A history of Italian literature

by Richard Garnett

This subject is most fully treated in general histories, whether of Italian or romantic literature. Panizzi’s introduction to his edition of Boiardo and Ariosto (1831), though in many respects erroneous or antiquated, deserves attention, as does Ferrario, Storia ed Analisi degli antichi Romanzi di Cavalleria, 1828-29. Ariosto’s indebtedness to earlier romancers has been investigated by Rajna, Le Fonti dell’ Orlando Furioso. Leigh Hunt’s Stories from the Italian Poets is a charming companion to Italian chivalric poetry.

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.

TASSO

All previous biographies are superseded by Solerti’s, 1895.

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Crescimbeni,Vite degl’ Arcadi Illustri, 1704-13.—Cantù,L’Abate Parini e la Lombardia nel Secolo XVIII.—Carducci,Parini.—Vernon Lee,Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy, 1880. Much of this brilliant book is devoted to music and the stage, but the literary element is never long absent.

NINETEENTH CENTURY

The most valuable essays on Italian literature in the nineteenth century are at present to be found in periodicals, especially the Nuova Antologia and theDeutsche Rundschau; in general works on Italy like Mariotti’s; in the biographies and correspondence of distinguished authors of the period, and in such monographs upon them as Zumbini’sSulle Poesie di Vincenzo Monti. Modern Italian poetry is well treated by W. D. Howells,Modern Italian Poets, 1887; by F. Sewall in his introduction to his translations from Carducci, 1892; and in the preface and biographical introductions to Greene’sItalian Lyrists of To-Day, 1893.