Studies in the Poetry of Italy, Part II. Italian

We have seen, at the end of the last chapter, how Dante had made a vow to glorify Beatrice, as no other woman had ever been glorified, and how he studied and labored to prepare...

In the preceding chapter we have outlined the development of early Italian poetry, endeavoring to show how from the Sicilian school it was carried over to Tuscany; how Guido Gui...

From the beginning of Italian literature to the death of Ariosto nearly three hundred years had elapsed. In that period four of its greatest writers had appeared. Yet no literat...

It is hard for people to-day to realize the enormous difference between the medieval and modern world. The former was full of superstition and naive belief; authority reigned su...

We have seen that Petrarch is considered the founder of the Renaissance in Italy. He died in 1374, and it took a century and more to complete the work he inaugurated. The whole...

The first thing that strikes the attention of the student of Italian literature is its comparatively recent origin. In the north and south of France the Old French and Provencal...

We have hitherto discussed the development of poetry almost exclusively; and this is justifiable, for in Italy, as in all other countries, the development of prose as a form of...

seventeenth centuries scarcely one deserves mention. In the early part of the eighteenth century one name became famous, Scipio Maffei (1675-1755) the immediate predecessor of A...

In the history of Italian literature, Dante, to expand a figure already used, stands at the end of the Middle Ages like a lofty, solitary mountain peak; behind him the low, leve...