What English literature owes to that of Italy, except in the case of Byron’s Bernesque period, it owes before the middle of the seventeenth century. From Dante to Tasso the obligations were great and manifold. To Italian stories, Italian sonnets and lyrics, to Italian epic, romance and pastoral, our writers from Chaucer to Milton are multifariously indebted. Most indebted of all is the great epoch which culminated in Shakespeare. Before his day the Tudor Court had much affected the language and courtesies of Italy. Italian travel was common, and Italians were relatively numerous in London. Even that sweet stateliness which characterizes so much of the Elizabethan lyric is a gift of Italy. To Italian skill and refinement of language, to Italian melodies of versification, our rough lyric beginnings owe debts more appreciable than to Italian matter. In other words, Italy taught us the art of writing, while leaving us to use it upon our own realities of thought and feeling. Before the poetical innovations of Wyatt and Surrey, English verse had stood in much need of further moulding of form and polish of language. It was an outcome of the partiality of the Court of Henry VIII for Italian art and manners that there arose the new school of poets whom Puttenham describes as “a new company of courtly makers, of whom Sir Thomas Wyatt, the elder, and Henry, Earl of Surrey, were the two chieftains, who, having travelled into Italy and there tasted the sweet and stately measures and style of the Italian poesy, as novices newly crept out of the schools of Dante, Ariosto, and Petrarch, they greatly polished our rude and homely manner of vulgar poesy from that it had been before, and for that cause may justly be said the first reformers of our English metre and style.” Both Wyatt and Surrey are best known as sonneteers. Sometimes they are translating from Petrarch, but they are by no means mere translators, or even servile imitators. It is well known that the sonnet, as introduced by them, differs somewhat from the Italian, and its ending in an epigrammatic couplet is a purely English novelty. “Sonnet,” indeed, was for a time used loosely for other forms than the true poem of fourteen lines; but, when it found itself, it had lost nothing in strength and beauty. Perhaps the chief impulse in establishing the sonnet in England, when a certain halt had occurred after Surrey, came from Watson’s Passionate Century of Love (1581), although in these “sonnets,” Italian enough in spirit, the form is strangely made to consist of eighteen lines in three sestets.

The whole Elizabethan world of lyrists “Petrarchized.” The Amoretti of Spenser made him to Gabriel Harvey “an English Petrarch,” although in truth Petrarch is but one in a list of Spenser’s models, which includes also Sannazaro, Ariosto, and Tasso. It would be easy to trace throughout the English sonneteers, from the appearance of Tottell’s Miscellany in 1557, the effects of many an Italian Petrarchist whose name has not been given in the foregoing sketch. Nor was the borrowing confined to the sonnet form or the sonnet spirit. It extended also to the “sonnet series” or “sonnet sequence.” The notion of such related sonnets was introduced from Italy by Surrey in his series dedicated to “Geraldine,” and from him was taken up by Sidney (to Stella), Spenser (to Rosalind), Constable (Diana), Daniel (Delia), Drayton (Idea), Lodge (Phillis), Giles Fletcher (Licia), as well as by Shakespeare, who, in his more noble way, leaves the object nameless. This development should perhaps serve as a warning to those who press Shakespeare’s sonnets too rigorously for a key to his actual experiences.

Our servitude to France followed upon the decline of Italian influence. So far as we have been affected by Italy during the last century it has been due rather to the residence of English writers—Byron, Shelley, Landor, Leigh Hunt, Browning, Ruskin—in the peninsula, than to any new fountains of inspiration to be found in its productions.

The English genius wisely rejected some portions of the literary offerings of Italy. Especially was this so in the domain of critical principle, and particularly as it concerned the drama. Sidney’s Apologie for Poetrie follows the false doctrine of the dramatic unities as laid down by Castelvetro (1570), but such pseudo-classical plays as were attempted met with the fate which had previously attended Sackville’s sterile effort of Gorboduc. The only useful and permanent contribution from dramatic sources was the blank verse of Trissino, which Surrey first borrowed for his translation of the Aeneid, whence it was passed on to the stage by Sackville. Taken up by playwrights, it was moulded into a powerful instrument by Marlowe, and thence grew to all its subsequent ripe uses. For the rest, when Gascoigne translated Ariosto’s comedy I Suppositi in The Supposes, the Italian model itself proved barren, but the lesson of style in dialogue left its usual improving result.

In borrowing the Italian novelle and translating them, the English sixteenth century for a time reproduced their horrors and licentiousness, much to the disgust of many good citizens, who would scarcely have recognized themselves if described as Puritans. It became necessary even to order the burning of many of them for their wantonness. Yet on the whole the English selection, whether for mere reading (as in Painter’s Palace of Pleasure), or for exploitation by the stage (as in Romeo and Juliet), or by prose fiction (as in the work of Greene), shows sufficient indication of the superior English sense of decency. Nevertheless, it was a recommendation to story-books if it could be said (truly or otherwise) that the tales came “from Italy.” Nor did the borrowings of them cease till the Puritans closed the playhouses, for Massinger and Webster seek their situations where Shakespeare sought his, albeit their choice may be less sure.

The Italians display literary characteristics not difficult to define. They are the heirs of the Latin tradition. But Latin literature, as has been stated earlier in this book, was not particularly original either in thought or style. It was not a highly imaginative or emotional literature; its verse tends chiefly to polish, and its prose to either declamation or epigram. It was marked by incessant strivings after verbal art, but not by any abandonments of passionate ardour, of lofty endeavours, or of profound meditations. It was a literature given to narration and satire; but not to exalted feeling. In other words, it was a literature of culture rather than of spontaneity. It was prone, therefore, to follow models, and to consider the form before the substance. In almost all these qualities Italian literature shares. Except in Dante, it hardly shows in any large measure the great poetic faculty of experiencing and vividly realizing great passions and far-reaching thoughts. Nearly all the Italians, after the vernacular had once been established, cultivate the most fastidious perfection of workmanship, while their thought and feeling are of but average depth, dealing with things positive and on the surface. Except in Dante and his age, Italian literature avoids the visionary and abstract, and deals by preference with the material and sensuous. It is not marked by potent and seminal thoughts, which are found almost only in Dante. For that reason it is Dante whom we generally satisfy ourselves with reading, if, indeed, we are not rather satisfied with talking of him and reading about him.

CONSPECTUS OF ITALIAN LITERATURE

Transcriber’s Note: An image of the original table is available by downloading the HTML version of the book from Project Gutenberg.

DEPARTMENT OF LITERATURE. CHIEF REPRESENTATIVES. DATE. TYPICAL WORKS. SOME INFLUENCES ON ENGLISH LITERATURE.
Allegorical Poetry (“Visions”) DANTE ALIGHIERI 1265-1321 (Divina Commedia) The first model of noble style and matter in modern literature. Afforded much suggestion to Milton (Paradise Lost). Chaucer shows borrowings and translations in e.g., House of Fame, Parliament of Fowles, and the story of Ugolino in Monk’s Tale. Specific influences are less obvious than the general fact.
Francesco PETRARCA 1304-1374 Trionfi (“Triumphs”).
Lyrical Poetry:
(a) Sonnets and Canzoni (Dante and his circle) 1265-1321
Francesco PETRARCA 1304-1374 Sonnets and Canzoni Petrarch’s sonnets became the model for all later Italians, and thence for Englishmen. The form (modified) was introduced into England by Wyatt and Surrey (temp. Henry VIII) and sonnets, or sonnet sequences, were written by more than a hundred versifiers in the Elizabethan period. Examples are Spenser (Amoretti), Sidney (Astrophel and Stella), Watson (Teares of Fansie), Daniel (Delia), Drayton (Idea) Constable (Diana), Shakespeare. Milton’s sonnets (five of them in Italian) are of the same suggestion; and so down to them Rossetti and Mrs. Browning. The poetical collections of Elizabethans (Tottell’s Miscellany, The Paradise of Dainty Devices, etc.) are markedly Italian in provenance.
(Lorenzo de’ Medici, etc.) 1448-1492 Sonnets and Canzoni.
Lodovico ARIOSTO 1474-1533 Sonnets.
Torquato TASSO 1544-1595 Sonnets.
Giovanni Battista MARINI 1569-1625 (Various.)
(b) Other Lyrics Gabriello Chiabrera 1551-1637 Pindaric lyrics Influenced the taste for Pindarics which appeared in Cowley, Dryden, etc.
Pietro METASTASIO 1698-1782 Operatic lyrics.
Heroic and Epic Verse (chiefly romantic heroics) Giovanni BOCCACCIO 1313-1375 La Teseide and Filostrato Chief introducer of the octave stanza (ottava rima), which became the type for Italian epic. Adopted in English with one modification by Chaucer (Troilus and Cressida), and with another by Spenser (Faerie Queene). Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale is from Boccaccio’s Teseide, and his Troilus and Cressida (like Shakespeare’s) from the Filostrato. Chaucer shows many borrowings and paraphrases.
Luigi PULCI 1431-1487 Morgante Maggiore (heroic romance, serious only in part).
Matteo Maria BOIARDO 1430-1494 Orlando Innamorato (mockingly recast by Berni fifty years later). Important as leading to Ariosto’s poem. Boiardo was well known to Milton, and had previously served as material for Elizabethan story writers. Byron in Don Juan and Beppo adopted the “Bernesque” style.
Lodovico ARIOSTO 1474-1533 Orlando Furioso (1516) Favourite reading of Spenser, to whom it suggests the metrical form and romantic style of Faerie Queene. Translated by Harington (1591) in the same metre.
Torquato TASSO 1544-1595 Gerusalemme Liberata (1581) Spenser’s Faerie Queene is full of echoes and imitations of Tasso (the bower of Acrasia is a translation of the garden of Armida). Milton is similarly indebted, as well as to Tasso’s Creation (Il Mondo Creato). Translated by Fairfax (1600).
Giovanni Battista MARINI 1569-1625 Adone (a romantic epic) Chiefly memorable for encouragement of the fantastic style known as Marinism (early seventeenth century in England). Marini was favourite reading with Crashaw and his like.
Mock Heroic Alessandro Tassoni 1565-1638 La Secchia Rapita (“Rape of the Bucket”). Suggested Pope’s Rape of the Lock.
Satirical Verse (Ariosto)
Luigi Alamanni 1495-1556 Utilized by Wyatt.
Pietro Aretino 1492-1557 Much affected by Elizabethan pamphleteers, e.g., Nash (“the English Aretino”).
Drama: Tragedy Giovanni Giorgio TRISSIMO 1478-1550 Sofonisba. Important as the first example of blank verse, which was borrowed from him by Surrey, used in the first English tragedy (Gorboduc, by Sackville), and thence established by Marlowe for English drama.
TASSO Il Torrismondo. (The French and English dramatists proper began by following the Italian example of producing so-called classical plays: but English drama owes little to Italian, the case being rather the reverse. So far as Italian effect was pronounced it was in the direction of horrible detail.)
Scipione MAFFEI 1675-1755 Merope.
Vittorio ALFIERI 1749-1803 Saul.
Drama: Comedy ARIOSTO 1474-1533 I Suppositi and La Cassaria, etc. I Suppositi (The Supposes) translated by Gascoigne (1566) as one of our earliest comedies. (The general influence in England was as slight as that of Tragedy. It should, however, be remarked that our Harlequin, Pantaloon, Columbine, and Punch, are derived from the old Italian commedie dell’arte, i.e., stock un-literary comedies: also that the “Masques” (up to Ben Jonson) were a suggestion from Italy.)
Niccolo MACHIAVELLI 1469-1527 Mandragola, etc.
(Pietro Aretino)
Carlo GOLDONI 1707-1792 Comedies.
Pastoral Drama (See below, “Pastoral Eclogues.”) Angelo POLIZIANO fl. 1480 Orfeo.
TASSO 1544-1595 Aminta (1572) Watson’s Amyntas (1584).
Battista GUARINI 1537-1612 Pastor Fido (1585) Many times translated into English, first in 1602. Fletcher’s Faithful Shepherdess.
Musical Drama (Melodrama, Opera.) Ottavio Rinuccini fl. 1594 Dafne and Euridice.
Apostolo Zeno 1669-1750
Pietro METASTASIO 1698-1782 Twenty-eight grand operas (La Semiramide, etc.).
Pastoral Eclogues Battista Spagnoli (MANTUANUS) fl. 1502 Latin eclogues Used by Barclay (1513) and freely by Spenser (Shepheard’s Calender), quoted by Holofernes in Shakespeare.
Giacomo SANNAZARO 1458-1530 Arcadia (1504) (prose and verse). Original of Sidney’s Arcadia. (These revive pastoral poetry among both the French (Marot) and English.)
(Marini.)
Prose Fiction Giovanni BOCCACCIO 1313-1375 Decameron (100 tales). Suggests plan of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and also several of the tales themselves. In Elizabethan times some of them appear in Painter’s Palace of Pleasure, whence All’s Well that Ends Well is derived. Well known at all times.
Ser Giovanni Publ. 1558 Pecorone Much read and used by Elizabethans (Greene, Peel, etc. ). The storehouse of dramatic plots. Thus, Romeo and Juliet, Measure for Measure, Othello, etc., are from the Novelle.
Giraldi Cinthio Publ. 1565 Hecatommithi
Matteo Bandello, etc. Publ. 1554-1573 Novelle
Other Prose Niccolo MACHIAVELLI 1469-1527 Il Principe, History, Discourses on Livy The Prince widely read. Bacon was well acquainted with Machiavelli, and takes occasional suggestion from him in the Essays.