2. The ORIGINS
The Aeneid
A book for all the times and all people
Virgil's Aeneid is as eternal as Rome itself, a sweeping epic of
arms and heroism--the searching portrait of a man caught
between love and duty, human feeling and the force of fate.
Aeneas flees the ashes of Troy to found the city of Rome and
change forever the course of the Western world--as literature
as well.
Filled with drama, passion, and the universal pathos that only
a masterpiece can express, the Aeneid has influenced writers
for over 2,000 years.
3. Twelve Books
rooted in Classicism
Publius Vergilius Maro
(October 15, 70 BC – September 21, 19 BC)
Virgil is traditionally
ranked as one of Rome's
greatest poets.
His Aeneid, modeled
after Homer's Iliad and
Odyssey, is considered
the national epic of
ancient Rome.
Virgil's work has had
wide and deep influence
on Western literature,
most notably the Divine
Comedy of Dante, in
which Virgil appears as
Dante's guide through
Hell and Purgatory.
4. ‘THE THREE CROWNS’
THE WORKS OF PETRARCH, DANTE AND BOCCACCIO IN THE 1300S
FORESHADOWED THE DRAMATIC CHANGE WESTERN CIVILIZATION
WAS ABOUT TO UNDERGO AND REVOLUTIONIZED LITERATURE EVEN
BEFORE THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PRINTING PRESS.
THIS WAS AN ESSENTIAL PART OF THE CULTURAL AND INTELLECTUAL
TRANSFORMATION SWEEPING EUROPE.
Petrarch, Dante
and Boccaccio
5. They were scholars, admirers of the humanism and were determined to
bring it into their world. Their most profound impact is how they helped
influence the rebirth of knowledge Europe was beginning to experience.
Who we are as a culture
— how we think and what we value —
was influenced by these three men.
6. ‘Dante’ -Durante degli Alighieri-
‘the Supreme Poet’ (c. 1265–1321)
Dante was born in Florence. The exact date of birth is unknown, although it is
generally believed to be around 1265. This can be deduced from autobiographic
allusions in La Divina Commedia.
The Divine Comedy describes Dante's journey through Hell
(Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), guided by the Roman poet
Virgil and Paradise (Paradiso), guided by Beatrice, the subject
of his love and of another of his works, La Vita Nuova.
7. While the vision of Inferno, is vivid for modern readers, the
theological niceties presented in the other books require a certain
amount of patience and knowledge to appreciate.
Purgatorio, is the most lyrical and human of the three, and also
introduces the reader to many poets who according to Dante are
spending eternity in limbo ;
Paradiso, is the most heavily theological and has the most
beautiful and ecstatic mystic passages in which Dante
tries to describe what he confesses he is unable to convey
(e.g., when Dante looks into the face of God: "at this high
moment, ability failed my capacity to describe," Paradiso,
XXXIII, 142).
Wi t h i t s ser i ousness of pur pose, i t s l i t er ar y
st at ur e and t he r ange — bot h st yl i st i cal l y and
subj ect wi se — of i t s cont ent , t he Co me d y soon
became a cor ner st one i n t he evol ut i on of I t al i an
as an est abl i shed l i t er ar y l anguage.
8. Italian
‘la langue de
Dante’
Dante was more aware than
most earlier Italian writers
of the variety of Italian
dialects and of the need to
create a literature, and a
unified literary language,
beyond the limits of Latin
writing at the time; in that
sense he is a forerunner of
the Renaissance, with its
effort to create vernacular
literature in competition
with earlier classical
writers.
Dante
reconciled his humanism with devotion to the Catholic Church.
Dante’s Divine Comedy does not contradict Catholic
theology.
The punishments fit the crimes, and Paradiso is true love
through union with God, deeper any human or romantic love.
9. The Next Generation
Francesco Petrarca
(1304 - 1374 )
But while Dante railed against those
who had been unjust and corrupt,
Petrarch went deeper through
introspection and his belief that God
gave humans intellect and
creativity for each person to use to
improve their experience of life.
He remained a devout Catholic, but
his shift of focus from the Church to
the Greeks and Romans and their
humanism helped begin a process
that ultimately would undermine the
church.
“Petrarch changed the
world through his
poetry”
Giovanni Boccaccio
(1313-1375)
The story line of Boccaccio’s Decameron
shows one reason everything was about to change .
Like his friend Petrarch, Boccaccio did not see any
contradiction between his faith and humanism. His
literature nonetheless broke with traditional forms,
even as his stories were based on old folk tales.
Boccaccio’s stories and language were often lewd and risque. In
Italy during the time of the Black Death, a group of seven young
women and three young men flee from plague-ridden Florence
to a deserted villa in the countryside of Fiesole for two weeks.
To pass the evenings, every member of the party tells a story
each night, except for one day per week for chores, and the holy
days in which they do no work at all, resulting in ten nights of
storytelling over the course of two weeks. Thus, by the end of
the fortnight they have told 100 stories
Throughout Decameron the mercantile ethic prevails and predominates.
The commercial and urban values of quick wit, sophistication, and
intelligence are treasured, while the vices of stupidity and dullness are
cured, or punished.
10. Alessandro Manzoni
The Making of a Nation
Alessandro F. T. Manzoni
(7 March 1785 – 22 May 1873)
was an Italian poet and novelist.
He is famous for the novel
The Betrothed (I Promessi
Sposi) (1827), generally ranked
among the masterpieces of
world literature.
The novel is also a symbol of
the Italian Risorgimento, both
for its patriotic message and
because it was a fundamental
milestone in the development of
the modern, unified Italian
language.
The Betrothed
an Historical Novel
Round the episode of the Innominato, historically identified with
Bernardino Visconti, the first manuscript of the novel I Promessi Sposi
began to grow into shape, and was completed in September 1823.
The work was published, after being deeply reshaped by the author and
revised by friends in 1825–1827, at the rate of a volume a year; it at once
raised its author to the first rank of literary fame.
It is generally agreed to be his greatest work, and the paradigm of modern
Italian language.
In 1822, Manzoni published his second tragedy, Adelchi, turning on the
overthrow by Charlemagne of the Lombard domination in Italy, and
containing many veiled allusions to the existing Austrian rule.
With these works Manzoni’s literary career was practically closed. But he
laboriously revised The Betrothed in Tuscan-Italian, and in 1840
republished it in that form, with a historical essay, Storia della Colonna
Infame, on details of the 17th century plague in Milan so important in the
novel.
He also wrote a small treatise on the Italian language.
11. A BRIEF OUTLINE OF MODERN CONTEMPORARY
ITALIAN LITERATURE
THE NOBEL
LAUREATES OF ITALY
Italian Nobel Prize Winners
12. Giosuè A. G. Carducci (1835 –1907) was an
Italian poet and teacher. In 1906 he became the
first Italian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Grazia Deledda (1871 – 1936) was an Italian writer whose
works won her the Nobel Prize for Literature for 1926.
Deledda's whole work is based on strong facts of love, pain
and death upon which rests the feeling of sin and of an
inevitable fatality.
Carducci (1906) and Deledda (1926)
"not only in consideration of his
deep learning and critical research,
but above all as a tribute to the
creative energy, freshness of style,
and lyrical force which characterize
his poetic masterpieces"
Prize motivation
"for her idealistically inspired
writings which with plastic clarity
picture the life on her native island
and with depth and sympathy deal
with human problems in general".
Prize motivation
13. Luigi Pirandello (1867 –1936) was an Italian dramatist,
novelist, poet and short story writer. He was awarded the
1934 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Salvatore Quasimodo (1901 –1968) was an Italian author
and along with Giuseppe Ungaretti and Eugenio Montale,
he is one of the foremost Italian poets of the 20th century.
Pirandello( 1934) and Quasimodo ( 1959)
Prize motivation: "for his bold and
ingenious revival of dramatic and scenic
art"
Pirandello's works include novels,
hundreds of short stories, and about 40
plays, some of which are written in
Sicilian. Pirandello's tragic farces are
often seen as forerunners for Theatre
of the Absurd.
Prize motivation: "for his lyrical poetry,
which with classical fire expresses the
tragic experience of life in our own times"
14. Eugenio Montale (1896 –1981), widely
considered the greatest Italian lyric poet
since Giacomo Leopardi, was awarded the
1975 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Dario Fo (24 March 1926) is an Italian actor-
playwright, theatre director, stage designer,
songwriter and political campaigner, and
recipient of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Literature
Montale (1975) and Fo (1997 )
Attentive to the effects of
history, Montale's poetry stands
out as congenial to spirits that
are aware of the consequences
of the second world tragedy,
which the writer saw as
temporary reflections of an evil
without origin and without end,
according to a parable which
makes him belong to the more
conscious part of the European
intellect
Prize motivation:
"for his distinctive poetry which,
with great artistic sensitivity,
has interpreted human values
under the sign of an outlook on
life with no illusions“
Dario Fo is the most widely performed contemporary
playwright in world theatre.
Much of his dramatic work depends on improvisation and
comprises the recovery of "illegitimate" forms of theatre, such as
those performed by giullari (medieval strolling players) and, more
famously, the ancient Italian style of commedia dell' arte.
The Swedish Academy praised Fo as a writer
"who emulates the jesters of the Middle Ages in
scourging authority and upholding the dignity
of the downtrodden".