A history of Italian literature

by Richard Garnett

ITALIAN RENAISSANCE

The best view of the Renaissance as a whole is to be obtained from Symonds’s great work, The Renaissance in Italy, 1875-81. A new edition is in course of issue. Much of this comprehensive book relates to politics, and much to art; but so complete in the Renaissance period was the interpenetration of all forms of mental activity that no part of the work is useless for the study of literature. The same may be said of almost all modern biographies of leading Italians of the period, of most collections of letters, and of such books as Bisticci’s memoirs of his contemporaries (p. 107). A useful abridged account of the scholars of the early period of the Renaissance will be found in Villari’s Life of Machiavelli; and authors of later date are noticed in Roscoe’sLife of Leo X. The dissemination of literature upon the invention of printing is illustrated by Horatio Brown in hisVenetian Printing Press, 1892.