Italian Literature

B

18th Century

Towards the end of the 17th century a movement arose in opposition to the affectations and unrestraint of the Baroque style. The principal exponents of this tendency belonged to Arcadia, a society founded in Rome in 1690. In conformity with the simplicity traditionally associated with the term Arcadian, this group advocated a conscious naiveté of expression. The Arcadian writers borrowed from Classical sources, chiefly from the Greek pastoral poets.

The outstanding Arcadian figure was the poet and dramatist Pietro Metastasio, who became the court poet in Vienna, capital of the Austrian emperors. He succeeded Apostolo Zeno, author of dramas and opera librettos, and a pioneer literary critic who was the co-founder (1710) of the first journal of criticism, Giornale dei Letterati d'Italia (Journal of Italian Literature). Metastasio's plays, such as Artaxerxes and Semiramis, are remarkable for the melodic fluency of their lines. Several were used as librettos for operas.

The influence of Arcadia is discernible in the comedies of Carlo Goldoni, one of the great playwrights in Italian literature. His best comedies include La locandiera (1753; The Mistress of the Inn, 1856), Il ventaglio (1763; The Fan, 1911), and Le baruffe chiozzotte (1760; Squabbles at Chioggia, 1914). Goldoni's genius was at its best in rendering situations simply and forcefully and in depicting the milieu from which his characters derive their distinctive qualities.

According to some critics, Goldoni developed his style of writing in reaction to the famed commedia dell'arte, or guild comedy, which flourished from the 16th to the 18th century. The guild comedy was based on routine comic situations, the plot outlines of which were composed by wandering companies of actors. The characters were fixed types called maschere (“masks”), such as Pantaloon, Harlequin, and Columbine; the actors improvised the dialogues for different performances. The most effective use of the guild-comedy style was made by the dramatist Carlo Gozzi, who was opposed to Goldoni's type of dramatic writing. Gozzi dramatized a number of popular fairy tales, establishing a new form known as the fairy play. Two of his plays later served as the basis for the operas The Love for Three Oranges, by the 20th-century Soviet composer Sergei Prokofiev, and Turandot, by the 19th-century Italian composer Giacomo Puccini.

In its scientific and ethical aspects, Italian literature was influenced during the 18th century by the ideas of the 17th-century French scientist and philosopher René Descartes and by the writers of the 18th-century French Enlightenment. The principal organ of Italian intellectual life, which was centred in Milan, was the periodical Il Caffè (1764-1766, The Coffeehouse). The most influential thinker of the Enlightenment in Italy was the jurist Cesare Bonesana Beccaria, who, in his work Dei delitti e delle pene (1764, On Crimes and Punishments), advocated humane treatment of prisoners and abolition of capital punishment. An unfortunate result of the general French influence was the infusion of French words and expressions into Italian at a time when the language already was overladen with Grecisms and Latinisms revived by the Arcadians. An important counterinfluence was that of English literature and ideas, which were popularized in Italy by the work of Giuseppe Baretti, a resident of England for many years. His periodical Frusta Letteraria (1763-1765, Literary Scourge) communicated English cultural values through translations and informative articles.

The poets Giuseppe Parini and Vittorio Alfieri were among those writers who reacted most vigorously and effectively against excessive foreign influences, and strove to arouse a sense of national pride and unity against foreign domination. Parini is best known for his social satire in the mock-heroic poem Il giorno (The Day), published in several parts between 1763 and 1801. He attacked by ridicule and irony the uselessness, frivolity, and immorality of the aristocracy, and praised in contrast the sober frugality of the working classes. Although he strove to free his work from undue foreign influences, the spirit of social indignation characteristic of Il giorno is very much the same as that found in many French writings that led to the French Revolution. In contrast, however, Parini displayed greater moderation and respected the Classical traditions and the Church.

Alfieri, whose autobiography describes one of the stormiest and most Romantic figures in literature, turned from a youthful life of aristocratic self-indulgence to a mature life of vigorous and prolific activity as a man of letters. Freedom was his obsession and tyranny his favourite target, both in his treatises and minor lyrics and in his famous tragedies. Except for Agamennone (1783), Saul (1783), and Mirra (1787), his best-known plays, such as Filippo (1781), have a strong political emphasis, which earned them great popularity in the struggle for national liberation that marked the following century.

Other important 18th-century writers are the literary critic and archaeologist Lodovico Antonio Muratori and the philosopher Giovanni Battista Vico, whose influence was revived by the work of his 20th-century disciple Benedetto Croce. In his Principii d'una scienza nuova (1725, Principles of a New Science), Vico attacked the Cartesian concept of body and mind as separate entities, propounded a cyclical view of history, and anticipated the Romantics' interest in the past.

V

19th Century

Liberation and unification had been a hope of Italian writers since the 13th century. At that time nationalism had been manifested, among other ways, by the development of an Italian literary language. The hope of liberation was stimulated further by the French Revolution, which released a fervent nationalism throughout Europe. From the beginning of the 19th century until 1870, when the evacuation of French troops from Rome removed the last trace of foreign domination, the prevailing influence in Italian literature and in almost every phase of Italian life was nationalism, in its particular Italian form called the Risorgimento.

A

Nationalism, Romanticism, and Classicism

Early 19th-century Italian literature was marked not only by nationalism but also by a lingering Classicism and by a new spirit of Romanticism, which, emphasizing history and tradition, encouraged nationalism. The great influence on Italy by the French Revolution and Napoleon I is directly evident in the works of Vincenzo Monti, Ugo Foscolo, and Carlo Porta. Monti's writings mirror the instability of his convictions. He began as a foe of the French Revolution, as shown in his poem La bassvilliana (1793), about the assassination of the French envoy Hugo Bassville, and he later favoured the French cause, extolling Napoleon in a series of poems. Monti is best known for his translation of Homer's Iliad.

Ugo Foscolo was a more stable personality than Monti. He served as a soldier and teacher in Italy during the French occupation, and on the return of the Austrians, he went to England, where he died. Foscolo's fame was established by an epistolary romance, Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis (1798; The Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis, 1818), modelled on The Sorrows of the Young Werther by the German poet and novelist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Foscolo's novel is a fusion of romantic love and ardent patriotism. Later his patriotism yielded to a resigned contemplation of the past glories of his divided country, the fairest provinces of which remained under foreign rule. In this mood, he wrote his masterpiece, Dei sepolcri (1807; On Sepulchres, 1860). In his later poems he turned from his passion for Italy to celebrate the ancient world.

The poet Carlo Porta, who wrote in a Milanese dialect, was concerned with describing the miserable life of the Italian common people during the Napoleonic period. He condemned the role of the clergy and nobility, but without excessive bitterness, in Poesie in dialetto milanese (1821, Poetry in the Milanese Dialect).

Giacomo Leopardi stands out as one of the greatest lyric poets in Italian literature. In his secluded home he made himself a Classical scholar, and then, schooled by his translations of Greek and Latin poetry, emerged as a poet of deep feeling. His first compositions were patriotic, such as “To Italy” and “On the Monument of Dante”. Later a pessimistic strain pervaded his work. His poems were published singly or in partial collections. The first complete edition, I canti (Songs), appeared in 1831 and was translated in 1962. His pessimism was expressed also in his prose writings, notably Operette morali (1827; trans. in Essays, Dialogues, and Thoughts, 1893 and 1905), Zibaldone (7 vols., 1898-1900, Miscellany), and his masterly letters. He did not look kindly on Romanticism, yet his introspection, his desolation, and his nostalgia for the unattainable link him with the Romantics. On the other hand, the aristocratic purity and elevation of his literary style, his use of Classical forms, and his rationalism link him with the classicists.

Outstanding among the political writers of the Risorgimento was the patriot Giuseppe Mazzini, whose political activities cost him imprisonment and exile. He ranks with the statesman Camillo Benso di Cavour and the soldier Giuseppe Garibaldi among the fathers of Italian liberty. Mazzini's impassioned yet polished political writings continue to be read with interest.

Nationalism gave rise to two other strains in 19th-century Italian literature. One was a new regional feeling that manifested itself in a realistic presentation of regional life, often in the dialect of the region. The other rose out of the conflict over the temporal power of the papacy. A major obstacle to the unification of Italy had been the Papal States, which the foreign powers, notably France, had supported in their own national interests. On this issue Italian nationalism came into conflict with religion, and the conflict was resolved variously by different writers. The more nationalist or revolutionary writers expressed antagonism to the Church; other writers withdrew to what they considered the more serene values of the pre-Christian Classical civilization; still others reaffirmed the Christian faith.

Foremost among the last-named group of writers is Alessandro Manzoni, the author of the famous 19th-century masterpiece of Italian Romantic fiction I promessi sposi (1825-1827; The Betrothed, 1834). It is basically the story of two humble lovers struggling against oppression and a hostile fate in 17th-century Italy, then under Spanish domination. Safeguarded by historical accuracy, Manzoni was able to ridicule and attack foreign oppression of any kind in any period, and to his fellow patriots the parallel with the contemporary domination by Austria was clear. The universal message of the work, however, which with its masterly style has gained it world renown, is the need for people to trust to divine providence rather than to human plans for the eventual triumph of good over evil. His Inni sacri (1810, Sacred Hymns) revealed Manzoni's preoccupation with religious thought, and his later work is imbued with a strong pietistic spirit. Manzoni acquired European fame with an ode written on the occasion of Napoleon's death and translated into German by Goethe. Manzoni's two plays—Il conte di Carmagnola (1820; Count of Carmagnola, 1868), about a Renaissance condottiere, or commander of mercenaries, and Adelchi (1822; trans. 1868), about the heir of the last king of the Lombards—anticipate the religious and patriotic themes of The Betrothed.

Manzoni's clear and effective prose has none of the Classical embellishments found in the works of Foscolo and Monti. His search for a mystic order in history, his preoccupation with the Middle Ages, and his sense of the imperfection and incompleteness of mortal life link him with the Romantics. Manzoni's Lettera sul romanticismo (1823, Letter on Romanticism) defends Romanticism as opposed to the conventions of Classicism.

Manzoni was also deeply concerned with the Italian language. In the course of the centuries the basically Tuscan Italian vocabulary had been enriched by contributions from other regional vernaculars. This development, in Manzoni's opinion, had resulted in a swollen, confusing, repetitive vocabulary, and he advocated a return to the Florentine vernacular as spoken by the cultivated classes.

Towards the middle of the 19th century the influence of Manzoni and Romanticism in general provoked a reaction accompanied by a Classicism more aggressive than that of Monti. The reaction culminated in the work of the poet Giosuè Carducci, who extolled Italian hope and Roman glory. His work was an assertion of Classical reason as opposed to Romantic mysticism and Roman Catholic piety. Among his outstanding writings are Levia gravia (1861-1877; trans. in Political and Satiric Verse of Giosuè Carducci, 1942), Rime nuove (1861-1887; New Rhymes, 1916), Odi barbare (1877-89; Pagan Odes, 1950), and Rime e ritmi (1899; Lyrics and Rhythms, 1942). Carducci was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1906.

B

Verist Literature

A reaction against Classicism and Romanticism as unrealistic marked the second half of the 19th century. It was a revolt against a literature obsessed by the past and its own past achievements, and with its roots in books rather than in life. Shunning conscious lyricism and rhetoric, leaders of this reaction advocated everyday speech and a simple style and a literature based on observable phenomena. The poets exalted reality as the truth and named the movement 'verismo' (Italian “Realism”).

The Verist trend imparted a new significance to the regional dialect poetry that characterizes this period as well as the beginnings of the 20th century. Earlier poets had written in dialect, notably Giambattista Basile, who wrote Lo cunto de li cunti (1634; The Tale of Tales, 1932) in Neapolitan; and Porta, who wrote in Milanese. The 19th-century dialect poets included a master of even greater significance, Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli, who wrote more than 2,000 descriptive sonnets in Roman dialect depicting the Roman populace grumbling humorously at social conditions and at the mismanagements of the pontifical administration.

The Verist movement affected drama and fiction as well as lyric poetry. The one great novelist of this movement is Giovanni Verga, a leader of the Sicilian Realists. His major works include the novels I malavoglia (1881; The House by the Medlar Tree, 1890) and Mastro-don Gesualdo (1889; trans. 1923). Two of his collections of short stories have been translated as Little Novels of Sicily (1925) and Cavalleria Rusticana and Other Tales (1928). The latter inspired the famous opera by Pietro Mascagni. Verga presented realistic pictures of the humble and often miserable lives of the Sicilian peasantry.

Opposed to and yet influenced by the Verist trend was the poet Giovanni Pascoli. His lyrics have an idyllic note and in their evocations of rustic life come close in spirit to the Georgics of Virgil. His Classicism contained no anti-Catholicism; on the contrary, he hailed Dante for his Christian spirituality. Pascoli's style is marked by loose metrics and avoidance of rhetoric. His work prepared the way for Italian free verse. Another antagonist of Realism was the poet and novelist Antonio Fogazzaro. Although a sincere Roman Catholic, he campaigned for the acceptance of Darwinism, and in Il santo (1905; The Saint, 1906) he espoused a form of religious modernism that brought him condemnation by Roman Catholic authorities. His novels see a way out of the moral crisis resulting from social revolution and advances in science. Fogazzaro's novels include Malombra (1881; The Woman, 1907), Daniele Cortis (1885; trans. 1887), and Piccolo mondo antico (1896; The Patriot, 1906). The latter, also translated as Little World of the Past (1962), is generally considered his best work.

Several other Italian writers are not associated directly with the literary trends of the period. Edmondo De Amicis is noted for his novels and travel books. His best-known work is Cuore (1886, Heart), written in the form of a journal kept by an Italian schoolboy. Carlo Collodi wrote the famous children's story Le avventure di Pinocchio (1883; The Adventures of Pinocchio, 1891).

Francesco De Sanctis was the foremost critic of the period and the founder of modern Italian literary criticism. Such works as Saggi critici (1881, Critical Essays), La letteratura italiana nel secolo XIX (1897, Italian Literature in the 19th Century), and especially Storia della letteratura italiana (1871; History of Italian Literature, 1931) apply sociological and psychological perceptions to literary evaluations with great judgement and skill.

VI

The 20th Century

Italian literature of the 20th century displays a rich variety of forms and concerns. Much of it reflects the experiences of the years of fascist rule; after World War II a concern for social realism dominated, to be succeeded by deeply introspective poetry and prose.