Italian Literature

A

Late 14th Century

One of the most important figures of the early Renaissance was the humanist scholar and poet Petrarch. With him a new feeling entered Western culture. Unlike Dante and other medieval thinkers such as the Italian Scholastic philosopher Thomas Aquinas and the French philosopher Peter Abelard, Petrarch was not concerned so much with using the material of the ancient Classical writers for his own purposes as with acting in the Classical spirit. A great Latinist, he helped to restore Classical Latin as a literary and scholarly language and to discredit the use of medieval Latin, which had served as an international medium of communication. After this period Latin lost currency as a spoken tongue.

Petrarch is often referred to as the “modern man” because of his interest in individuality; his Vita Solitaria (1480; Solitary Life, 1924) and his De Remediis Utriusque Fortunae (1468; Physicke Against Fortune, 1579) are considered the first essays to express this new attitude. He has also been called the first Italian nationalist, as contrasted with Dante, who was a universalist and for whom Italy was a part to be fitted into an imperial whole. To Petrarch, Italy was the heir and successor of ancient Rome, the civilizing mission of which he glorified in his Latin epic Africa (critical edition, 1926), dealing with the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage. He believed that the various states of Italy should be united to resume the mission of ancient Rome.

Impressive as were Petrarch's contributions to Classical scholarship, his greatness rests on his Italian lyrics. His Canzoniere (after 1327; trans. 1777)—a collection of sonnets addressed to Laura, probably the Frenchwoman Laure de Noves, the counterpart of Dante's Beatrice—departs from the idealized approach of the dolce stil nuovo. It introduced an intensity and inwardness of feeling and perception hitherto unknown in European poetry.

Boccaccio, like Petrarch, was conscious of belonging to a new age. He was strongly influenced by Petrarch, and the two men became close friends. Boccaccio had a strong narrative bent, as evidenced by his prose romances Il Filocolo (c. 1336) and L'amorosa Fiammetta (c. 1343, Amorous Fiammetta). Boccaccio's greatest work is his Decamerone (1353; The Decameron, 1620), a masterpiece in which he drew directly from life instead of from literary models. It is a collection of 100 short stories presumed to have been told during a period of ten days by seven gentlemen and three ladies of Florence living in a remote country villa in which they had taken refuge from an epidemic of the plague.

Unlike Petrarch, Boccaccio valued Dante highly; his last work was a biography and a series of lectures on the work of the great poet. Boccaccio's writings gained an international public and were drawn upon for plots and characters by writers in other countries. For example, his epic poem La Teseida (c. 1341) was used by the 14th-century English poet Geoffrey Chaucer as the basis for his “Knight's Tale” and by the 17th-century English poet John Dryden in his poem “Palamon and Arcite”.

Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio were the first Italian writers to make literary use of the Tuscan dialect spoken in Florence, Siena, and other towns of north-central Italy, and they won for it general acceptance as the language of culture.

B

15th Century

The 15th century saw the development of a new cultural movement called Humanism which overturned the medieval view of man as being of little value and instead praised him as the centre of the universe, and earthly life as the realm of full expression of the soul. In the Renaissance appeared many examples of the so-called universal man, who achieved greatness in more than one field. Among the most famous figures of this type were the architect, painter, organist, and writer Leon Battista Alberti, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo. This universality of mind and talent was true also of the princes who ruled the Italian towns, the most brilliant of whom was Lorenzo de' Medici, a member of the Medici family that ruled Florence. Lorenzo was a brilliant statesman and administrator, a patron of the arts, a poet, and a critic of distinction.

Angelo Poliziano, called Politian, is generally considered the outstanding poet of the period and exponent of humanist values. His verse play Orfeo (c. 1480; trans. 1880) ranks as the first important work in Italian drama, and his collections of lyrics are of a high order. Politian is famous also for his scholarly editions and translations of Greek texts.

In this period the Carolingian geste and the pastoral continued to provide literary themes. Among the outstanding gestes was the Orlando innamorato (1487, Roland in Love) of Matteo Maria Boiardo. The finest work in the pastoral genre was Arcadia (1504), by Jacopo Sannazzaro, which attained Continental recognition. In their preoccupation with worldly rather than religious values Renaissance writers departed widely from the Christian concepts of the Middle Ages. The popes themselves patronized atheist and so-called pagan authors. Some of these writers, especially the humanist Lorenzo Valla, whose bold exposure of dubious papal documents almost cost him his life, mentioned Christian authors only to find fault with them. The sermons and polemical writings of the reformer Girolamo Savonarola, who attempted to reverse this trend, provide graphic descriptions of revived pagan tastes and practices. He instituted a theocratic republic in Florence, but it lasted less than three years. He was abandoned by the people and suffered martyrdom for his defiance of Pope Alexander VI, who was famous for his patronage of pagan culture.

C

16th Century

The Renaissance reached its fulfilment in the 16th century. Italian, long eclipsed by the humanists' preoccupation with Greek and Latin, rose to a new and conscious dignity as a medium of serious literary expression. Pietro Bembo, who exercised tremendous influence in the first half of the century, contributed greatly to this development. In his treatises, especially Le prose della volgar lingua (1525, Prose in the Vernacular), he established Boccaccio's writings as the model for prose. His Rime (1530), imitative of Petrarch's verse, marked the effective beginning of the movement known as Petrarchism. Other writers of this period who made much more creative use of the heritage of humanism were the statesman and political philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli and the poet Ludovico Ariosto.

Both from his experiences as a Florentine official and diplomat and from his historical studies, Machiavelli arrived at the realistic conception of statecraft with which his name has since been linked. It is elaborated in Il principe (1532; The Prince, 1640), an analysis of the basis and exercise of political power that formed part of a larger work, his commentary on The History of Rome by the Roman historian Livy. The premise of The Prince is that “the preservation of the state is the supreme law” transcending all other obligations. Machiavelli's ideal prince anticipated the so-called benevolent despots of later periods who consolidated state power and deployed it in international affairs. In his thinking he departed from medieval theocratic concepts and presaged modern scientific political economy. Some historians conjecture that had his views been realized Italy might have been united under a strong ruler and spared the subsequent French and Spanish invasions. Other works by Machiavelli include a treatise on the art of war, a history of Florence, a biography (1520) of the Italian soldier and political figure Castruccio Castracani, poems, and a number of plays. His most famous play, La mandragola (1524; The Mandrake, 1957), is a bitter, pessimistic analysis of human instincts. In it he applied to social and religious life the principle of analysis that he applied in The Prince to political life.

The Florentine historian and statesman Francesco Guicciardini, Machiavelli's friend, is best known for La storia d'Italia (posthumously pub. 1561-1564; The History of Italy, 1579), a work outstanding for its objectivity and its astute discussion of personalities and events. His Ricordi politici e civili (1857, Political and Civil Memoirs) is based on his thorough experience as a political participant in the affairs of Florence.

The genius of Ariosto, the supreme poet of the 16th century, found its best expression in the epic poem Orlando furioso (1516, The Mad Roland ), a work of originality and power in continuation of Boiardo's Orlando innamorato. The events related in the poem concern the struggle of Charlemagne and his paladins against the Saracens. Against this unifying background, the epic weaves together adventure, romance, magic, heroism, villainy, pathos, sensuality, and contemporary reality into a sophisticated, ever varying narrative enlivened by humour and gentle irony. The poem achieves the universal appeal of a masterpiece because Ariosto's extraordinary imagination is based on a profound understanding of human nature and psychology.

Two popular treatises on manners belong to this period of cosmopolitan refinement and worldly accomplishment. Il cortegiano (1528; The Book of the Courtier, 1561), by the diplomat Baldassare Castiglione, is a discussion of etiquette, social problems, and the advantages of intellectual pursuits. It served as a handbook for the training of gentlemen on the Continent and in England. Galateo (1558; trans. 1576), by the prelate Giovanni della Casa, discusses etiquette from the point of view of a broad understanding of human nature.

A violent reaction against this cult of fancy, beauty, and refinement is found in the mock epic Baldus (1517) by Teofilo Folengo. Written in the macaronic style, a comical burlesque of scholarly Latin, it is an extremely and often vulgarly funny parody of the world of chivalry and belles lettres and satirizes many aspects of contemporary life. The French writer François Rabelais found inspiration and material in Baldus. Another rebel, of much greater contemporary prestige, was Pietro Aretino, a talented playwright and pamphleteer. His Ragionamenti (1532-1534, Reasonings) and the six volumes of his letters (1537-1557) best represent his scurrilous and harsh wit.

The great artists of the period made several notable contributions to literature. The sonnets of Michelangelo are impassioned expressions of inner feelings and religious conviction. Leonardo's treatises on art and science contain principles of analysis that have profoundly influenced modern thinkers. The remarkable autobiography of the sculptor Benvenuto Cellini ranks among the greatest personal documents in all literature. The biographies of famous painters, sculptors, and architects written by the painter and architect Giorgio Vasari constitute an invaluable source of art history.

The short narrative tale is best represented in the 16th century by the Novelle (4 vols., 1554-1573) of Matteo Bandello. These tales, modelled on those of Boccaccio, formed the basis of many European literary works, including probably Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet.

The second half of the 16th century was dominated by the Counter-Reformation, which began with the Council of Trent in 1545. The resulting wave of piety and submission to authority replaced the frank enjoyment and exploration of life cultivated by the humanists and their successors with a superficial regard for morality and public welfare. The exuberant freedom of expression and form characteristic of Ariosto was frowned on, while such freedom of thought and utterance as Machiavelli's became downright dangerous. In literature this change was intensified by a new Classicism, which relied on the authority of Aristotle's rediscovered Poetics and spread later throughout all Europe. In 1548 the Poetics was published in the original with a Latin translation and commentary by Francesco Robortelli. Many other versions as well as treatises on the Poetics followed, the most important of which were the Poetics (1561) of Julius Caesar Scaliger and the commentary (1570) by Lodovico Castelvetro, in which the unities of time and place in drama were first set forth.

Despite the prevailing climate of repression, one great lyric and imaginative poet, Torquato Tasso, produced a masterpiece, Gerusalemme liberata (1581; Jerusalem Delivered, 1600). This beautiful epic treatment of the First Crusade is much shorter and simpler and more unified and serious than the Orlando furioso. It aroused so much pedantic criticism, however, that the author later rewrote it, producing a work of inferior quality. Another great mind and bolder spirit, the philosopher Giordano Bruno, wrote dialogues attacking pedantry and authoritarianism and daring to uphold views that were forbidden by the Church. He was burned at the stake as a heretic in Rome in 1600.

IV

Early Modern Period

Italy, beginning in the late 15th century, was exhausted by constant wars as rival Spanish, French, and Austrian rulers made the country their battleground. At the same time, world trade was shifting from the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean, causing an economic decline in Italy. The once free-spirited, cosmopolitan city-states offered little resistance to tyranny and began to stagnate into provincial communities. In the 17th and 18th centuries most of the country was under Spanish or Austrian rule.

A

17th Century

The predominant style of the 17th century, not only in literature but in the fine arts and music, was Baroque. Poetry and drama became extravagant in imagination, rhetorical in expression, and richly metaphorical in imagery.

Typical of the century in this respect is the poetry of Giambattista Marino, whose Adone (1623, Adonis) is a masterpiece of literary virtuosity. A remarkable study of the universality of love, it masks sense under sentiment and discovers amorous tendencies in all nature.

Much of the writing of the period is morbid in spirit. Representative of this genre are the tragedies of Federigo della Valle, whose La reina di Scotia (1628, The Queen of Scotland) centres on the trials of Mary, Queen of Scots. A dissatisfaction with life, especially with the social order of his time, is expressed in the work of the poet, scientist, and philosopher Tommaso Campanella, whose speculations about ways of improving society cost him imprisonment and exile. His most important work is Civitas solis (1623, City of the Sun), which he wrote in prison. It is a utopian vision of an egalitarian state maintained by careful regulation.