A balance-sheet of literary exchange over some seven centuries would doubtless show that Italy's debt to France began earlier, and was the greater, but between the 14th and the end of the 17th c. there are significant instances of Italian influence upon the development of French literature. The earliest occur as a direct result of the intense contact between the two cultures during the period of the Avignon Papacy (1309-77). From the start, however, Italian literature (and strictures against France by Petrarch in particular) provoked a nationalistic response: Jean de Hesdin and Nicolas de Clamanges began in the late 14th c. a debate that was to be continued well into the 16th by Jean Lemaire de Belges (Concorde des deux langages, 1511), Symphorien Champier (Duellum epistolare, 1519), Henri Estienne (Deux dialogues, 1578), and Thomas Sébillet .
Of the three dominant figures of Italian medieval literature, Dante was the least influential in France, remaining neglected, even after his translation in 1596-7, until his rediscovery in the early 19th c. The Latin writings of Petrarch (especially De remediis utriusque fortune, translated in 1378 and 1503) and of Boccaccio, on the other hand, were to have considerable impact, and were frequently cited as sources of sound moral doctrine and historical information by such early writers as Christine de Pizan; their presence is often a sign of nascent humanism. Petrarch's Latin translation of Boccaccio's story of Griselda was to enjoy considerable popularity in France from 1385 onwards and, as an extreme example of feminine virtue, contributed to the Querelle des Femmes which was to last well into the 17th c. Petrarch was also admired for his Latin style and classical scholarship, areas in which his humanist successors remained predominant, as is revealed by the presence among the first books printed in Paris in 1470 of works by Barzizza and Valla.
Petrarch's Trionfi, already known in France in the late 15th c., were translated in 1514 by Georges de la Forge and c.1530 by Simon Bourgouyn. Above all, however, his Canzoniere (not fully translated—by Vasquin Philieul—until 1548-55) inspired in the 16th c., in France as everywhere else in Europe, that poetic phenomenon known as Petrarchism: use of the sonnet form (probably first imitated in French by Clément Marot c.1530), of a complex structure to hold together a sequence of love-poems, and of a vast vocabulary of poetic conceits. Scève's identification of the tomb of Petrarch's beloved Laura in Avignon, and his Délie (1544), reflect the interest that the Canzoniere held for him and other Lyonnais poets such as Louise Labé; in 1549 Du Bellay published the first French Petrarchan sonnet-sequence (L'Olive), and from then onwards the Pléiade and poets such as Magny and Desportes continued to draw on Petrarch and his Italian imitators (in particular Cariteo, Tebaldeo, Serafino, Bembo, Ariosto, and Sannazaro). Du Bellay himself obligingly provides the theoretical underpinning for, and an example of, imitation in his Défense et illustration de la langue française, heavily dependent upon a dialogue by Sperone Speroni; similarly, in his Art poétique français Sebillet urges his compatriots to absorb all that they can of what Italy and classical antiquity have to offer. In the 17th c. Saint-Amant, Scudéry, and Tristan l'Hermite were still to find inspiration in Italian sources such as the love-poetry of Marino or the satirical verse of Berni [see Satire], while Tasso was to have a considerable influence upon the development of the French historical epic.
Boccaccio's Decameron (translated in 1400 and 1485) left its mark on French prose fiction. It was already known to the author of the Cent nouvelles nouvelles; a new translation was made in 1545 for Marguerite de Navarre, in whose Heptaméron its traces are visible, as in the anonymous Comptes du monde aventureux of 1555. Boccaccio's Filocolo and Fiammetta, both translated early in the 1530s, were, like other short stories by Poggio Bracciolini and Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, to provide French writers with further versatile Italian narrative models.
But the content of the narrative, as the Heptaméron shows, is increasingly influenced by Neoplatonism. Petrarchist love-poetry, such as that of Louise Labé or the Pléiade, also frequently echoed ideas deriving from Ficino and Pico della Mirandola; the demand for Italian dialogues and treatises of a broadly Neoplatonic slant led to the translation of Bembo's Asolani, Leon Ebreo's Dialoghi d'amore, Cariteo's Peregino, Sannazaro's Arcadia, and others. The impact of Castiglione's Cortegiano (first translated in 1537) on Héroët's Parfaite Amie is clear, and it remained popular well into the latter half of the century [see Courtoisie]. Meanwhile other ideas of partly Italian origin were also gaining currency in France: the rationalist and sceptical views of Pomponazzi and the Paduan Averroists, the political thought of Machiavelli and Guicciardini, the latter not appreciated for his anti-French sentiments.
One more major area in which Italian influence may be discerned is the theatre. Troupes of Italian actors were already active in France in the 16th c., importing the stock figures of the commedia dell'arte; from the middle of the century onwards Italian comedies were increasingly imitated and translated, notably by Larivey. Traces of the same comic tradition are evident in the plays of Molière and Marivaux, and in the activities of the Italian actors [see Comédie-italienne], who were expelled from Paris in 1697 but later returned, merging in 1762 with players of the théâtres de la foire to form the nucleus of what was in 1780 to become the Opéra-Comique. Finally, the pastoral, deriving especially from Tasso and Guarini, left a profound stamp both on the prose narrative of d'Urfé's Astrée and on the plays of Hardy, Racan, and Beaumarchais.
Except in the domains of the theatre and opera, there is little more Italian literary influence in France before the 19th c. The rediscovery of Italy which took place then was partly a physical one, the result of increased travel; in literary terms it is marked more by the adoption of historical themes than by the influence of texts, and by a long-over-due interest in Dante, hero of a romantic myth of the Middle Ages which lasted at least until Baudelaire. But Madame de Staël's novel Corinne (1807) started a fashion which was underpinned by histories of Italian literature by Ginguené (1811-19) and Sismondi (1812), and above all by the writings of Stendhal. Venetian themes were explored by Gautier and Balzac, and Florentine ones by Dumas père and Musset; by the middle of the 19th c. Italy was firmly established as a setting for adventure and romance.
[Nicholas Mann]
Bibliography
- F. Simone, Il rinascimento francese (1961)
- L. Sozzi (ed.), Mélanges à la mémoire de Franco Simone, vol. 3 (1984)
- J. Serroy (ed.), La France et l'Italie au temps de Mazarin (1986)
- F. Braudel, Le Modèle italien (1989)
