Jacopone covered himself with rags, joined St. Francis's Third Order , took pleasure in being laughed at, and was followed by a crowd of people who mocked him and called after him Jacopone, Jacopone. He went on raving for years, subjecting himself to the severest sufferings, and giving vent to his religious intoxication in his poems.
Jacopone was a mystic , who from his hermit 's cell looked out into the world and specially watched the papacy, scourging with his words Pope Celestine V and Pope Boniface VIII, for which he was imprisoned. The religious movement in Umbria was followed by another literary phenomenon, the religious drama. In a hermit, Raniero Fasani , left the cavern where he had lived for many years and suddenly appeared at Perugia.
Fasani represented himself as sent by God to disclose mysterious visions, and to announce to the world terrible visitations.
This was a turbulent period of political faction the Guelphs and Ghibellines , interdicts and excommunications issued by the popes, and reprisals of the imperial party. In this environment, Fasani's pronouncements stimulated the formation of the Compagnie di Disciplinanti , who, for a penance, scourged themselves until they drew blood, and sang Laudi in dialogue in their confraternities. These laudi , closely connected with the liturgy , were the first example of the drama in the vernacular tongue of Italy. As early as the end of the 13th century the Devozioni del Giovedi e Venerdi Santo appeared, mixing liturgy and drama.
Later, di un Monaco che ando al servizio di Dio "of a monk who entered the service of God" approached the definite form the religious drama would assume in the following centuries. The Tuscans spoke a dialect that closely resembled Latin and afterward became, almost exclusively, the language of literature, and which was already regarded at the end of the 13th century as surpassing other dialects. Lingua Tusca magis apta est ad literam sive literaturam "The Tuscan tongue is better suited to the letter or literature" wrote Antonio da Tempo of Padua , born about After the fall of the Hohenstaufen at the Battle of Benevento in , it was the first province of Italy.
From , Florence began a political reform movement that led, in , to the appointment of the Priori delle Arti , and establishment of the Arti Minori. This was later copied by Siena with the Magistrato dei Nove , by Lucca , by Pistoia , and by other Guelph cities in Tuscany with similar popular institutions. The guilds took the government into their hands, and it was a time of social and political prosperity. In Tuscany, too, popular love poetry existed. A school of imitators of the Sicilians was led by Dante da Majano , but its literary originality took another line — that of humorous and satirical poetry.
The entirely democratic form of government created a style of poetry that stood strongly against the medieval mystic and chivalrous style. Devout invocation of God or of a lady came from the cloister and the castle ; in the streets of the cities everything that had gone before was treated with ridicule or biting sarcasm.
Folgore da San Gimignano laughs when in his sonnets he tells a party of Sienese youths the occupations of every month in the year, or when he teaches a party of Florentine lads the pleasures of every day in the week. Cenne della Chitarra laughs when he parodies Folgore's sonnets. The sonnets of Rustico di Filippo are half-fun and half-satire, as is the work of Cecco Angiolieri of Siena, the oldest humorist we know, a far-off precursor of Rabelais and Montaigne. Another kind of poetry also began in Tuscany.
He attempted political poetry, and, although his work is often obscure, he prepared the way for the Bolognese school. Bologna was the city of science, and philosophical poetry appeared there. Guido Guinizelli was the poet after the new fashion of the art. In his work the ideas of chivalry are changed and enlarged. Only those whose heart is pure can be blessed with true love, regardless of class. He refuted the traditional credo of courtly love, for which love is a subtle philosophy only a few chosen knights and princesses could grasp.
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Love is blind to blasons but not to a good heart when it finds one: Guinizzelli's democratic view can be better understood in the light of the greater equality and freedom enjoyed by the city-states of the center-north and the rise of a middle class eager to legitimise itself in the eyes of the old nobility, still regarded with respect and admiration but in fact dispossessed of its political power. Guinizelli's Canzoni make up the bible of Dolce Stil Novo, and one in particular, "Al cor gentil" "To a Kind Heart" is considered the manifesto of the new movement that bloomed in Florence under Cavalcanti, Dante, and their followers.
His poetry has some of the faults of the school of d'Arezzo. Nevertheless, he marks a great development in the history of Italian art, especially because of his close connection with Dante's lyric poetry. In the 13th century, there were several major allegorical poems. One of these is by Brunetto Latini , who was a close friend of Dante. His Tesoretto is a short poem, in seven-syllable verses, rhyming in couplets, in which the author is lost in a wilderness and meets a lady, who represents Nature and gives him much instruction.
We see here vision, allegory, and instruction with a moral object—three elements we find again in the Divine Comedy. Francesco da Barberino , a learned lawyer who was secretary to bishops , a judge , and a notary , wrote two little allegorical poems, the Documenti d'amore and Del reggimento e dei costumi delle donne. The poems today are generally studied not as literature, but for historical context.
A fourth allegorical work was the Intelligenza , which is sometimes attributed to Compagni, but is probably only a translation of French poems. In the 15th century, humanist and publisher Aldus Manutius published Tuscan poets Petrarch and Dante Alighieri The Divine Comedy , creating the model for what became a standard for modern Italian.
Italian prose of the 13th century was as abundant and varied as its poetry. The earliest example dates from , and consists of short notices of entries and expenses by Mattasala di Spinello dei Lambertini of Siena. At this time, there was no sign of literary prose in Italian, though there was in French. Rusticiano of Pisa , who was for a long while at the court of Edward I of England , composed many chivalrous romances, derived from the Arthurian cycle , and subsequently wrote the Travels of Marco Polo , which may have been dictated by Polo himself.
And finally Brunetto Latini wrote his Tesoro in French. Latini also wrote some works in Italian prose such as La rettorica , an adaptation from Cicero 's De inventione , and translated three orations from Cicero: There are some moral narratives taken from religious legends, a romance of Julius Caesar , some short histories of ancient knights, the Tavola rotonda , translations of the Viaggi of Marco Polo , and of Latini's Tesoro.
At the same time, translations from Latin of moral and ascetic works, histories, and treatises on rhetoric and oratory appeared. Some of the works previously regarded as the oldest in the Italian language have been shown to be forgeries of a much later time. The oldest prose writing is a scientific book, Composizione del mondo by Ristoro d'Arezzo , who lived about the middle of the 13th century.
This work is a copious treatise on astronomy and geography. Ristoro was a careful observer of natural phenomena; many of the things he relates were the result of his personal investigations, and consequently his works are more reliable than those of other writers of the time on similar subjects. Another short treatise exists: De regimine rectoris , by Fra Paolino , a Minorite friar of Venice, who was probably bishop of Pozzuoli , and who also wrote a Latin chronicle.
His treatise stands in close relation to that of Egidio Colonna , De regimine principum. It is written in the Venetian language. The 13th century was very rich in tales.
A collection called the Cento Novelle antiche contains stories drawn from many sources, including Asian, Greek and Trojan traditions, ancient and medieval history, the legends of Brittany , Provence and Italy, the Bible , local Italian traditions, and histories of animals and old mythology. This book has a distant resemblance to the Spanish collection known as El Conde Lucanor. The peculiarity of the Italian book is that the stories are very short, and seem to be mere outlines to be filled in by the narrator as he goes along.
Other prose novels were inserted by Francesco Barberino in his work Del reggimento e dei costumi delle donne , but they are of much less importance. On the whole the Italian novels of the 13th century have little originality, and are a faint reflection of the very rich legendary literature of France. Some attention should be paid to the Lettere of Fra Guittone d'Arezzo, who wrote many poems and also some letters in prose, the subjects of which are moral and religious.
Guittone's love of antiquity and the traditions of Rome and its language was so strong that he tried to write Italian in a Latin style. The letters are obscure, involved and altogether barbarous. Guittone took as his special model Seneca the Younger , and hence his prose became bombastic. Guittone viewed his style as very artistic, but later scholars view it as extravagant and grotesque. In the year a period of new literature began, developing from the Tuscan beginnings. The whole novelty and poetic power of this school, consisted in, according to Dante, Quando Amore spira, noto, ed a quel niodo Ch'ei detta dentro, vo significando: Love is a divine gift that redeems man in the eyes of God, and the poet's mistress is the angel sent from heaven to show the way to salvation.
This a neo-platonic approach widely endorsed by Dolce Stil Novo , and although in Cavalcanti's case it can be upsetting and even destructive, it is nonetheless a metaphysical experience able to lift man onto a higher, spiritual dimension. Cavalcanti's poems fall into two classes: To the first set belongs the famous poem Sulla natura d'amore , which in fact is a treatise on amorous metaphysics , and was annotated later in a learned way by renowned Platonic philosophers of the 15th century, such as Marsilius Ficinus and others.
In other poems, Cavalcanti tends to stifle poetic imagery under a dead weight of philosophy. On the other hand, in his Ballate , he pours himself out ingenuously, but with a consciousness of his art. The greatest of these is considered to be the ballata composed by Cavalcanti when he was banished from Florence with the party of the Bianchi in , and took refuge at Sarzana. The third poet among the followers of the new school was Cino da Pistoia, of the family of the Sinibuldi. His love poems are sweet, mellow and musical.
Dante, one of the greatest of Italian poets, also shows these lyrical tendencies. In he wrote La Vita Nuova "new life" in English, so called to indicate that his first meeting with Beatrice was the beginning of a new life , in which he idealizes love. It is a collection of poems to which Dante added narration and explication.
Everything is supersensual, aerial, heavenly, and the real Beatrice is supplanted by an idealized vision of her, losing her human nature and becoming a representation of the divine. Dante is the main character of the work, and the narration purports to be autobiographical, though historical information about Dante's life proves this to be poetic license. Several of the lyrics of the La Vita Nuova deal with the theme of the new life.
Not all the love poems refer to Beatrice, however—other pieces are philosophical and bridge over to the Convivio. Divina Commedia tells of the poet's travels through the three realms of the dead— Hell , Purgatory , and Paradise —accompanied by the Latin poet Virgil. An allegorical meaning hides under the literal one of this great epic. Dante, travelling through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, symbolizes mankind aiming at the double object of temporal and eternal happiness. The forest where the poet loses himself symbolizes the civil and religious confusion of society, deprived of its two guides, the emperor and the pope.
The mountain illuminated by the sun is universal monarchy. The three beasts are the three vices and the three powers that offered the greatest obstacles to Dante's designs. Pride is the house of France. Avarice is the papal court. Virgil represents reason and the empire. Beatrice is the symbol of the supernatural aid mankind must have to attain the supreme end, which is God. The merit of the poem does not lie in the allegory, which still connects it with medieval literature.
What is new is the individual art of the poet, the classic art transfused for the first time into a Romance form. Whether he describes nature, analyses passions, curses the vices or sings hymns to the virtues, Dante is notable for the grandeur and delicacy of his art. He took the materials for his poem from theology , philosophy, history, and mythology, but especially from his own passions, from hatred and love.
Under the pen of the poet, the dead come to life again; they become men again, and speak the language of their time, of their passions. Thomas Aquinas , Cacciaguida , St. Benedict , and St. Peter , are all so many objective creations; they stand before us in all the life of their characters, their feelings, and their habits.
The real chastizer of the sins and rewarder of virtues is Dante himself. The personal interest he brings to bear on the historical representation of the three worlds is what most interests us and stirs us. Dante remakes history after his own passions. Thus the Divina Commedia is not only a lifelike drama of contemporary thoughts and feelings, but also a clear and spontaneous reflection of the individual feelings of the poet, from the indignation of the citizen and the exile to the faith of the believer and the ardour of the philosopher.
The Divina Commedia defined the destiny of Italian literature, giving artistic lustre to all forms of literature the Middle Ages had produced. Two facts characterize the literary life of Petrarch: The facts are not separate; rather, the former caused the latter [ citation needed ]. The Petrarch who unearthed the works of the great Latin writers helps us understand the Petrarch who loved a real woman, named Laura, and celebrated her in her life and after her death in poems full of studied elegance.
Petrarch was the first humanist , and he was at the same time the first modern lyric poet. His career was long and tempestuous. He lived for many years at Avignon , cursing the corruption of the papal court; he travelled through nearly the whole of Europe; he corresponded with emperors and popes, and he was considered the most important writer of his time. His Canzoniere is divided into three parts: The one and only subject of these poems is love; but the treatment is full of variety in conception, in imagery and in sentiment, derived from the most varied impressions of nature.
Petrarch is a psychological poet, who examines all his feelings and renders them with an art of exquisite sweetness. The lyrics of Petrarch are no longer transcendental like Dante's, but keep entirely within human limits. The second part of the Canzoniere is the more passionate. The Trionfi are inferior; in them Petrarch tried to imitate the Divina Commedia , but failed. The Canzoniere includes also a few political poems, one supposed to be addressed to Cola di Rienzi and several sonnets against the court of Avignon. These are remarkable for their vigour of feeling, and also for showing that, compared to Dante, Petrarch had a sense of a broader Italian consciousness.
He wooed an Italy that was different from any conceived by the people of the Middle Ages. In this, he was a precursor of modern times and modern aspirations. Petrarch had no decided political idea. He exalted Cola di Rienzi, invoked the emperor Charles IV , and praised the Visconti ; in fact, his politics were affected more by impressions than by principles.
Above all this was his love of Italy, which in his mind was reunited with Rome, the great city of his heroes, Cicero and Scipio. Petrarca, some say, began the Renaissance humanism. Boccaccio had the same enthusiastic love of antiquity and the same worship for the new Italian literature as Petrarch. He was the first to put together a Latin translation of the Iliad and, in , the Odyssey.
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His classical learning was shown in the work De genealogia deorum , in which he enumerates the gods according to genealogical trees from the various authors who wrote about the pagan divinities. The Genealogia deorum is, as A. Heeren said, an encyclopaedia of mythological knowledge; and it was the precursor of the humanist movement of the 15th century. Boccaccio was also the first historian of women in his De mulieribus claris , and the first to tell the story of the great unfortunates in his De casibus virorum illustrium.
He continued and perfected former geographical investigations in his interesting book De montibus, silvis, fontibus, lacubus, fluminibus, stagnis, et paludibus, et de nominibus maris , for which he made use of Vibius Sequester. Of his Italian works, his lyrics do not come anywhere near to the perfection of Petrarch's. His narrative poetry is better. He did not invent the octave stanza , but was the first to use it in a work of length and artistic merit, his Teseide , the oldest Italian romantic poem.
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It may be that Boccaccio knew the French poem of the Trojan war by Benoit de Sainte-More ; but the interest of his poem lies in the analysis of the passion of love. The Ninfale fiesolano tells the love story of the nymph Mesola and the shepherd Africo. The Amorosa Visione , a poem in triplets, doubtless owed its origin to the Divina Commedia. The Ameto is a mixture of prose and poetry, and is the first Italian pastoral romance. The Filocopo takes the earliest place among prose romances.
In it Boccaccio tells the loves of Florio and Biancafiore. Probably for this work he drew materials from a popular source or from a Byzantine romance, which Leonzio Pilato may have mentioned to him. In the Filocopo , there is a remarkable exuberance in the mythological part, which damages the romance as an artistic work, but contributes to the history of Boccaccio's mind.
The Fiammetta is another romance, about the loves of Boccaccio and Maria d'Aquino, a supposed natural daughter of King Robert, whom he always called by this name of Fiammetta. Boccaccio became famous principally for the Italian work, Decamerone , a collection of a hundred novels, related by a party of men and women who retired to a villa near Florence to escape the plague in Novel-writing, so abundant in the preceding centuries, especially in France, now for the first time assumed an artistic shape. The style of Boccaccio tends to the imitation of Latin, but in him prose first took the form of elaborated art.
The rudeness of the old fabliaux gives place to the careful and conscientious work of a mind that has a feeling for what is beautiful, that has studied the classic authors, and that strives to imitate them as much as possible. Over and above this, in the Decamerone , Boccaccio is a delineator of character and an observer of passions. In this lies his novelty. Much has been written about the sources of the novels of the Decamerone. Probably Boccaccio made use both of written and of oral sources.
Popular tradition must have furnished him with the materials of many stories, as, for example, that of Griselda. Unlike Petrarch, who was always discontented, preoccupied, wearied with life, disturbed by disappointments, we find Boccaccio calm, serene, satisfied with himself and with his surroundings. Notwithstanding these fundamental differences in their characters, the two great authors were old and warm friends.
But their affection for Dante was not equal. Petrarch, who says that he saw him once in his childhood, did not preserve a pleasant recollection of him, and it would be useless to deny that he was jealous of his renown. The Divina Commedia was sent him by Boccaccio, when he was an old man, and he confessed that he never read it. On the other hand, Boccaccio felt for Dante something more than love—enthusiasm.
He wrote a biography of him which some critics deprecate the accuracy of and gave public critical lectures on the poem in Santa Maria del Fiore at Florence. Fazio degli Uberti and Federico Frezzi were imitators of the Divina Commedia , but only in its external form. The former wrote the Dittamondo , a long poem, in which the author supposes that he was taken by the geographer Solinus into different parts of the world, and that his Commedia guide related the history of them. The legends of the rise of the different Italian cities have some importance historically. Frezzi, bishop of his native town Foligno , wrote the Quadriregio , a poem of the four kingdoms Love, Satan, the Vices, and the Virtues.
This poem has many points of resemblance with the Divina Commedia. Frezzi pictures the condition of man who rises from a state of vice to one of virtue, and describes hell, limbo, purgatory and heaven. The poet has Pallas for a companion. Ser Giovanni Fiorentino wrote, under the title of Pecorone , a collection of tales, which are supposed to have been related by a monk and a nun in the parlour of the monastery Novelists of Forli.
He closely imitated Boccaccio, and drew on Villani's chronicle for his historical stories.
Franco Sacchetti wrote tales too, for the most part on subjects taken from Florentine history. His book gives a lifelike picture of Florentine society at the end of the 14th century. The subjects are almost always improper, but it is evident that Sacchetti collected these anecdotes so he could draw his own conclusions and moral reflections, which he puts at the end of each story.
From this point of view, Sacchetti's work comes near to the Monalisaliones of the Middle Ages. A third novelist was Giovanni Sercambi of Lucca, who after wrote a book, in imitation of Boccaccio, about a party of people who were supposed to fly from a plague and to go travelling about in different Italian cities, stopping here and there telling stories.
Later, but important, names are those of Masuccio Salernitano Tommaso Guardato , who wrote the Novellino , and Antonio Cornazzano whose Proverbii became extremely popular. Chronicles formerly believed to have been of the 13th century are now mainly regarded as forgeries. At the end of the 13th century there is a chronicle by Dino Compagni , probably authentic. Giovanni Villani , born in , was more of a chronicler than an historian. He relates the events up to The journeys that he made in Italy and France, and the information thus acquired, mean that his chronicle, the Historie Fiorentine , covers events all over Europe.
He speaks at length, not only of events in politics and war, but of the stipends of public officials, the sums of money used to pay for soldiers and public festivals, and many other things of which knowledge is valuable. Villani's narrative is often encumbered with fables and errors, particularly when he speaks of things that happened before his time. Matteo was the brother of Giovanni Villani, and continued the chronicle up to It was again continued by Filippo Villani. The Divine Commedia is ascetic in its conception, and in a good many points of its execution. Petrarch's work has similar qualities; yet neither Petrarch nor Dante could be classified among the pure ascetics of their time.
But many other writers come under this head. St Catherine of Siena 's mysticism was political. This extraordinary woman aspired to bring back the Church of Rome to evangelical virtue, and left a collection of letters written in a high and lofty tone to all kinds of people, including popes. Hers is the clearest religious utterance to have made itself heard in 14th-century Italy. Although precise ideas of reformation did not enter her head, the want of a great moral reform was felt in her heart. She must take her place among those who prepared the way for the religious movement of the 16th century.
Another Sienese, Giovanni Colombini , founder of the order of Jesuati , preached poverty by precept and example, going back to the religious idea of St Francis of Assisi. His letters are among the most remarkable in the category of ascetic works in the 14th century. Bianco da Siena wrote several religiously-inspired poems lauda that were popular in the Middle Ages.
Jacopo Passavanti , in his Specchio della vera penitenza , attached instruction to narrative. Rivalta left behind him many sermons, and Franco Sacchetti the famous novelist many discourses. On the whole, there is no doubt that one of the most important productions of the Italian spirit of the 14th century was religious literature. Orgagna was specially comic; Bonichi was comic with a satirical and moral purpose. Pucci was superior to all of them for the variety of his production.
He put into triplets the chronicle of Giovanni Villani Centiloquio , and wrote many historical poems called Serventesi , many comic poems, and not a few epico-popular compositions on various subjects. A little poem of his in seven cantos treats of the war between the Florentines and the Pisans from to These poems, meant to be recited, are the ancestors of the romantic epic. Many poets of the 14th century produced political works. It may be said in general that following the example of Petrarch many writers devoted themselves to patriotic poetry.
From this period also dates that literary phenomenon known under the name of Petrarchism. The Petrarchists, or those who sang of love, imitating Petrarch's manner, were found already in the 14th century. But others treated the same subject with more originality, in a manner that might be called semi-popular. Ballate were poems sung to dancing, and we have very many songs for music of the 14th century.
We have already stated that Antonio Pucci versified Villani's Chronicle. Besides this, every kind of subject, whether history, tragedy or husbandry, was treated in verse. Scholasticism focused on preparing men to be doctors, lawyers or professional theologians, and was taught from approved textbooks in logic, natural philosophy, medicine, law and theology. Rather than train professionals in jargon and strict practice, humanists sought to create a citizenry including, sometimes, women able to speak and write with eloquence and clarity.
Thus, they would be capable of better engaging the civic life of their communities and persuading others to virtuous and prudent actions. This was to be accomplished through the study of the studia humanitatis , today known as the humanities: Early humanists, such as Petrarch , Coluccio Salutati and Leonardo Bruni , were great collectors of antique manuscripts. Many worked for the organized Church and were in holy orders like Petrarch , while others were lawyers and chancellors of Italian cities, like Petrarch's disciple, Salutati, the Chancellor of Florence, and thus had access to book copying workshops.
In Italy, the humanist educational program won rapid acceptance and, by the midth century, many of the upper classes had received humanist educations. Some of the highest officials of the Church were humanists with the resources to amass important libraries. Such was Cardinal Basilios Bessarion , a convert to the Latin Church from Greek Orthodoxy, who was considered for the papacy and was one of the most learned scholars of his time.
At Florence the most celebrated humanists wrote also in the vulgar tongue, and commented on Dante and Petrarch, and defended them from their enemies. Leone Battista Alberti , the learned Greek and Latin scholar, wrote in the vernacular, and Vespasiano da Bisticci , while he was constantly absorbed in Greek and Latin manuscripts, wrote the Vite di uomini illustri , valuable for their historical contents, and rivalling the best works of the 14th century in their candour and simplicity.
Belcari and Girolamo Benivieni returned to the mystic idealism of earlier times. But it is in Lorenzo de Medici that the influence of Florence on the Renaissance is particularly seen. His mind was formed by the ancients: De Medici lived entirely in the classical world; and yet if we read his poems we only see the man of his time, the admirer of Dante and of the old Tuscan poets, who takes inspiration from the popular muse, and who succeeds in giving to his poetry the colors of the most pronounced realism as well as of the loftiest idealism, who passes from the Platonic sonnet to the impassioned triplets of the Amori di Venere , from the grandiosity of the Salve to Nencia and to Beoni, from the Canto carnascialesco to the lauda.
The feeling of nature is strong in him; at one time sweet and melancholy, at another vigorous and deep, as if an echo of the feelings, the sorrows, the ambitions of that deeply agitated life. He liked to look into his own heart with a severe eye, but he was also able to pour himself out with tumultuous fulness.
He described with the art of a sculptor; he satirized, laughed, prayed, sighed, always elegant, always a Florentine, but a Florentine who read Anacreon , Ovid and Tibullus , who wished to enjoy life, but also to taste of the refinements of art. Next to Lorenzo comes Poliziano , who also united, and with greater art, the ancient and the modern, the popular and the classical style.
In his Rispetti and in his Ballate the freshness of imagery and the plasticity of form are inimitable. A great Greek scholar, Poliziano wrote Italian verses with dazzling colors; the purest elegance of the Greek sources pervaded his art in all its varieties, in the Orfeo as well as the Stanze per la giostra. A completely new style of poetry arose, the Canto carnascialesco. These were a kind of choral songs, which were accompanied with symbolic masquerades, common in Florence at the carnival.
They were written in a metre like that of the ballate ; and for the most part they were put into the mouth of a party of workmen and tradesmen, who, with not very chaste allusions, sang the praises of their art. These triumphs and masquerades were directed by Lorenzo himself. In the evening, there set out into the city large companies on horseback, playing and singing these songs. There are some by Lorenzo himself, which surpass all the others in their mastery of art. That entitled Bacco ed Arianna is the most famous. Italy did not yet have true epic poetry ; but had, however, many poems called cantari , because they contained stories that were sung to the people; and besides there were romantic poems, such as the Buovo d'Antona , the Regina Ancroja and others.
But the first to introduce life into this style was Luigi Pulci , who grew up in the house of the Medici, and who wrote the Morgante Maggiore at the request of Lucrezia Tornabuoni , mother of Lorenzo the Magnificent. The material of the Morgante is almost completely taken from an obscure chivalrous poem of the 15th century, rediscovered by Pio Rajna. Pulci erected a structure of his own, often turning the subject into ridicule, burlesquing the characters, introducing many digressions, now capricious, now scientific, now theological.
Pulci raised the romantic epic into a work of art, and united the serious and the comic. With a more serious intention Matteo Boiardo , count of Scandiano , wrote his Orlando innamorato , in which he seems to have aspired to embrace the whole range of Carolingian legends; but he did not complete his task.
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We find here too a large vein of humour and burlesque. Still Boiardo was drawn to the world of romance by a profound sympathy for chivalrous manners and feelings; that is to say, for love, courtesy, valour and generosity. He drew from the Carolingian cycle , from the romances of the Round Table , and from classical antiquity. He was a poet of no common genius, and of ready imagination. He showed the influence of Boiardo, especially in the use of fantasy.
History had neither many nor very good students in the 15th century. Its revival belonged to the following age. It was mostly written in Latin. Bernardino Corio wrote the history of Milan in Italian, but in a rude way. Leonardo da Vinci wrote a treatise on painting, Leone Battista Alberti one on sculpture and architecture. But the names of these two men are important, not so much as authors of these treatises, but as being embodiments of another characteristic of the age of the Renaissance; versatility of genius, power of application along many and varied lines, and of being excellent in all.
Leonardo was an architect, a poet, a painter, an hydraulic engineer and a distinguished mathematician. Alberti was a musician, studied jurisprudence, was an architect and a draughtsman, and had great fame in literature. He had a deep feeling for nature, and an almost unique faculty of assimilating all that he saw and heard.
Leonardo and Alberti are representatives and almost a compendium in themselves of all that intellectual vigour of the Renaissance age, which in the 16th century took to developing itself in its individual parts, making way for what has by some been called the golden age of Italian literature. Piero Capponi , author of the Commentari deli acquisto di Pisa and of the narration of the Tumulto dei Ciompi , belonged to both the 14th and the 15th centuries. He then produced a Latin tragedy on Ezzelino da Romano , Henry's imperial vicar in northern Italy, the Eccerinus , which was probably not represented on the stage.
This remained an isolated work. This kind of semi-popular literature was born in Florence, and attached itself to certain popular festivities that were usually held in honor of St John the Baptist , patron saint of the city. The Sacra Rappresentazione is the development of the medieval Mistero mystery play. Although it belonged to popular poetry, some of its authors were literary men of much renown: From the 15th century, some element of the comic-profane found its way into the Sacra Rappresentazione.
From its Biblical and legendary conventionalism Poliziano emancipated himself in his Orfeo , which, although in its exterior form belonging to the sacred representations, yet substantially detaches itself from them in its contents and in the artistic element introduced. The fundamental characteristic of the literary epoch following that of the Renaissance is that it perfected itself in every kind of art, in particular uniting the essentially Italian character of its language with classicism of style.
This period lasted from about to about — being when Charles VIII descended into Italy, marking the beginning of Italy's foreign domination and political decadence. The famous men of the first half of the 16th century had been educated in the preceding century. Literary activity that appeared from the end of the 15th century to the middle of the 16th century was the product of the political and social conditions of an earlier age. Machiavelli's principal works are the Istorie fiorentine , the Discorsi sulla prima deca di Tito Livio , the Arte della guerra and the Principe.
His merit consists in having emphasized the experimental side of the study of political action in having observed facts, studied histories and drawn principles from them. His history is sometimes inexact in facts; it is rather a political than an historical work. The peculiarity of Machiavelli's genius lay, as has been said, in his artistic feeling for the treatment and discussion of politics in and for themselves, without regard to an immediate end in his power of abstracting himself from the partial appearances of the transitory present, in order more thoroughly to possess himself of the eternal and inborn kingdom, and to bring it into subjection to himself.
Next to Machiavelli both as an historian and a statesman comes Guicciardini. Guicciardini was very observant, and endeavoured to reduce his observations to a science. His Storia d'Italia , which extends from the death of Lorenzo de Medici to , is full of political wisdom, is skillfully arranged in its parts, gives a lively picture of the character of the persons it treats of, and is written in a grand style. He shows a profound knowledge of the human heart, and depicts with truth the temperaments, the capabilities and habits of the different European nations. Going back to the causes of events, he looked for the explanation of the divergent interests of princes and of their reciprocal jealousies.
The fact of his having witnessed many of the events he related, and having taken part in them, adds authority to his words. The political reflections are always deep; in the Pensieri , as Gino Capponi says, he seems to aim at extracting through self-examination a quintessence, as it were, of the things observed and done by him; thus endeavouring to form a political doctrine as adequate as possible in all its parts. Machiavelli and Guicciardini may be considered as distinguished historians as well as originators of the science of history founded on observation.
Inferior to them, but still always worthy of note, were Jacopo Nardi a just and faithful historian and a virtuous man, who defended the rights of Florence against the Medici before Charles V , Benedetto Varchi , Giambattista Adriani , Bernardo Segni , and, outside Tuscany, Camillo Porzio , who related the Congiura de baroni and the history of Italy from to ; Angelo di Costanza , Pietro Bembo , Paolo Paruta , and others.
Ariosto's Orlando furioso was a continuation of Boiardo's Innamorato. His characteristic is that he assimilated the romance of chivalry to the style and models of classicism. Romantic Ariosto was an artist only for the love of his art; his epic. His sole aim was to make a romance that would please himself and his generation. His Orlando has no grave and serious purpose. On the contrary, it creates a fantastic world in which the poet rambles, indulges his caprice, and sometimes smiles at his own work. His great desire is to depict everything with the greatest possible perfection; the cultivation of style is what occupies him most.
In his hands the style becomes wonderfully plastic to every conception, whether high or low, serious or sportive. With him, the octave stanza reached a high level of grace, variety, and harmony. Pietro Bembo was an influential figure in the development of the Italian language , specifically Tuscan, as a literary medium, and his writings assisted in the 16th-century revival of interest in the works of Petrarch. As a writer, Bembo attempted to restore some of the legendary "affect" that ancient Greek had on its hearers, but in Tuscan Italian instead.
Italian literature
He held as his model, and as the highest example of poetic expression ever achieved in Italian, the work of Petrarch and Boccaccio, two 14th-century writers he assisted in bringing back into fashion. In the Prose della volgar lingua , he set Petrarch up as the perfect model, and discussed verse composition in detail, including rhyme, stress, the sounds of words, balance and variety. In Bembo's theory, the specific placement of words in a poem, with strict attention to their consonants and vowels, their rhythm, their position within lines long and short, could produce emotions ranging from sweetness and grace to gravity and grief in a listener.
This work was of decisive importance in the development of the Italian madrigal, the most famous secular musical form of the 16th century, as it was these poems, carefully constructed or, in the case of Petrarch, analyzed according to Bembo's ideas, that were to be the primary texts for the music. The historians of Italian literature are in doubt whether Tasso should be placed in the period of the highest development of the Renaissance, or whether he should form a period by himself, intermediate between that and the one following.
Certainly he was profoundly out of harmony with his own century. His religious faith, the seriousness of his character, the deep melancholy settled in his heart, his continued aspiration after an ideal perfection—all place him outside the literary epoch represented by Machiavelli, Ariosto, and Berni. As Carducci said, Tasso is the legitimate heir of Dante: He was only eighteen years old when, in , he tried his hand at epic poetry, and wrote Rinaldo , in which be said that he had tried to reconcile the Aristotelian rules with the variety of Ariosto.
He later wrote the Aminta , a pastoral drama of exquisite grace, but the work to which he had long turned his thoughts was an heroic poem, and that absorbed all his powers. He explains his intentions in the three Discorsi , written while he composed the Gerusalemme: He would treat it rigorously according to the rules of the unity of action observed in Greek and Latin poems, but with a far greater variety and splendour of episodes, so that in this point it should not fall short of the romantic poem; and finally, he would write it in a lofty and ornate style.
This is what Tasso has done in the Gerusalemme liberata , the subject of which is the liberation of the sepulchre of Jesus Christ in the 11th century by Godfrey of Bouillon. The poet does not follow faithfully all the historical facts, but sets before us the principal causes of them, bringing in the supernatural agency of God and Satan.
The Gerusalemme is the best heroic poem that Italy can show. It approaches to classical perfection. Its episodes above all are most beautiful. There is profound feeling in it, and everything reflects the melancholy soul of the poet. As regards the style, however, although Tasso studiously endeavoured to keep close to the classical models, one cannot help noticing that he makes excessive use of metaphor , of antithesis , of far-fetched conceits; and it is specially from this point of view that some historians have placed Tasso in the literary period generally known under the name of Secentismo , and that others, more moderate in their criticism, have said that he prepared the way for it.
Meanwhile, side by side with the romantic, there was an attempt at the historical epic. Full of learning and of the rules of the ancients, he formed himself on the latter, in order to sing of the campaigns of Belisarius ; he said that he had forced himself to observe all the rules of Aristotle , and that he had imitated Homer.
In this again, we see one of the products of the Renaissance ; and, although Trissino's work is poor in invention and without any original poetical coloring, yet it helps one to understand better what were the conditions of mind in the 16th century. Lyric poetry was certainly not one of the kinds that rose to any great height in the 16th century. Originality was entirely wanting, since it seemed in that century as if nothing better could be done than to copy Petrarch. Still, even in this style there were some vigorous poets. Monsignore Giovanni Guidiccioni of Lucca — showed that he had a generous heart.
In fine sonnets he expressed his grief for the sad state of his country. Francesco Molza of Modena — , learned in Greek, Latin and Hebrew, wrote in a graceful style and with spirit. Giovanni della Casa — and Pietro Bembo — , although Petrarchists, were elegant. Even Michelangelo was at times a Petrarchist, but his poems bear the stamp of his extraordinary and original genius. And a good many ladies are to be placed near these poets, such as Vittoria Colonna loved by Michelangelo , Veronica Gambara , Tullia d'Aragona , and Giulia Gonzaga , poets of great delicacy, and superior in genius to many literary men of their time.
Isabella di Morra is a singular example of female poetry of the time, whose sorrowful life was one of the most poignant and tragic stories to emerge from the Italian Renaissance. Many tragedies were written in the 16th century, but they are all weak. The cause of this was the moral and religious indifference of the Italians, the lack of strong passions and vigorous characters. The first to occupy the tragic stage was Trissino with his Sofonisba , following the rules of the art most scrupulously, but written in sickly verses, and without warmth of feeling. Sperone Speroni in his Canace and Giraldi Cintio in his Orbecche tried to become innovators in tragic literature, but provoked criticisms of grotesquerie and debate over the role of decorum.
They were often seen as inferior to the Torrismondo of Torquato Tasso , specially remarkable for the choruses, which sometimes remind one of the chorus of the Greek tragedies. The Italian comedy of the 16th century was almost entirely modelled on the Latin comedy.
They were almost always alike in the plot, in the characters of the old man, of the servant, of the waiting-maid; and the argument was often the same. There appear to be only three writers who should be distinguished among the many who wrote comedies: Machiavelli, Ariosto, and Giovan Maria Cecchi.
In his Mandragola Machiavelli, unlike the others, composed a comedy of character, creating personalities that seem living even now because he copied them from reality with a finely observant eye. Ariosto, on the other hand, was distinguished for his picture of the habits of his time, and especially of those of the Ferrarese nobles, rather than for the objective delineation of character. Lastly, Cecchi left in his comedies a treasure of spoken language, which lets us, in a wonderful way, acquaint ourselves with that age.
The notorious Pietro Aretino might also be included in the list of the best writers of comedy. The 15th century included humorous poetry. Antonio Cammelli , surnamed the Pistoian, is specially deserving of notice, because of his pungent bonhomie , as Sainte-Beuve called it. But it was Francesco Berni who and satire, carried this kind of literature to perfection in the 16th century.
From him the style has been called bernesque poetry. In the Berneschi we find nearly the same phenomenon that we already noticed with regard to Orlando furioso. It was art for arts sake that inspired and moved Berni to write, as well as Antonio Francesco Grazzini , called Il Lasca, and other lesser writers. It may be said that there is nothing in their poetry; and it is true that they specially delight in praising low and disgusting things and in jeering at what is noble and serious.
Bernesque poetry is the clearest reflection of that religious and moral scepticism that was a characteristic of Italian social life in the 16th century, and that showed itself in most of the works of that period—a scepticism that stopped the religious Reformation in Italy , and which in its turn was an effect of historical conditions. The Berneschi, and especially Berni himself, sometimes assumed a satirical tone. But theirs could not be called true satire. Pure satirists, on the other hand, were Antonio Vinciguerra , a Venetian, Lodovico Alamanni and Ariosto, the last superior to the others for the Attic elegance of his style, and for a certain frankness, passing into malice, which is particularly interesting when the poet talks of himself.
In the 16th century there were not a few didactic works. His style is clear and light, and he adds interest to his book by frequent allusions to the events of the time. The most important didactic work, however, is Castiglione's Cortigiano , in which he imagines a discussion in the palace of the dukes of Urbino between knights and ladies as to what gifts a perfect courtier requires. This book is valuable as an illustration of the intellectual and moral state of the highest Italian society in the first half of the 16th century.
Of the novelists of the 16th century, the two most important were Grazzini, and Matteo Bandello ; the former as playful and bizarre as the latter is grave and solemn. Bandello was a Dominican friar and a bishop, but that notwithstanding his novels were very loose in subject, and that he often holds up the ecclesiastics of his time to ridicule. At a time when admiration for qualities of style, the desire for classical elegance, was so strong as in the 16th century, much attention was naturally paid to translating Latin and Greek authors. From about began a period of decadence in Italian literature.
Tommaso Campanella was tortured by the Inquisition , and Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake. This period is known in the history of Italian literature as the Secentismo. Its writers resorted to exaggeration; they tried to produce effect with what in art is called mannerism or barocchism. Writers vied with one another in their use of metaphors, affectations, hyperbole and other oddities and draw it off from the substantial element of thought.
At the head of the school of the Secentisti was Giambattista Marino of Naples, born in , especially known for his long poem, Adone. He used the most extravagant metaphors, the most forced antitheses and the most far-fetched conceits. He strings antitheses together one after the other, so that they fill up whole stanzas without a break. Claudio Achillini of Bologna followed in Marino's footsteps, but his peculiarities were even more extravagant. Almost all the poets of the 17th century were more or less infected with Marinism.
Alessandro Guidi , although he does not attain to the exaggeration of his master, is bombastic and turgid, while Fulvio Testi is artificial and affected. Yet Guidi as well as Testi felt the influence of another poet, Gabriello Chiabrera , born at Savona in Enamoured of the Greeks, he made new metres, especially in imitation of Pindar , treating of religious, moral, historical, and amatory subjects.
Chiabrera, though elegant in form, attempts to disguise a lack of substance with poetical ornaments of every kind. Products of an age-old artistic tradition. For the first time, they are studied and classified in their entirety. Illustrated with examples drawn from collections housed in the museums of the Caucasian valleys. The German edition of Kilim, Tappeti piani del Caucaso. The ancient origin of a most singular nomadic tribe.
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