Handbook of Universal Literature, From the Best and Latest Authorities

by Anne C. Lynch Botta

The second period, commencing 1475, embraces the age of Lorenzo de' Medici and Leo X., when literature began to revive; the age of Ariosto, Tasso, Machiavelli, and Galileo, when it reached its meridian splendor; its subsequent decline, through the school of Marini; and its last revival towards the close of the seventeenth century.

The third period, extending from the close of the seventeenth century to the present time, includes the development of Italian literature, its decline under French influence, and its subsequent national tendency, through the writings of Metastasio, Goldoni, Alfieri, Parini, Monti, Manzoni, and Leopardi.

2. THE DIALECTS.—The dialects of the ancient tribes inhabiting the peninsula early came in contact with the rustic Latin, and were moulded into new tongues, which, at a later period, were again modified by the influence of the barbarians who successively invaded the country. These tongues, elaborated by the action of centuries, are still in use, especially with the lower classes, and many of them have a literature of their own, with grammars and dictionaries. The more important of these dialects are divided into three groups: 1st. The Northern, including the Ligurian, Piedmontese, Lombard, Venetian, and Emilian. 2d. The Central, containing the Tuscan, Umbrian, the dialects of the Marches and of the Roman Provinces. 3d. The Southern, embracing those of the Neapolitan provinces and of Sicily. Each is distinguished from the other and from the true Italian, although they all rest on a common basis, the rustic Latin, the plebeian tongue of the Romans, as distinct from the official and literary tongue.

3. THE ITALIAN LANGUAGE.—The Tuscan or Florentine dialect, which early became the literary language of Italy, was the result of the natural development of the popular Latin and a native dialect probably akin to the rustic Roman idiom. Tuscany suffering comparatively little from foreign invasion, the language lost none of its purity, and remained free from heterogeneous elements. The great writers, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, who appeared so early, promoted its perfection, secured its prevailing influence, and gave it a national character. Hence, in the literature there is no old Italian as distinct from the modern; the language of Dante continues to be that of modern writers, and becomes more perfect the more it approaches the standard fixed by the great masters of the fourteenth century. Of this language it may he said that for flexibility, copiousness, freedom of construction, and harmony and beauty of sound, it is the most perfect of all the idioms of the Neo-Latin or Romanic tongues.

PERIOD FIRST.

FROM THE ORIGIN OF ITALIAN LITERATURE TO ITS FIRST DECLINE (1100-1475).

1. LATIN INFLUENCE.—During the early part of the Middle Ages Latin was the literary language of Italy, and the aim of the best writers of the time was to restore Roman culture. The Gothic kingdom of Ravenna, established by Theodoric, was the centre of this movement, under the influence of Cassiodorus, Boethius, and Symmachus. It was due to the prevailing affection for the memories of Rome, that through all the Dark Ages the Italian mind kept alive a spirit of freedom unknown in other countries of Europe, a spirit active, later, in the establishment of the Italian republics, and showing itself in the heroic resistance of the communes of Lombardy to the empire of the Hohenstaufens. While the literatures of other countries were drawn almost exclusively from sacred and chivalric legends, the Italians devoted themselves to the study of Roman law and history, to translations from the philosophers of Greece, and, above all, to the establishment of those great universities which were so powerful in extending science and culture throughout the Peninsula.

While the Latin language was used in prose, the poets wrote in Provençal and in French, and many Italian troubadours appeared at the courts of Europe.

2. EARLY ITALIAN POETRY AND PROSE.—The French element became gradually lessened, and towards the close of the thirteenth century there arose the Tuscan school of lyric poetry, the true beginning of Italian art, of which Lapo Gianni, Guido Cavalcanti, Cino da Pistoia, and Dante Alighieri were the masters. It is mainly inspired by love, and takes a popular courtly or scholastic form. The style of Gianni had many of the faults of his predecessors. That of Cavalcanti, the friend and precursor of Dante, showed a tendency to stifle poetic imagery under the dead weight of philosophy. But the love poems of Cino are so mellow, so sweet, so musical, that they are only surpassed by those of Dante, who, as the author of the "Vita Nuova," belongs to this lyric school. In this book he tells the story of his love for Beatrice, which was from the first a high idealization in which there was apparently nothing human or earthly. Everything is super-sensual, aerial, heavenly, and the real Beatrice melts more and more into the symbolic, passing out of her human nature into the divine.

Italian prose writing is of a later date, and also succeeded a period when Italian authors wrote in Latin and French. It consists chiefly of chronicles, tales, and translations.