziflor, the terrors of the Babilonia Infernale and the blessedness of the Gerusalemme celeste, and the singers of religious poetry vied with those of the chansons de geste. [edit] Sicilian SchoolThe year 1230 marked the beginning of the Sicilian School and of a literature showing more uniform traits. Its importance lies more in the language (the creation of the first standard Italian) than its subject, a love-song partly modeled on the Provençal poetry imported to the south by the Normans and the Svevs under Frederick II. This poetry differs from the French equivalent in its treatment of the woman, less erotic and more platonic, a vein which further developed by Dolce Stil Novo in later 13th century Bologna and Florence. The customary repertoire of chivalry terms is adapted to Italian phonotactics, creating new Italian vocabulary. The French suffixes -ière and -ce generated hundreds of new Italian words in -iera and -za (for example, riv-iera and costan-za). These were adopted by Dante and his contemporaries, and handed on to future generations of Italian writers. To the Sicilian school belonged Enzio, king of Sardinia, Pietro della Vigna, Inghilfredi, Guido and Odo delle Colonne, Jacopo d'Aquino, Ruggieri Apugliese, Giacomo da Lentini, Arrigo Testa, and others. Most famous is No m'aggio posto in core, by Giacomo da Lentini, the head of the movement, but there is also poetry written by Frederick himself. Giacomo da Lentini is also credited with inventing the sonnet, a form later perfected by Dante and Petrarch. The censorship imposed by Frederick meant that no political matter entered literary debate. In this respect, the poetry of the north, still divided into communes or city-states with relatively democratic governments, provided new ideas. These new ideas are shown in the Sirventese genre, and later, Dante's Commedia: his lines are full of invectives against contemporary political leaders and popes. Though the conventional love-song prevailed at Frederick's (and later Manfred's) court, more spontaneous poetry existed in the Contrasto attributed to Cielo d'Alcamo. This contrasto (dispute) between two lovers in the Sicilian dialect is not the most ancient or the only southern poem of a popular kind. It belongs without doubt to the time of the emperor Frederick II (no later than 1250), and is important as proof that there existed a popular, independent of literary, poetry. The Contrasto is probably a scholarly re-elaboration of a lost popular rhyme and is the closest to a kind of poetry that perished or was smothered by the ancient Sicilian literature. Its distinguishing point was its possession of all qualities opposite to the poetry of the rhymers of the "Sicilian School", though its style may betray a knowledge of Frederick's poetry, and there is probably a satiric intent in the mind of the anonymous poet. It is vigorous in the expression of feelings. The conceits, sometimes bold and very coarse, show that its subject matter is popular. Everything about the Contrasto is original. The poems of the Sicilian school were written in the first known standard Italian. This was elaborated by these poets under the direction of Frederick II and combines many traits typical of the Sicilian, and to a lesser, but not negligible extent, Apulian dialects and other southern dialects, with many words of Latin and French origin. Dante's styles illustre, cardinale, aulico, curiale were developed from his linguistic study of the Sicilian School, which had been re-founded by Guittone d'Arezzo in Tuscany. The standard changed slightly in Tuscany, because Tuscan scriveners perceived the five-vowel system used by southern Italian as a seven-vowel one. As a consequence, the texts that Italian students read in their anthology contain lines that do not rhyme with each other (sometimes Sic. -i > -e, -u > -o), and that may account for its decrease in popularity through the 19th and early 20th century. [edit] Religious literatureIn the 13th century a religious movement took place in Italy, with the rise of the Dominican and Franciscan Orders. Francis of Assisi, mystic and reformer in the Catholic Church, the founder of the Franciscans, also wrote poetry. Though he was educated, Francis's poetry was beneath the refined poetry at the center of Frederick's court. According to legend, Francis dictated the hymn Cantico del Sole in the eighteenth year of his penance, almost rapt in ecstasy; doubts remain about its authenticity. It was the first great poetical work of Northern Italy, written in a kind of verse marked by assonance, a poetic device more widespread in Northern Europe. Other poems previously attributed to Francis are now generally recognized as lacking in authenticity. Jacopone da Todi was a poet who represented the religious feeling that had made special progress in Umbria. Jacopone was possessed by St. Francis's mysticism, but was also a satirist who mocked the corruption and hypocrisy of the Church personified by Pope Boniface VIII, persecutor of Jacopone and Dante. Jacopone's wife died after the stands at a public tournament collapsed, and the sorrow at her sudden death caused Jacopone to sell all he possessed and give it to the poor. Jacopone covered himself with rags, joined St. Francis's Third Order, took pleasure in being laughed at, and was followed by a crowd of people who mocked him and called after him Jacopone, Jacopone. He went on raving for years, subjecting himself to the severest sufferings, and giving vent to his religious intoxication in his poems. Jacopone was a mystic, who from his hermit's cell looked out into the world and specially watched the papacy, scourging with his words Pope Celestine V and Pope Boniface VIII, for which he was imprisoned. The religious movement in Umbria was followed by another literary phenomenon, the religious drama. In 1258 a hermit, Raniero Fasani, left the cavern in which he had lived for many years and suddenly appeared at Perugia. Fasani represented himself as sent by God to disclose mysterious visions, and to announce to the world terrible visitations. This was a turbulent period of political faction (the Guelphs and Ghibellines), interdicts and excommunications issued by the popes, and reprisals of the imperial party. In this environment, Fasani's pronouncements stimulated the formation of the Compagnie di Disciplinanti, who, for a penance, scourged themselves till they drew blood, and sang Laudi in dialogue in their confraternities. These laudi, closely connected with the liturgy, were the first example of the drama in the vernacular tongue of Italy. They were written in the Umbrian dialect, in verses of eight syllables, and, according to the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, "have not any artistic value." Their development, however, was rapid. As early as the end of the 13th century the Devozioni del Giovedi e Venerdi Santo appeared, mixing liturgy and drama. Later, di un Monaco che ando al servizio di Dio ("of a monk who entered the service of God") approached the definite form the religious drama would assume in the following centuries. [edit] First Tuscan literatureThirteenth century Tuscany was in a unique situation. The Tuscans spoke a dialect which closely resembled Latin - one which afterwards became almost exclusively the language of literature, and which was already regarded at the end of the 13th century as surpassing the other dialects; Lingua Tusca magis apta est ad literam sive literaturam ("The Tuscan tongue is better suited to the letter or literature") wrote Antonio da Tempo of Padua, born about 1275. After the fall of the Hohenstaufen at the Battle of Benevento in 1266, it was the first province of Italy. From 1266 Florence began the movement of political reform which in 1282 resulted in the appointment of the Priori delle Arti, and the establishment of the Arti Minori. This was later copied by Siena (with the Magistrato dei Nove), by Lucca, by Pistoia, and by other Guelph cities in Tuscany with similar popular institutions. The guilds took the government into their hands, and it was a time of social and political prosperity. In Tuscany, too, popular love poetry existed. A school of imitators of the Sicilians was led by Dante da Majano, but its literary originality took another line — that of humorous and satirical poetry. The entirely democratic form of government created a style of poetry which stood strongly against the medieval mystic and chivalrous style. Devout invocation of God or of a lady came from the cloister and the castle; in the streets of the cities everything that had gone before was treated with ridicule or biting sarcasm. Folgore da San Gimignano laughs when in his sonnets he tells a party of Sienese youths the occupations of every month in the year, or when he teaches a party of Florentine lads the pleasures of every day in the week. Cenne della Chitarra laughs when he parodies Folgore's sonnets. The sonnets of Rustico di Filippo are half-fun and half-satire, as is the work of Cecco Angiolieri of Siena, the oldest humorist we know, a far-off precursor of Rabelais and Montaigne. Another kind of poetry also began in Tuscany. Guittone d'Arezzo made art quit chivalry and Provençal forms for national motives and Latin forms. He attempted political poetry, and, although his work is often obscure, he prepared the way for the Bolognese school. Bologna was the city of science, and philosophical poetry appeared there. Guido Guinizelli was the poet after the new fashion of the art. In his work the ideas of chivalry are changed and enlarged. Only those whose heart is pure can be blessed with true love, regardless of class. He refuted the traditional credo of courtly love, for which love is a subtle philosophy only a few chosen knights and princesses could grasp. Love is blind to blasons but not to a good heart when it finds one: when it succeeds it is the result of the spiritual, not physical affinity between teo souls. Guinizzelli's democratic view can be better understood in the light of the greater equality and freedom enjoyed by the city-states of the center-north and the rise of a middle class eager to legitimise itself in the eyes of the old nobility, still regarded with respect and admiration but in fact dispossessed of its political power. Guinizelli's Canzoni make up the bible of Dolce Stil Novo, and one in particular, "Al cor gentil" ("To a Kind Heart") is considered the manifesto of the new movement which will bloom in Florence under Cavalcanti, Dante and their followers. His poetry has some of the faults of the school of d'Arezzo. Nevertheless, he marks a great development in the history of Italian art, especially because of his close connection with Dante's lyric poetry. In the 13th century, there were several major allegorical poems. One of these is by Brunetto Latini, who was a close friend of Dante. His Tesoretto is a short poem, in seven-syllable verses, rhyming in couplets, in which the author professes to be lost in a wilderness and to meet with a lady, who represents Nature, from whom he receives much instruction. We see here the vision, the allegory, the instruction with a moral object, three elements which we shall find again in the Divine Comedy. Francesco da Barberino, a learned lawyer who was secretary to bishops, a judge, and a notary, wrote two little allegorical poems, the Documenti d'amore and Del reggimento e dei costumi delle donne. The poems today are generally studied not as literature, but for historical context. A fourth allegorical work was the Intelligenza, which is sometimes attributed to Compagni, but is probably only a translation of French poems. In the 15th century, humanist and publisher Aldus Manutius published Tuscan poets Petrarch and Dante Alighieri (The Divine Comedy), creating the model for what became a standard for modern Italian. [edit] Development of early proseItalian prose of the 13th century was as abundant and varied as its poetry. The earliest example dates from 1231, and consists of short notices of entries and expenses by Mattasala di Spinello dei Lambertini of Siena. At this time, there was no sign of literary prose in Italian, though there was in French. Halfway through the century, a certain Aldobrando or Aldobrandino, from either Florence or Siena, wrote a book for Beatrice of Savoy, countess of Provence, called Le Régime du corps. In 1267 Martino da Canale wrote a history of Venice in the same Old French (langue d'oïl). Rusticiano of Pisa, who was for a long while at the court of Edward I of England, composed many chivalrous romances, derived from the Arthurian cycle, and subsequently wrote the Travels of Marco Polo, which may have been dictated by Polo himself. And finally Brunetto Latini wrote his Tesoro in French. Latini also wrote some works in Italian prose such as La rettorica, an adaptation from Cicero's De inventione, and translated three orations from Cicero: Pro Ligario, Pro Marcello and Pro rege Deiotaro. Another important writer was the Florentine judge Bono Giamboni, who translated Orosius's Historiae adversus paganos, Vegetius's Epitoma rei militaris, made a translation/adaptation of Cicero's De inventione mixed with the Rethorica ad Erennium, and a translation/adaptation of Innocent III's De miseria humane conditionis. He also wrote an allegorical novel called Libro de' Vizi e delle Virtudi whose earlier version (Trattato delle virtù e dei vizi) is also preserved. After the original compositions in the langue d'oïl came translations or adaptations from the same. There are some moral narratives taken from religious legends, a romance of Julius Caesar, some short histories of ancient knights, the Tavola rotonda, translations of the Viaggi of Marco Polo, and of Latini's Tesoro. At the same time, translations from Latin of moral and ascetic works, histories, and treatises on rhetoric and oratory appeared. Some of the works previously regarded as the oldest in the Italian language have been shown to be forgeries of a much later time. The oldest prose writing is a scientific book, Composizione del mondo by Ristoro d'Arezzo, who lived about the middle of the 13th century. This work is a copious treatise on astronomy and geography. Ristoro was a careful observer of natural phenomena; many of the things he relates were the result of his personal investigations, and consequently his works are more reliable than those of other writers of the time on similar subjects. Another short treatise exists: De regimine rectoris, by Fra Paolino, a Minorite friar of Venice, who was probably bishop of Pozzuoli, and who also wrote a Latin chronicle. His treatise stands in close relation to that of Egidio Colonna, De regimine principum. It is written in the Venetian language. The 13th century was very rich in tales. A collection called the Cento Novelle antiche contains stories drawn from many sources, including Asian, Greek and Trojan traditions, ancient and medieval history, the legends of Brittany, Provence and Italy, the Bible, local Italian traditions, and histories of animals and old mythology. This book has a distant resemblance to the Spanish collection known as El Conde Lucanor. The peculiarity of the Italian book is that the stories are very short, and seem to be mere outlines to be filled in by the narrator as he goes along. Other prose novels were inserted by Francesco Barberino in his work Del reggimento e dei costumi delle donne, but they are of much less importance. On the whole the Italian novels of the 13th century have little originality, and are a faint reflection of the very rich legendary literature of France. Some attention should be paid to the Lettere of Fra Guittone d'Arezzo, who wrote many poems and also some letters in prose, the subjects of which are moral and religious. Guittone's love of antiquity and the traditions of Rome and its language was so strong that he tried to write Italian in a Latin style. The letters are obscure, involved and altogether barbarous. Guittone took as his special model Seneca the Younger, and hence his prose became bombastic. Guittone viewed his style as very artistic, but later scholars view it as extravagant and grotesque. [edit] The Renaissance[edit] A new literatureIn the year 1282 a period of new literature began, developing from the Tuscan beginnings. With the school of Lapo Gianni, Guido Cavalcanti, Cino da Pistoia and Dante Alighieri, lyric poetry became exclusively Tuscan. The whole novelty and poetic power of this school, consisted in, according to Dante, Quando Amore spira, noto, ed a quel niodo Ch'ei detta dentro, vo significando: that is, in a power of expressing the feelings of the soul in the way in which love inspires them, in an appropriate and graceful manner, fitting form to matter, and by art fusing one with the other. Love is a divine gift that redeems man in the eyes of God, and the poet's mistress is the angel sent from heaven to show the way to salvation. This a neo-platonic approach widely endorsed by Dolce Stil Novo, and although in Cavalcanti's case it can be upsetting and even destructive, it is nonetheless a metaphysical experience able to lift man onto a higher, spiritual dimension. Gianni's new style was still influenced by the Siculo-Provencal school. Cavalcanti's poems may be divided into two classes: those which portray the philosopher, (il sottilissimo dialettico, as Lorenzo the Magnificent called him) and those which are more directly the product of his poetic nature imbued with mysticism and metaphysics. To the first set belongs the famous poem Sulla natura d'amore, which in fact is a treatise on amorous metaphysics, and was annotated later in a learned way by renowned Platonic philosophers of the 15th century, such as Marsilius Ficinus and others. In other poems, Cavalcanti tends to stifle poetic imagery under a dead weight of philosophy. On the other hand, in his Ballate, he pours himself out ingenuously, but with a consciousness of his art. The greatest of these is considered to be the ballata composed by Cavalcanti when he was banished from Florence with the party of the Bianchi in 1300, and took refuge at Sarzana. The third poet among the followers of the new school was Cino da Pistoia, of the family of the Sinibuldi. His love poems are sweet, mellow and musical. [edit] Dante
Dante, the greatest of Italian poets, also shows these lyrical tendencies. In 1293 he wrote La Vita Nuova ("new life" in English, so called to indicate that his first meeting with Beatrice was the beginning of a new life), in which he idealizes love. It is a collection of poems to which Dante added narration and explication. Everything is supersensual, aerial, heavenly, and the real Beatrice is supplanted by an idealized vision of her, losing her human nature and becoming a representation of the divine. Dante is the main character of the work, and the narration purports to be autobiographical, though historical information about Dante's life proves this to be poetic license. Several of the lyrics of the Canzoniere deal with the theme of the new life. Not all the love poems refer to Beatrice, however—other pieces are philosophical and bridge over to the Convito. [edit] The Divine ComedyThe work which made Dante immortal, and raised him above all other men of genius in Italy, was his Divina Commedia, which tells of the poet's travels through the three realms of the dead—Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise—accompanied by the Latin poet Virgil. An allegorical meaning is hidden under the literal one of this great epic. Dante, travelling through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, is a symbol of mankind aiming at the double object of temporal and eternal happiness. The forest in which the poet loses himself symbolizes the civil and religious confusion of society, deprived of its two guides, the emperor and the pope. The mountain illuminated by the sun is universal monarchy. The three beasts are the three vices and the three powers which offered the greatest obstacles to Dante's designs: envy is Florence, light, fickle and divided by the Bianchi and Neri; pride is the house of France; avarice is the papal court. Virgil represents reason and the empire. Beatrice is the symbol of the supernatural aid without which man cannot attain the supreme end, which is God. The merit of the poem does not lie in the allegory, which still connects it with medieval literature. What is new is the individual art of the poet, the classic art transfused for the first time into a Romance form. Whether he describes nature, analyses passions, curses the vices or sings hymns to the virtues, Dante is notable for the grandeur and delicacy of his art. He took the materials for his poem from theology, philosophy, history, and mythology, but especially from his own passions, from hatred and love. Under the pen of the poet, the dead come to life again; they become men again, and speak the language of their time, of their passions. Farinata degli Uberti, Boniface VIII, Count Ugolino, Manfred, Sordello, Hugh Capet, St. Thomas Aquinas, Cacciaguida, St. Benedict, and St. Peter, are all so many objective creations; they stand before us in all the life of their characters, their feelings, and their habits. The real chastizer of the sins and rewarder of virtues is Dante himself. The personal interest he brings to bear on the historical representation of the three worlds is what most interests us and stirs us. Dante remakes history after his own passions. Thus the Divina Commedia is not only a life-like drama of contemporary thoughts and feelings, but also a clear and spontaneous reflection of the individual feelings of the poet, from the indignation of the citizen and the exile to the faith of the believer and the ardour of the philosopher. The Divina Commedia defined the destiny of Italian literature, giving artistic lustre to all forms of literature the Middle Ages had produced. Dante, some scholars say, began the Renaissance. [edit] Petrarch
Two facts characterize the literary life of Petrarch: classical research and the new human feeling introduced into his lyric poetry. The facts are not separate; rather, the former caused the latter. The Petrarch who unearthed the works of the great Latin writers helps us understand the Petrarch who loved a real woman, named Laura, and celebrated her in her life and after her death in poems full of studied elegance. Petrarch was the first humanist, and he was at the same time the first modern lyric poet. His career was long and tempestuous. He lived for many years at Avignon, cursing the corruption of the papal court; he travelled through nearly the whole of Europe; he corresponded with emperors and popes, and he was considered the most important writer of his time. His Canzoniere is divided into three parts: the first containing the poems written during Laura's lifetime, the second the poems written after her death, the third the Trionfi. The one and only subject of these poems is love; but the treatment is full of variety in conception, in imagery and in sentiment, derived from the most varied impressions of nature. Petrarch's lyric verse is quite different, not only from that of the Provencal troubadours and the Italian poets before him, but also from the lyrics of Dante. Petrarch is a psychological poet, who examines all his feelings and renders them with an art of exquisite sweetness. The lyrics of Petrarch are no longer transcendental like Dante's, but keep entirely within human limits. The second part of the Canzoniere is the more passionate. The Trionfi are inferior; in them Petrarch tried to imitate the Divina Commedia, but failed. The Canzoniere includes also a few political poems, one supposed to be addressed to Cola di Rienzi and several sonnets against the court of Avignon. These are remarkable for their vigour of feeling, and also for showing that, compared to Dante, Petrarch had a sense of a broader Italian consciousness. The Italy which he wooed was different from any conceived by the men of the Middle Ages, and in this also he was a precursor of modern times and of modern aspirations. Petrarch had no decided political idea. He exalted Cola di Rienzi, invoked the emperor Charles IV, and praised the Visconti; in fact, his politics were affected more by impressions than by principles. Above all this was his love of Italy, which in his mind is reunited with Rome, the great city of his heroes Cicero and Scipio. [edit] Boccaccio
Boccaccio had the same enthusiastic love of antiquity and the same worship for the new Italian literature as Petrarch. He was the first to put together a Latin translation of the Iliad and, in 1375, the Odyssey. His classical learning was shown in the work De genealogia deorum, in which he enumerates the gods according to genealogical trees from the various authors who wrote about the pagan divinities. The Genealogia deorum is, as A. H. Heeren said, an encyclopaedia of mythological knowledge; and it was the precursor of the humanist movement of the 15th century. Boccaccio was also the first historian of women in his De mulieribus claris, and the first to tell the story of the great unfortunates in his De casibus virorum illustrium. He continued and perfected former geographical investigations in his interesting book De montibus, silvis, fontibus, lacubus, fluminibus, stagnis, et paludibus, et de nominibus maris, for which he made use of Vibius Sequester. Of his Italian works, his lyrics do not come anywhere near to the perfection of Petrarch's. His narrative poetry is better. He did not invent the octave stanza, but was the first to use it in a work of length and artistic merit, his Teseide, the oldest Italian romantic poem. The Filostrato relates the loves of Troiolo and Griseida (Troilus and Cressida). It may be that Boccaccio knew the French poem of the Trojan war by Benoit de Sainte-More; but the interest of his poem lies in the analysis of the passion of love. The Ninfale fiesolano tells the love story of the nymph Mesola and the shepherd Africo. The Amorosa Visione, a poem in triplets, doubtless owed its origin to the Divina Commedia. The Ameto is a mixture of prose and poetry, and is the first Italian pastoral romance. The Filocopo takes the earliest place among prose romances. In it Boccaccio tells the loves of Florio and Biancafiore. Probably for this work he drew materials from a popular source or from a Byzantine romance, which Leonzio Pilato may have mentioned to him. In the Filocopo there is a remarkable exuberance in the mythological part, which damages the romance as an artistic work, but which contributes to the history of Boccaccio's mind. The Fiammetta is another romance, about the loves of Boccaccio and Maria d'Aquino, a supposed natural daughter of King Robert, whom he always called by this name of Fiammetta. The Italian work which principally made Boccaccio famous was the Decamerone, a collection of a hundred novels, related by a party of men and women, who had retired to a villa near Florence to escape from the plague in 1348. Novel-writing, so abundant in the preceding centuries, especially in France, now for the first time assumed an artistic shape. The style of Boccaccio tends to the imitation of Latin, but in him prose first took the form of elaborated art. The rudeness of the old fabliaux gives place to the careful and conscientious work of a mind that has a feeling for what is beautiful, that has studied the classic authors, and that strives to imitate them as much as possible. Over and above this, in the Decamerone, Boccaccio is a delineator of character and an observer of passions. In this lies his novelty. Much has been written about the sources of the novels of the Decamerone. Probably Boccaccio made use both of written and of oral sources. Popular tradition must have furnished him with the materials of many stories, as, for example, that of Griselda. Unlike Petrarch, who was always discontented, preoccupied, wearied with life, disturbed by disappointments, we find Boccaccio calm, serene, satisfied with himself and with his surroundings. Notwithstanding these fundamental differences in their characters, the two great authors were old and warm friends. But their affection for Dante was not equal. Petrarch, who says that he saw him once in his childhood, did not preserve a pleasant recollection of him, and it would be useless to deny that he was jealous of his renown. The Divina Commedia was sent him by Boccaccio, when he was an old man, and he confessed that he never read it. On the other hand, Boccaccio felt for Dante something more than love--enthusiasm. He wrote a biography of him, of which the accuracy is now depreciated by some critics, and he gave public critical lectures on the poem in Santa Maria del Fiore at Florence. [edit] Others[edit] ImitatorsFazio degli Uberti and Federigo Frezzi were imitators of the Divina Commedia, but only in its external form. The former wrote the Dittamondo, a long poem, in which the author supposes that he was taken by the geographer Solinus into different parts of the world, and that his Commedia guide related the history of them. The legends of the rise of the different Italian cities have some importance historically. Frezzi, bishop of his native town Foligno, wrote the Quadriregio, a poem of the four kingdoms Love, Satan, the Vices, and the Virtues. This poem has many points of resemblance with the Divina Commedia. Frezzi pictures the condition of man who rises from a state of vice to one of virtue, and describes hell, limbo, purgatory and heaven. The poet has Pallas for a companion. Ser Giovanni Fiorentino wrote, under the title of Pecorone, a collection of tales, which are supposed to have been related by a monk and a nun in the parlour of the monastery Novelists of Forli. He closely imitated Boccaccio, and drew on Villani's chronicle for his historical stories. Franco Sacchetti wrote tales too, for the most part on subjects taken from Florentine history. His book gives a life-like picture of Florentine society at the end of the 14th century. The subjects are almost always improper; but it is evident that Sacchetti collected all these anecdotes in order to draw from them his own conclusions and moral reflections, which are to be found at the end of every story. From this point of view Sacchetti's work comes near to the Monalisaliones of the Middle Ages. A third novelist was Giovanni Sercambi of Lucca, who after 1374 wrote a book, in imitation of Boccaccio, about a party of people who were supposed to fly from a plague and to go travelling about in different Italian cities, stopping here and there telling stories. Later, but important, names are those of Masuccio Salernitano (Tommaso Guardato), who wrote the Novellino, and Antonio Cornazzano whose Proverbii became extremely popular. [edit] ChroniclesChronicles formerly believed to have been of the 13th century are now mainly regarded as forgeries. At the end of the 13th century there is a chronicle by Dino Compagni, probably authentic. Giovanni Villani, born in 1300, was more of a chronicler than an historian. He relates the events up to 1347. The journeys that he made in Italy and France, and the information thus acquired, mean that his chronicle, the Historie Fiorentine, covers events all over Europe. He speaks at length, not only of events in politics and war, but also of the stipends of public officials, of the sums of money used for paying soldiers and for public festivals, and of many other things of which the knowledge is very valuable. Villani's narrative is often encumbered with fables and errors, particularly when he speaks of things that happened before his own time. Matteo was the brother of Giovanni Villani, and continued the chronicle up to 1363. It was again continued by Filippo Villani. Piero Capponi, author of the Commentari deli acquisto di Pisa and of the narration of the Tumulto dei Ciompi, belonged to both the 14th and the 15th centuries. [edit] AsceticsThe Divine Commedia is ascetic in its conception, and in a good many points of its execution. Petrarch's work has similar qualities; yet neither Petrarch nor Dante could be classified among the pure ascetics of their time. But many other writers come under this head. St Catherine of Siena's mysticism was political. This extraordinary woman aspired to bring back the Church of Rome to evangelical virtue, and left a collection of letters written in a high and lofty tone to all kinds of people, including popes. Hers is the clearest religious utterance to have made itself heard in 14th century Italy. Although precise ideas of reformation did not enter her head, the want of a great moral reform was felt in her heart. She must take her place among those who prepared the way for the religious movement of the 16th century. Another Sienese, Giovanni Colombini, founder of the order of Jesuati, preached poverty by precept and example, going back to the religious idea of St Francis of Assisi. His letters are among the most remarkable in the category of ascetic works in the 14th century. Jacopo Passavanti, in his Specchio della vera penitenza, attached instruction to narrative. Cavalca translated from the Latin the Vite dei santi padri. Rivalta left behind him many sermons, and Franco Sacchetti (the famous novelist) many discourses. On the whole, there is no doubt that one of the most important productions of the Italian spirit of the 14th century was religious literature. [edit] Popular worksHumorous poetry, largely developed in the 13th century, was carried on in the 14th by Bindo Bonichi, Arrigo di Castruccio, Cecco Nuccoli, Andrea Orgagna, Filippo de Bardi, Adriano de Rossi, Antonio Pucci and other lesser writers. Orgagna was specially comic; Bonichi was comic with a satirical and moral purpose. Pucci was superior to all of them for the variety of his production. He put into triplets the chronicle of Giovanni Villani (Centiloquio), and wrote many historical poems called Serventesi, many comic poems, and not a few epico-popular compositions on various subjects. A little poem of his in seven cantos treats of the war between the Florentines and the Pisans from 1362 to 1365. Other poems drawn from a legendary source celebrate the Reina d'Oriente, Apollonio di Tiro, the Bel Gherardino, etc. These poems, meant to be recited, are the ancestors of the romantic epic. [edit] Political worksMany poets of the 14th century produced political works. Fazio degli Uberti, the author of Dittamondo, who wrote a Serventese to the lords and people of Italy, a poem on Rome, and a fierce invective against Charles IV, deserves notice, as do Francesco di Vannozzo, Frate Stoppa and Matteo Frescobaldi. It may be said in general that following the example of Petrarch many writers devoted themselves to patriotic poetry. From this period also dates that literary phenomenon known under the name of Petrarchism. The Petrarchists, or those who sang of love, imitating Petrarch's manner, were found already in the 14th century. But others treated the same subject with more originality, in a manner that might be called semi-popular. Such were the Ballate of Ser Giovanni Fiorentino, of Franco Sacchetti, of Niccolo Soldanieri, and of Guido and Bindo Donati. Ballate were poems sung to dancing, and we have very many songs for music of the 14th century. We have already stated that Antonio Pucci versified Villani's Chronicle. It is enough to notice a chronicle of Arezzo in terza rima by Gorello de Sinigardi, and the history, also in terza rima, of the journey of Pope Alexander III to Venice, by Pier de Natali. Besides this, every kind of subject, whether history, tragedy or husbandry, was treated in verse. Neri di Landocio wrote a life of St Catherine; Jacopo Gradenigo put the Gospels into triplets; Paganino Bonafede in the Tesoro de rustici gave many precepts in agriculture, beginning that kind of georgic poetry which was fully developed later by Alamanni in his Coltivazione, by Girolamo Baruffaldi in the Canapajo, by Rucellai in Le api, by Bartolomeo Lorenzi in the Coltivazione de' monti, and by Giambattista Spolverini in the Coltivazione del riso. [edit] DramaAlbertino Mussato of Padua wrote in Latin a history of Emperor Henry VII. He then produced a Latin tragedy on Ezzelino da Romano, Henry's imperial vicar in northern Italy, the Eccerinus, which was probably not represented on the stage. This remained an isolated work. At Florence the most celebrated humanists wrote also in the vulgar tongue, and commented on Dante and Petrarch, and defended them from their enemies. Leone Battista Alberti, the learned Greek and Latin scholar, wrote in the vernacular, and Vespasiano da Bisticci, while he was constantly absorbed in Greek and Latin manuscripts, wrote the Vite di uomini illustri, valuable for their historical contents, and rivalling the best works of the 14th century in their candour and simplicity. Andrea da Barberino wrote the beautiful prose of the Reali di Francia, giving a coloring of romanità to the chivalrous romances. Belcari and Girolamo Benivieni returned to the mystic idealism of earlier times. But it is in Lorenzo de Medici that the influence of Florence on the Renaissance is particularly seen. His mind was formed by the ancients: he attended the class of the Greek John Argyropulos, sat at Platonic banquets, took pains to collect codices, sculptures, vases, pictures, gems and drawings to ornament the gardens of San Marco and to form the library later named after him. In the saloons of his Florentine palace, in his villas at Careggi, Fiesole and Anibra, stood the wonderful chests painted by Dello di Niccolò Delli with stories from Ovid, the Hercules of Pollaiuolo, the Pallas of Botticelli, the works of Filippino and Verrocchio. De Medici lived entirely in the classical world; and yet if we read his poems we only see the man of his time, the admirer of Dante and of the old Tuscan poets, who takes inspiration from the popular muse, and who succeeds in giving to his poetry the colors of the most pronounced realism as well as of the loftiest idealism, who passes from the Platonic sonnet to the impassioned triplets of the Amori di Venere, from the grandiosity of the Salve to Nencia and to Beoni, from the Canto carnascialesco to the lauda. The feeling of nature is strong in him; at one time sweet and melancholy, at another vigorous and deep, as if an echo of the feelings, the sorrows, the ambitions of that deeply agitated life. He liked to look into his own heart with a severe eye, but he was also able to pour himself out with tumultuous fulness. He described with the art of a sculptor; he satirized, laughed, prayed, sighed, always elegant, always a Florentine, but a Florentine who read Anacreon, Ovid and Tibullus, who wished to enjoy life, but also to taste of the refinements of art. Next to Lorenzo comes Poliziano, who also united, and with greater art, the ancient and the modern, the popular and the classical style. In his Rispetti and in his Ballate the freshness of imagery and the plasticity of form are inimitable. A great Greek scholar, Piliziano wrote Italian verses with dazzling colors; the purest elegance of the Greek sources pervaded his art in all its varieties, in the Orfeo as well as the Stanze per la giostra. [edit] EpicItaly never had true epic poetry; but had, however, many poems called cantari, because they contained stories that were sung to the people; and besides there were romantic poems, such as the Buovo d'Antona, the Regina Ancroja and others. But the first to introduce life into this style was Luigi Pulci, who grew up in the house of the Medici, and who wrote the Morgante Maggiore at the request of Lucrezia Tornabuoni, mother of Lorenzo the Magnificent. The material of the Morgante is almost completely taken from an obscure chivalrous poem of the 15th century, rediscovered by Pio Rajna. Pulci erected a structure of his own, often turning the subject into ridicule, burlesquing the characters, introducing many digressions, now capricious, now scientific, now theological. Pulci raised the romantic epic into a work of art, and united the serious and the comic. With a more serious intention Matteo Boiardo, count of Scandiano, wrote his Orlando innamorato, in which he seems to have aspired to embrace the whole range of Carolingian legends; but he did not complete his task. We find here too a large vein of humour and burlesque. Still Boiardo was drawn to the world of romance by a profound sympathy for chivalrous manners and feelings; that is to say, for love, courtesy, valour and generosity. A third romantic poem of the 15th century was the Mambriano by Francesco Bello (Cieco of Ferrara). He drew from the Carolingian cycle, from the romances of the Round Table, and from classical antiquity. He was a poet of no common genius, and of ready imagination. He showed the influence of Boiardo, especially in something of the fantastic which he introduced into his work. [edit] Carnival songsA completely new style of poetry arose, the Canto carnascialesco. These were a kind of choral songs, which were accompanied with symbolic masquerades, common in Florence at the carnival. They were written in a metre like that of the ballate; and for the most part they were put into the mouth of a party of workmen and tradesmen, who, with not very chaste allusions, sang the praises of their art. These triumphs and masquerades were directed by Lorenzo himself. In the evening, there set out into the city large companies on horseback, playing and singing these songs. There are some by Lorenzo himself, which surpass all the others in their mastery of art. That entitled Bacco ed Arianna is the most famous. [edit] DramaThe development of the drama in the 15th century was very great. This kind of semi-popular literature was born in Florence, and attached itself to certain popular festivities that were usually held in honor of St John the Baptist, patron saint of the city. The Sacra Rappresentazione is the development of the medieval Mistero (mystery play). Although it belonged to popular poetry, some of its authors were literary men of much renown: Lorenzo de Medici, for example, wrote San Giovanni e Paolo, and Feo Belcari wrote San Panunzio, Abramo ed Isaac, and more. From the 15th century, some element of the comic-profane found its way into the Sacra Rappresentazione. From its Biblical and legendary conventionalism Poliziano emancipated himself in his Orfeo, which, although in its exterior form belonging to the sacred representations, yet substantially detaches itself from them in its contents and in the artistic element introduced. [edit] SavonarolaGirolamo Savonarola, who came to Florence in 1489, arose to fight against the literary and social movement of the Renaissance. Some have tried to make out that Savonarola was an apostle of liberty, others that he was a precursor of the Reformation. In truth, however, he was neither. In his struggle with Lorenzo de Medici, he attacked the promoter of classical studies, the patron of pagan literature, rather than the political tyrant. Animated by mystic zeal, he took the line of a prophet, preaching against reading voluptuous authors, against the tyranny of the Medici, and calling for popular government. This, however, was not done from a desire for civil liberty, but because Savonarola saw in Lorenzo and his court the greatest obstacle to that return to Catholic doctrine which was his hearts desire; while he thought this return would be easily accomplished if, on the fall of the Medici, the Florentine republic should come into the hands of his supporters. There may be more justice in looking on Savonarola as the forerunner of the Reformation. If he was so, it was more than he intended. The friar of Ferrara never thought of attacking the papal dogma, and always maintained that he wished to remain within the church of Rome. He had none of the great aspirations of Martin Luther. He only repeated the complaints and the exhortations of St Catherine of Siena; he desired a reform of manners, entirely of manners, not of doctrine. He prepared the ground for the German and English religious movement of the 16th century, but unconsciously. In the history of Italian civilization he represents retrogression, that is to say, the cancelling of the great fact of the Renaissance, and a return to medieval ideas. His attempt to put himself in opposition to his time, to arrest the course of events, to bring the people back to the faith of the past, the belief that all the social evils came from Medicis and Borgias, his not seeing the historical reality, as it was, his aspiring to found a republic with Jesus Christ for its king; all these things show that Savonarola was more of a fanatic than a thinker. Nor has he any great merit as a writer. He wrote Italian sermons, hymns (laudi), ascetic and political treatises, but they are roughly executed, and only important as throwing light on the history of his ideas. The religious poems of Girolamo Benivieni are better than his, and are drawn from the same inspirations. In these lyrics, sometimes sweet, always warm with religious feeling, Benivieni and with him Belcari carry us back to the literature of the 14th century. [edit] OtherHistory had neither many nor very good students in the 15th century. Its revival belonged to the following age. It was mostly written in Latin. Leonardo Bruni of Arezzo wrote the history of Florence, Gioviano Pontano that of Naples, in Latin. Bernardino Corio wrote the history of Milan in Italian, but in a rude way. Leonardo da Vinci wrote a treatise on painting, Leone Battista Alberti one on sculpture and architecture. But the names of these two men are important, not so much as authors of these treatises, but as being embodiments of another characteristic of the age of the Renaissance; versatility of genius, power of application along many and varied lines, and of being excellent in all. Leonardo was an architect, a poet, a painter, an hydraulic engineer and a distinguished mathematician. Alberti was a musician, studied jurisprudence, was an architect and a draughtsman, and had great fame in literature. He had a deep feeling for nature, and an almost unique faculty of assimilating all that he saw and heard. Leonardo and Alberti are representatives and almost a compendium in themselves of all that intellectual vigour of the Renaissance age, which in the 16th century took to developing itself in its individual parts, making way for what has by some been called the golden age of Italian literature. [edit] After the Renaissance
The fundamental characteristic of the literary epoch following that of the Renaissance is that it perfected itself in every kind of art, in particular uniting the essentially Italian character of its language with classicism of style. This period lasted from about 1494 to about 1560; 1494 being the year in which Charles VIII descended into Italy, marking the beginning of Italy's political decadence and of foreign domination over it. The famous men of the first half of the 16th century had been educated in the preceding century. Pietro Pomponazzi was born in 1462, Marcello Adriani Virgilio in 1464, Castiglione in 1468, Machiavelli in 1469, Bembo in 1470, Michelangelo Buonarroti and Ariosto in 1474, Jacopo Nardi in 1476, Gian Giorgio Trissino in 1478, and Guicciardini in 1482. The literary activity which showed itself from the end of the 15th century to the middle of the following one was the product of the political and social conditions of an earlier age. Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini were the chief originators of the science of history. Machiavelli's principal works are the Istorie fiorentine, the Discorsi sulla prima deca di Tito Livio, the Arte della guerra and the Principe. His merit consists in having been the creator of the experimental science of politics in having observed facts, studied histories and drawn consequences from them. His history is sometimes inexact in facts; it is rather a political than an historical work. The peculiarity of Machiavelli's genius lay, as has been said, in his artistic feeling for the treatment and discussion of politics in and for themselves, without regard to an immediate end in his power of abstracting himself from the partial appearances of the transitory present, in order more thoroughly to possess himself of the eternal and inborn kingdom, and to bring it into subjection to himself. Next to Machiavelli both as an historian and a statesman comes Guicciardini. Guicciardini was very observant, and endeavoured to reduce his observations to a science. His Storia d'Italia, which extends from the death of Lorenzo de Medici to 1534, is full of political wisdom, is skillfully arranged in its parts, gives a lively picture of the character of the persons it treats of, and is written in a grand style. He shows a profound knowledge of the human heart, and depicts with truth the temperaments, the capabilities and habits of the different European nations. Going back to the causes of events, he looked for the explanation of the divergent interests of princes and of their reciprocal jealousies. The fact of his having witnessed many of the events he related, and having taken part in them, adds authority to his words. The political reflections are always deep; in the Pensieri, as Gino Capponi says, he seems to aim at extracting through self-examination a quintessence, as it were, of the things observed and done by him; thus endeavouring to form a political doctrine as adequate as possible in all its parts. Machiavelli and Guicciardini may be considered as distinguished historians as well as originators of the science of history founded on observation. Inferior to them, but still always worthy of note, were Jacopo Nardi (a just and faithful historian and a virtuous man, who defended the rights of Florence against the Medici before Charles V), Benedetto Varchi, Giambattista Adriani, Bernardo Segni, and, outside Tuscany, Camillo Porzio, who related the Congiura de baroni and the history of Italy from 1547 to 1552; Angelo di Costanza, Pietro Bembo, Paolo Paruta, and others. 
Ariosto's Orlando furioso was a continuation of Boiardo's Innamorato. His characteristic is that he assimilated the romance of chivalry to the style and models of classicism. Romantic Ariosto was an artist only for the love of his art; his epic. His sole aim was to make a romance that would please himself and the generation in which he lived. His Orlando has no grave and serious purpose; on the contrary it creates a fantastic world, in which the poet rambles, indulging his caprice, and sometimes smiling at his own work. His great desire is to depict everything with the greatest possible perfection; the cultivation of style is what occupies him most. In his hands the style becomes wonderfully plastic to every conception, whether high or low, serious or sportive. The octave stanza reached in him the highest perfection of grace, variety, and harmony. Meanwhile, side by side with the romantic, there was an attempt at the historical epic. Gian Giorgio Trissino of Vicenza composed a poem called Italia liberata dai Goti. Full of learning and of the rules of the ancients, he formed himself on the latter, in order to sing of the campaigns of Belisarius; he said that he had forced himself to observe all the rules of Aristotle, and that he had imitated Homer. In this again, we see one of the products of the Renaissance; and, although Trissino's work is poor in invention and without any original poetical coloring, yet it helps one to understand better what were the conditions of mind in the 16th century. Lyric poetry was certainly not one of the kinds that rose to any great height in the 16th century. Originality was entirely wanting, since it seemed in that century as if nothing better could be done than to copy Petrarch. Still, even in this style there were some vigorous poets. Monsignore Giovanni Guidiccioni of Lucca (1500-1541) showed that he had a generous heart. In fine sonnets he gave expression to his grief for the sad state to which his country was reduced. Francesco Molza of Modena (1489-1544), learned in Greek, Latin and Hebrew, wrote in a graceful style and with spirit. Giovanni della Casa (1503-1556) and Pietro Bembo (1470-1547), although Petrarchists, were elegant. Even Michelangelo was at times a Petrarchist, but his poems bear the stamp of his extraordinary and original genius. And a good many ladies are to be placed near these poets, such as Vittoria Colonna (loved by Michelangelo), Veronica Gambara, Tullia d'Aragona, and Giulia Gonzaga, poets of great delicacy, and superior in genius to many literary men of their time. Many tragedies were written in the 16th century, but they are all weak. The cause of this was the moral and religious indifference of the Italians, the lack of strong passions and vigorous characters. The first to occupy the tragic stage was Trissino with his Sofonisba, following the rules of the art most scrupulously, but written in sickly verses, and without warmth of feeling. The Oreste and the Rosmunda of Giovanni Rucellai were no better, nor Luigi Alamanni's Antigone. Sperone Speroni in his Canace and Giraldi Cintio in his Orbecche tried to become innovators in tragic literature, but they only succeeded in making it grotesque. Decidedly superior to these was the Torrismondo of Torquato Tasso, specially remarkable for the choruses, which sometimes remind one of the chorus of the Greek tragedies. The Italian comedy of the 16th century was almost entirely modelled on the Latin comedy. They were almost always alike in the plot, in the characters of the old man, of the servant, of the waiting-maid; and the argument was often the same. Thus the Lucidi of Agnolo Firenzuola, and the Vecchio amoroso of Donato Giannotti were modelled on comedies by Plautus, as were the Sporta by Giambattista Gelli, the Marito by Lodovico Dolce, and others. There appear to be only three writers who should be distinguished among the many who wrote comedies: Machiavelli, Ariosto, and Giovan Maria Cecchi. In his Mandragora Machiavelli, unlike all the others, composed a comedy of character, creating types which seem living even now, because they were copied from reality seen with a finely observant eye. Ariosto, on the other hand, was |
