This epoch may be most
intelligibly represented by the names of Manzoni, Silvio Pellico, and
Tommaso Grossi--all Lombards. About 1830 a new literary life began
to be felt in Florence under the indifferentism or toleration of the
grand-dukes. The chiefs of this school were Giacomo Leopardi;
Giambattista Niccolini, the author of certain famous tragedies of
political complexion; Guerrazzi, the writer of a great number of
revolutionary romances; and Giuseppe Giusti, a poet of very marked and
peculiar powers, and perhaps the greatest political satirist of the
century. The chief poets of a later time were Aleardo Aleardi, a
Veronese; Giovanni Prati, who was born in the Trentino, near the
Tyrol; and Francesco Dall Ongaro, a native of Trieste. I shall mention
all these and others particularly hereafter, and I have now only named
them to show how almost entirely the literary life of militant Italy
sprang from the north. There were one or two Neapolitan poets of less
note, among whom was Gabriele Rossetti, the father of the English
Rossettis, now so well known in art and literature.
IV
In dealing with this poetry, I naturally seek to give its universal
and aesthetic flavor wherever it is separable from its political
quality; for I should not hope to interest any one else in what I had
myself often found very tiresome.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25