Crescimbeni, Istoria della volgar Poesia, 1730. Quadrio, Della Storia e della regione d’ogni Poesia, 1739-52. Standard histories long out of print, but to be found in all good public libraries.—Muratori, Della perfetta Poesia, 1821. Characterised at p. 295.—Ruth, Geschichte der italienischen Poesie, 1844-47.—Loise, Histoire de la Poésie en Italie, 1895.—Carducci, Studi Letterari, 1880. Valuable criticisms on various periods of Italian literature.—An excellent anthology of the dicta of modern Italian critics has been compiled by Morandi, Antologia, &c., 1893.
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.
POPULAR POETRY
Rubieri, Storia della Poesia popolare italiana, 1877.—D’Ancona, La Poesia popolare italiana, 1878.—Tommaseo, Canti popolari, 1841-42.—Tigri, Canti popolari Toscani, 1869. See also J. A. Symonds’s essay in his Italian Sketches and Studies, 1879, a new edition of which is in preparation.
PREDECESSORS AND CONTEMPORARIES OF DANTE
Rossetti, Dante and his Circle, 1893. Consists chiefly of translations of the highest merit. The information it contains is chiefly derived from Nannucci, Manuale della Letteratura del primo Secolo, 1843; and Trucchi, Poesie italiane inedite di dugento autori, 1846.
DANTE
There is, perhaps, as much commentary upon Dante as upon all the rest of Italian literature put together. The most charming edition, when comment is not needed, is that of Dr. Edward Moore, 1894, where all Dante’s works are compressed into one small and exquisitely printed volume; but few students can dispense with a commentary, and it is generally advisable to read Dante in a modern Italian edition, with notes in that language. Of several excellent editions of this description, the best, perhaps, is Fraticelli’s, 1892. For profound students, Ferrazzi, Manuale Dantesco, 1865, and Poletto, Dizionario Dantesco, 1885, are indispensable. A similar and not less important work in English, by Mr. Paget Toynbee, is now in the press. Of the numerous introductions to the Divine Comedy, the following may be recommended to English readers: Scartazzini, Companion to Dante, translated by A. J. Butler, 1895; Symonds, Introduction to Dante, 1890; Maria Francesca Rossetti, A Shadow of Dante, 1884; Dean Church, Dante, 1878; and A. J. Butler, Dante, 1895. Of these, Scartazzini is the scholar and Dantophilist, Symonds and Butler are the efficient critics from the modern point of view, and Miss Rossetti and Dean Church represent Dante’s own position. Moore’s Studies in Dante, now in course of publication, and Wicksteed’s Sermons on Dante, have a wider scope than that of an introductory manual. The point of Dante’s influence on posterity has been investigated by Oelsner, Influence of Dante on Modern Thought, 1895; and his relation to his own countrymen is discussed in the third volume of Dean Plumptre’s translation of the Divine Comedy. He is treated from the neo-catholic point of view by Ozanam, Dante et la Philosophie catholique, 1845.
The best editions of Dante’s lyrical poems, including the very many falsely attributed to him, and of his Vita Nuova and other prose works, are those by Fraticelli. The best English translation of the Vita Nuova is Rossetti’s; but other translators (Martin, 1862; Norton, 1893; Boswell, 1895; and the Austrian translator Federn, 1897) have done much more for the illustration of the text. A beautiful work on Dante, sein Leben und sein Werk, sein Verhältniss zur Kunst und zur Politik, by Franz Xaver Kraus, has just been published in Berlin.