did. Among the numberless writers of tragedy in the sixteenth and

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 Alfieri, whose Merope was vastly popular throughout all Europe.

Yet Italy could not boast of a truly national drama before the appearance of Vittorio Alfieri (1749-1803), who gave her an honorable rank in this department of the world's literature. The story of his life, as told by himself in his autobiography, is exceedingly interesting. Born in Asti, near Turin, of a noble family, after a youth spent in idleness, ignorance, and selfish pleasure, he "found himself," at the age of twenty-six, and being fired with ambition to become a poet, he began a long period of self-education, in which he made especial effort to master the Italian language, which he, born in Piedmont, and long absent abroad, only half understood. The rest of his life was spent in this study and in writing his dramas.

In his reform of the Italian drama, Alfieri did not, like Manzoni later, try to introduce Shakesperean methods. He went back to the tragic system of the Greeks and tried to improve on the French followers of the latter. He observed the three unities, especially that of action, even more strictly than Corneille or even Racine. Hence his plays are extraordinarily short (only one is of more than fifteen hundred lines). The action moves on swiftly to the climax with no effort at mere dramatic situation or stage effect.

Of especial interest are the subjects of Alfieri's tragedies, all of them having a political or social tendency. They all express the theories of the French philosophers then so popular in Italy, concerning freedom and the rights of the people in opposition to the divine right of kings. His heroes--Virginius, Brutus, Timoleon--all proclaim the liberty of man. It is interesting to note that he dedicated one of his plays to George Washington. To the reader of the present day even his best plays--Virginia, Orestes, Agamemnon, Myrra, and Saul--seem conventional, monotonous, and unreal. The characters are mere types of passion or sentiment; there is no variety of action, no episodes, and no poetical adornments. Yet in his own age Alfieri was regarded as a great tragic poet, not only in his own country, but beyond the Alps. His influence on Italian literature was very great. For the next two generations there was scarcely a poet who did not admire and imitate him. Parini, Foscolo, Monti, Manzoni, Leopardi, and Pellico, all looked up to him as their master.

Alfieri was the first to speak of a fatherland, a united Italy; he practically founded the patriotic school of literature which has lasted down to the present time. Hence he is even more important from a political standpoint than from a literary one. He himself looked on his tragedies as a means of inspiring new and higher political ideas in his fellow-countrymen, degraded as they had been by the long oppression of Spain. "I wrote," he says, "because the sad conditions of the times did not allow me to act."

The literature of the first half of the nineteenth century was dominated by this political and patriotic spirit; Monti, Foscolo, Manzoni, and Pellico, all wrote dramas in the spirit of Alfieri. Most of them, however, are better known in other accounts. Foscolo, through his letters of Jacopo Ortis, the Italian Werther, and his literary essays; Pellico for his My Prisons; Manzoni for his Betrothed, one of the great novels of modern times.

Greater than all of these, however, is Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837), who alone is worthy to be placed beside the four great Italian poets, Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, and Tasso, the last three of whom, at least, he might under happier circumstances have equaled. The story of his life is a pathetic one. Born of a family noble but poor, with a sensitive and melancholy temperament, the circumstances of his life only added to his morbid tendency, and after a brief existence, passed in sickness, poverty, and gloom, he died. Leopardi was great as a poet, a philosopher, and scholar. His Ode to Italy is one of the noblest poems in the language, and his Solitary Shepherd of Asia, is full of incomparable beauty.

Other names of this later period crowd upon our attention, in political literature, Mazzini; in the novel, D'Azeglio, Cantu, Guerazzi, and Gozzi; in history Botta, Balbo, and Cantu. But we must hasten to close this brief survey, with merely mentioning the names of a few of the more important writers of the present time; in poetry, Carducci, Ada Negri, D'Annunzio; in the novel, which in Italy as elsewhere has usurped the chief place, Fogazzaro, D'Annunzio. The latter, although still young, is, next to Carducci, the most considerable figure in Italian literature to-day. In his dramas, poetry, and novels he shows a wonderful command of language and descriptive imagination, and at one time bid fair to become a truly great writer. In his later works he shows retrogression rather than progress, and the taint of immorality and a certain exaggerated eccentricity of thought have vitiated his talent and tended to destroy his popularity.

QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

1. Mention some causes of the degradation of Italian literature in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

2. Describe the political and social condition of the country.

3. Who was Marini?

4. Name some of the early writers of Italian comedy.

5. Life, character, and literary genius of Goldoni.

6. What was the musical drama; who its greatest writer?

7. Name two famous tragedies before the time of Alfieri.

8. Give an account of the life of Alfieri.

9. What is the general character of his plays?

10. Alfieri's influence, what form did it take?

11. Name some of his followers.

12. Who was the greatest poet of the early nineteenth century?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

For the political and social condition of Italy during the period of decline see Symond's Catholic Reaction. Alfieri's Autobiography, an intensely interesting book, has been often published in English. For modern literature see Howell's Modern Italian Poets, Sewall's translations from Carducci, and Greene's Italian Lyrists of To-day.

INDEX

Accius, 5.

Alexander, 7.

Alfieri, Vittorio, 341, seq.

Alighieri, Dante, 195, seq.; 299, 313, 337.

Andronicus, 4, 39, 119.

Angelo, Michel, 335.

Annales, 124.

Anselm, 179.

Apollodorus, 39.

Aquinas, St. Thomas, 180, 256, 263.

Arezzo, Guittone d', 184, seq.

Argo, 7.

Argonautae, 7.

Ariosto, 191, Chap. VI. works; 303, 322, 335.

Aristophanes, 39.

Bandello, Matteo, 335.

Beatrice, 197, 204, 206, seq.

Bellum, Punicum, 119.

Bembo, Pietro, 335.

Benivieni, Girolamo, 189.

Berni, Francesco, 335.

Boccaccio, 196, 267, Chap. V. works; 286, seq.; 299, 335, 337.

Boiardo, 191, 300, seq.; 322.

Bonaventura, St., 180.

Bracciolini, Poggio, 297.

Caesar, 82, 90, 129.

Calvo, Bonifaccio, 182.

Carducci, 345.

Castiglione, Baldasarre, 335.

Cato, 9, 72, 122.

Catullus, 128.

Cavalcanti, 193, seq.

Cellini, Benvenuto, 335.

Cervantes, 314.

Chanson, de geste, 190, 299.

Chaucer, 286, seq.; 289.

Chiabrera, 339.

Ciani, Gioachino, 286.

Cicero, 129.

Cino da Pistoia, 193.

Cinzio, Giraldo, 335.

Colonna, Vittoria, 335.

Convito, 205.

Cratinus, 39.

Damian, Peter, 179, 257.

Daniel, Arnaut, 184.

D'Annunzio, 345.

Dante da Majano, 193.

Decameron, 287, seq.

Dies, Irae, 188.

Divine Comedy, 205, Chap. III., 316.

Domitian, 106.

Domitius, 9.

Eclogues of Vergil, 130.

Ennius, 5, 74; epitaph of, 75; 121.

Epicharmus, 74.

Eupolis, 39.

Fabulae praetextae, 5.

Fasani, 188.

Ficino, Marsilio, 297.

Filicaja, 339.

Firenzuola, 335.

Flagellants, 188, seq.

Foscolo, 343, 344.

Francesca da Rimini, 203, 221.

Frederick II., 182, seq.

Fulvius, 122, 123.

Georgics of Vergil, 130.

Gianni, Lapo, 193.

Goldoni, Carlo, 339.

Guarini, 335.

Guelphs and Ghibellines, 198, seq.

Guicciardini, 335.

Guinicelli, Guido, 185, seq.; 247.

Hesiod, 72.

Horace, 72, 80.

Italian Renaissance, 314, 335.

Jacopone da Todi, 189.

Jerusalem Delivered, 304, 322, seq.

Juvenal, 105.

Lanfranc, 179.

Latini, Brunetto, 196, 227.

Laudi, 189.

Laura, 269, seq.

Leopardi, Giacomo, 344.

Lombard, Peter, 179.

Lucan, 9.

Lucilius, 72, 73, 75, 76, 128.

Lucretius, 128.

Machiavelli, Nicholas, 335, 340.

Maecenas, 83, 91, 92, 95, 130.

Maffei, Scipio, 342.

Manzoni, 343, 344.

Marini, 339.

Marsili, Luigi, 297.

Maternus, 9.

Menander, 39.

Metastasio, Pietro, 341.

Mirandola, Pico della, 298.

Naevius, 5, 40, 119.

Nardi, 335.

New Life, The, 206, seq.

Octavia, 9.

Odyssey, 4, 119.

OEnomaus, 8.

Orlando, 300; Innamorato, 301; Furioso, 303; seq., 316.

Ovid, 9, 72.

Pacuvius, 5.

Paris, 7.

Pellico, 343, 344.

Persius, 99.

Petrarch, Chap. IV., 299, 335, 337.

Petroni, Pietro de', 285.

Pharsalia of Lucan, 127.

Philemon, 39.

Plautus, 40.

Politian, 298, 299.

Pollio, 8, 91.

Pomponius Secundus, 9.

Porto Luigi da, 335.

Provencal, 173, 182, seq.

Ptolemaic system, 216, 217.

Pulci, Luigi, 191, 299.

Punica, of Silius, 127.

Sallust, 129.

Salutati, Coluccio, 297.

Sannazaro, 335.

Sarpi, 339.

Seneca, 9.

Sordello, of Mantua, 182, 241.

Speculum Majus, 180.

Stabat Mater, 189.

St. Francis, 187, 256.

Tacitus, 107.

Tasso, 298, Chapter VII. Works, 322, 337.

Terence, 40.

Testi, 339.

Thebaid, of Statius, 127.

Thomas, of Celano, 188.

Thyestes, 9.

Uberti, Farinata degli, 225.

Ulysses, 230.

Universal Monarchy, 205; political treatise on, 206.

Vaqueiras, Rambaud de, 181.

Varchi, 335.

Varius, 8, 9.

Varro, 72, 128.

Vasari, 335.

Vergil, 9, 72, 91, 128, Chap. III.

Vico, 339.

Vidal, Pierre, 181.

Vigne, Pier delle, 183.

Vincent of Beauvais, 180.

Works and Days, 72.

Zorzi, Bartolomeo, 182.

Transcriber's Notes

This is the second part of a larger work. The first part is "Studies in the Poetry of Italy, I. Roman" by Frank Justus Miller. References in the index to pages earlier than 173 refer the first part.

Page 261

'among the men and woman'

'woman' is likely 'women'. Unchanged.

Page 273

'noonday' rather that 'noon-day' as used elsewhere.

Unchanged.

Page 302

'Rinaldo, and the latter's sister, Brandiamente,'

Brandiamente also spelled Brandiamante. Unchanged.

Page 302

'Other important characters are Astolfo, Rodomonte,'

Rodamonte also spelled Rodomonte. Unchanged.

Pages 305-315

Medoro and Medore are used interchangeably. Unchanged.

Page 313

'Roger and Brandiamante, the former a pagan,'

Brandiamente also spelled Brandiamante. Unchanged.

Page 313

on his wedding day, slays Rodamonte,

'Rodamonte also spelled Rodomonte. Unchanged.'

Page 315

'For the romatic poets,'

May be 'romantic' vice 'romatic'. Unchanged.

End of Project Gutenberg's Studies in the Poetry of Italy, by Oscar Kuhns