Risponde il fonte del gentil parlare.
—Sonnet XLII.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The number of books which may be usefully consulted on various points of Italian literature is very considerable. Only the most important can be named here, and those for the most part such as are written in English or Italian, and fall strictly under the heads of literary history or bibliography, or standard editions with indispensable commentaries. Many books not referable to any of these classes, such as Burckhardt’s Cicerone, Des Brosses’s Letters, or Dennistoun’s Lives of the Dukes of Urbino, are incidentally of high value, but cannot be enumerated in a bibliographical list. Some few biographies, however, have been added which may be deemed essential. The dates given are in general those of the best or most accessible editions. Some of the most important are out of print.
GENERAL COLLECTIONS OF ITALIAN AUTHORS
D’Ancona and Bacci, Manuale della Letteratura italiana, 5 vols. 1893-95. A most admirable selection, both for its soundness of judgment and its comprehensiveness. The notices of the various authors prefixed to the selections are excellent from the biographical and bibliographical points of view, and also from the critical when criticism is sufficiently full, which is not always the case.—Cantù, La Letteratura italiana esposta, &c., 1851, and Morandi, Antologia, 1893, are inferior to D’Ancona and Bacci, yet deserve attention.
GENERAL HISTORIES
Tiraboschi, Storia della Letteratura italiana, &c., 1822. The Italian literary historian par excellence, characterised at pp. 295, 296 of this book. There is a continuation by Lombardi.—Sismondi, Histoire de la Littérature du Midi de l’Europe; numerous editions and translations, but hardly equal to its reputation.—Ginguené, Histoire littéraire d’Italie, 14 vols., 1811-35 [the last four volumes by Salfi]. A work of extraordinary diligence and erudition, on no account to be neglected by the few who may have time to read it, though written from an eighteenth-century point of view now entirely antiquated. The chief literary defect is the immoderate space devoted to unravelling the plots of uninteresting epics and dramas; this excess of diligence, however, renders it a valuable source of information concerning minor authors frequently omitted.—This is also a valuable feature of Corniani, I Secoli della Letteratura italiana, 1832-33.—Bartoli, Storia della Letteratura italiana, 1875. This unfinished work is the best authority for the history of the early period, beyond which it does not as yet extend. It is full of learning and research, but prolix.—Gaspary, Geschichte der italienischen Litteratur, &c., 1885. Another important work unfortunately left incomplete, breaking off in the Cinque Cento. The best of all the larger Italian literary histories, but deficient in form, rather a quarry of material than a regular edifice. An English translation by H. Oelsner is in preparation.