A history of Italian literature

by Richard Garnett

ABRIDGED LITERARY HISTORIES

Emiliani-Giudici, Compendia della Storia della Letteratura italiana, 1855. Very sound, but verbose.—Settembrini, Lezioni della Letteratura italiana, 1877. Perhaps on the whole the most recommendable of all the minor Italian literary histories. The author, an exile lately restored to his country, is inspired with a spirit of patriotism which renders his work singularly vital and energetic, and the young men to whom his lectures are addressed are ever before him. Notwithstanding occasional paradoxes, his appreciations are in general sound, although he is naturally inclined to bear hardly upon authors who fail to attain his standard of patriotism.—De Sanctis, Storia della Letteratura italiana, 1879. Very good, but deficient in the spirit and fire of Settembrini.—Fenini, Letteratura italiana, 1889. The model of an abbreviated handbook; and the same may be said of its English counterpart, Snell’s Primer of Italian Literature, 1893.