Category: Encyclopedias/Dictionaries/Reference
Whoever examines a map of Europe, and sees the position occupied by Italy, must, even without knowledge of history, come to the conclusion that a country situated in so central a position and favoured in so many respects by Nature, cannot have failed to command an exalted rank...
It is not often that a writer towers so immeasurably above his contemporaries, that we can point him out, without fear of contradiction, as the greatest of his century. We can,...
10. CHAPTER IX.It is but seldom that poets are as romantic as their poems, or as interesting as the offspring of their imagination. When, therefore, a poet arises gifted with an interesting pe...
11. CHAPTER X.The Annals of Italy during the Seventeenth Century were not signalised by disasters as terrible as those of the Sixteenth Century. The country was not desolated by the invasion...
12. CHAPTER XI.In enumerating the Prose Writers of the Seventeenth Century, we are confronted with the illustrious name of GALILEO GALILEI, which will continue to be remembered as long as Scie...
14. CHAPTER XIII.PIETRO TRAPASSI was born in Rome on the third of January, 1698. His parents were of humble origin, and he was apprenticed to a goldsmith. He was gifted by nature with a musical...
9. CHAPTER VIII.NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI, the profoundest thinker and the keenest politician of his century, was born in Florence on the third of May, 1469. In 1498 he was made Secretary of State of...
18. CHAPTER XVII.The Prose Writers of the Eighteenth Century need not detain us long, for with the exception of the Comedies of Goldoni, few works have any sort of vitality. Some authors, especi...
7. CHAPTER VI.The Sixteenth Century had not seen many years before the world was presented with one of the most celebrated works in the Italian Language, a poem destined to acquire a reputati...
1. CHAPTER I.Whoever examines a map of Europe, and sees the position occupied by Italy, must, even without knowledge of history, come to the conclusion that a country situated in so central...
4. CHAPTER III.Unlike the life of Dante, of which so few particulars have come down to us that our curiosity is rather excited than satisfied by the information we possess, the life of PETRARC...
2. CHAPTER II.DURANTE (a name afterwards called for shortness DANTE) was born in Florence in the month of May, 1265, the son of Aldighiero Aldighieri and Bella, his wife. "Of his ancestors, t...
17. CHAPTER XVI.The three great writers whose works we have just examined, tower above their contemporaries at an immeasurable height. Still, many able poems were produced, and many authors are...
22. CHAPTER XXI.The author of this celebrated book was born at Saluzzo, in Piedmont, in 1788. He spent his youth in France, but shortly after he came of age, he returned to Italy and settled in...
16. CHAPTER XV.Italy had produced splendid epics, noble lyrics and spirited satires, but up to the middle of the Eighteenth Century she had not produced a single tragedy which could be placed...
21. CHAPTER XX.ALESSANDRO MANZONI, the most popular writer of the first half of the Nineteenth Century, was born at Milan on the seventh of March, 1785. His mother was the daughter of Beccaria...
15. CHAPTER XIV.If the Eighteenth Century was frivolous and luxurious, it was also picturesque and elegant. The age of Dresden china, the age of Watteau and Liotard in painting, must also have...
19. CHAPTER XVIII.The tremendous cataclysm of the French Revolution produced vibrations and convulsions throughout the civilized world, nor is it a subject of surprise that Italy responded more v...
5. CHAPTER IV.GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO was born in 1313 in Paris, the son of a Florentine merchant and a French-woman. His father had property in the hamlet of Certaldo, and the author always signe...
8. CHAPTER VII.The age of Ariosto is remarkable for the first appearance of blank verse in the Italian language. The _Italia Liberata_ of TRISSINO, on the subject of the victories of Belisariu...
23. CHAPTER XXII.The most conspicuous, though not in reality the most eminent, of the Italian poets in the early part of the Nineteenth Century, was VINCENZO MONTI. The inexhaustible fluency of...
3. CANTO XXXIV."The banners of Hell's Monarch do come forth Towards us; therefore look," so spake my guide, "If thou discern him." As when breathes a cloud Heavy and dense, or when the shades...
6. CHAPTER V.In striking contrast to the Fourteenth Century, the Fifteenth is conspicuous for a great dearth of eminent authors. The same may be noticed in the literary development of Englan...
13. CHAPTER XII.The precepts of Crescimbeni bore good fruit, and both prose and poetry gradually freed themselves from the faults of taste so obvious in the preceding generation. Verse became l...
25. CHAPTER XXIV.In this History of Italian Literature I have endeavoured, to the best of my ability, to trace its progress and development. That it has progressed, cannot, I think, be denied. P...
24. CHAPTER XXIII.Pre-eminent among the historians of the Nineteenth Century are CESARE BALBO and CESARE CANTU. They were both indefatigably laborious and they both devoted themselves to the eluc...