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Italian literature is literature written in the Italian language, particularly by citizens of Italy. It may also refer
to literature written by people living in Italy who speak other languages. The collective works have a long, influential history.
Prominent authors include Dante Alighieri, Machiavelli and Petrarch. For works from ancient Rome see Latin literature.
Origins
Italian literature with a foreign basis
A depiction of Boetius teaching his students (1385). Boetius, a 6th century Christian philosopher, helped keep alive the classic
tradition in post-Roman Italy.
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.
Unlike other countries, Italy lacked legends, tales, epic poems, and satires, so their literature originally came from foreign
sources. The 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.
Latin did not disappear in Italy. The use of the vernacular in Italian literature was initially
rare, preceded by two periods of Italian literature in foreign and French languages. There were many Italians who wrote
Provençal poems, such as the Marchese Alberto
Malaspina (12th century), Maestro Ferrari Ferrara, Cigala of
Genoa, Zorzi of Venice, Sordello, Buvarello of Bologna, Nicoletto of Turin, and others. Their poetry of love
and war accustomed the people and the courts to new sounds and new harmonies.
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.
The emergence of purely Italian literature
The French language 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.
The Sicilian School
-
The 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.
Religious literature
In 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 c/fe 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.
Tuscan literature
Thirteenth 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. Being largely unaffected by the Germanic invasion, Tuscany
was never subjected to the feudal system, and internal struggles did not weaken its cultural
life. 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.
Early prose
Italian 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.
The spontaneous development of Italian literature
A new literature
In 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.
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.
The Divine Comedy
The 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.
Petrarch
-
Statue outside the
Uffizi, Florence
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.
Boccaccio
-
From an edition of Boccaccio's "De Casibus Virorum Illustrium" showing Lady Fortune spinning her wheel.
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.
Others
Imitators
Fazio 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 Massuccio Salernitano
(Tommaso Guardato), who wrote the Novellino, and Antonio Cornazzano whose
Proverbii became extremely popular.
Chronicles
Chronicles 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.
Ascetics
The 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.
Popular works
Humorous 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.
Political works
Many 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. This instance of versified history is not unique, and it is evidently connected with the precisely similar
phenomenon offered by the vulgar Latin literature. 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.
Drama
There cannot have been an entire absence of dramatic literature in Italy in the 14th century, but traces of it are wanting,
although we find them again in great abundance in the drama of the 15th century. The 14th century had, however, one drama unique
of its kind. In the sixty years (1250 to 1310) which ran from the death of the emperor Frederick II to the expedition of Henry
VII, no emperor had come into Italy. In the north of Italy, Ezzelino da Romano, with
the title of Imperial Vicar, had taken possession of almost the whole of the March of Treviso,
and threatened Lombardy. The popes proclaimed a crusade against him and, crushed by it, the
Ezzelini fell. Padua then began to breathe again, and took to extending its dominion.
There lived at Padua a man named Albertino Mussato, born in 1261, a year after the
catastrophe of the Ezzelini; he grew up among the survivors of a generation that hated the name of the tyrant. After having
written in Latin a history of Henry VII he devoted himself to a dramatic work on Ezzelino, and wrote it also in Latin. The
Eccerinus, which was probably never represented on the stage, has been by some critics compared to the great tragic works
of Greece. It would probably be nearer the truth to say that it has nothing in common with the
works of Aeschylus; but certainly the dramatic strength, the delineation of certain
situations, and the narration of certain events are very original. Mussato's work stands alone in the history of Italian dramatic
literature. Perhaps this would not have been the case if he had written it in Italian.
Prelude to the Renaissance
In the last years of the 14th century we find the struggle that was soon to break out between the indigenous literary
tradition and the reviving classicism already alive in spirit. As representatives of this struggle, of this antagonism, we may
consider Luigi Marsilio and Coluccio Salutati, both
learned men who spoke and wrote Latin, who aspired to be humanists, but who meanwhile also loved Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio,
and felt and celebrated in their writings the beauty of Italian literature.
The Renaissance
Background
The memory of Rome excited a passion in 15th century men. The worship of Rome's language and institutions, which at one time
had retarded the development of Italian literature, now grafted the old Latin branch of ancient classicism on the flourishing
stock of Italian literature.
Leading intellectual figures of the 15th century were Niccolò Niccoli,
Giannozzo Manetti, Palla Strozzi,
Leonardo Bruni, Francesco Filelfo,
Poggio Bracciolini, Carlo d'Arezzo,
and Lorenzo Valla. Manetti buried himself in his books, slept only for a few hours in the
night, never went out of doors, and spent his time in translating from Greek, studying Hebrew, and commenting on Aristotle.
Strozzi sent into Greece at his own expense to search for ancient books, and had Plutarch and
Plato brought for him. Bracciolini went to the Council of
Constance, and found in a monastery Cicero's Orations. He copied Quintilian with his own hand, discovered Lucretius, Plautus, Pliny, and many other Latin authors. Guarino went through the East in search of codices. Giovanni Aurispa
returned to Venice with many hundreds of manuscripts. All this is but the continuation of a phenomenon that has existed for ages.
It is the thought of Rome that always dominated Italians, the thought that appears from Boethius to Dante Alighieri, from Arnold of
Brescia to Cola di Rienzi, and became stronger in Petrarch and Boccaccio.
Everything, the individual and society, was changed under the influence of new facts.
First forming was a human individuality, lacking in the Middle Ages. As Jakob
Burckhardt has said, the man was changed into the individual. He began to feel and assert his own personality. As a
consequence, the idea and desire for fame arose. A cultured class, in the modern meaning of the word, appeared, and the idea
arose that the worth of a man depended on merits, not birth. Poggio in
De nobilitate declares that he entirely agreed with his interlocutors Niccolo Niccoli and Lorenzo de Medici in the opinion that there is no nobility but that of personal merit. External life
was growing more refined in all particulars; the man of society was created; rules for civilized life were made; there was an
increasing desire for artistic entertainments. The medieval idea of existence was turned upside down; men who had previously
turned their thoughts exclusively to heavenly things, and believed exclusively in the divine right, now began to think of
beautifying their earthly existence and returned to a belief in their human rights.
This was a great advance, but one which carried with it the seeds of many dangers. The conception of morality became gradually
weaker. The fay ce que vouldras of Rabelais became the first principle of life.
Religious feeling was blunted, weakened, and changed, and became pagan again. The Italian of the Renaissance, in his qualities
and his passions, became the most remarkable representative of the heights and depths, of the virtues and faults, of humanity. A
profound scepticism took hold of people's minds; indifference to good and evil reached its highest point.
Besides this, a great literary danger was hanging over Italy. Humanism threatened to
submerge its youthful national literature. There were authors who laboriously tried to give Italian Latin forms, to do again,
after Dante, what Guittone d'Arezzo had so unhappily done of Lalia in the 13th
century. Provincial dialects tried to reassert themselves in literature. The
great authors of the 14th century, Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, were by many people forgotten or despised.
Florence
It was Florence that saved literature by reconciling the classical models to modern feeling, by assimilating classical forms
to the vulgar art.
Still gathering vigour and elegance from classicism, still drawing from the ancient fountains all that th
