Italian Writers

Society of Young Nigerian Writers

Michelangelo Antonioni

Michelangelo Antonioni (1912-2007), Italian avant-garde motion-picture director and screenwriter, whose films are known for their haunting images of human isolation. Antonioni was born in Ferrara and educated at the University of Bologna. In 1939 he went to Rome, where he worked as a film critic and for a short time attended the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. He entered the film industry in 1942 as a screenwriter and then became an assistant director. In 1943 Antonioni began work on a documentary film of his own, Gente del Po (People of the Po, which he was unable to complete until 1947). From 1947 to 1950 he directed six brief documentary films.

Antonioni’s first feature film was Cronaca di un Amore (Story of a Love, 1950). Antonioni’s best-known films, all of which were released internationally, are his trilogy on the theme of alienation, formed by L'Avventura (The Adventure, 1960), La Notte (Night, 1961), and Eclipse (1962); Red Desert (1964), his first color film; Blowup (1966), his first English-language film; Zabriskie Point (1970), filmed in the American West; and The Passenger (1975), a return to his earlier enigmatic style. Later he directed Il mistero di Oberwald (The Mystery of Oberwald, 1979), an experimental film shot on videotape, Identificazione di una donna (Identification of a Woman, 1982), and Beyond the Clouds (1995). Antonioni wrote or cowrote the screenplays of most of his films, which deal in highly personal terms with themes of alienation, boredom, loveless eroticism, and human failure to communicate.

Antonioni was known—especially in his work of the early 1960s—for a unique cinematographic style that often employs lengthy tracking shots that transfix human figures against a barren natural landscape or a scene of urban sterility, or that otherwise emphasize human isolation. The narrative line is so vague and mysterious that his films sometimes seem virtually plotless, using characters more as visual objects or symbols than as real people. Antonioni’s reputation diminished considerably after the 1970s and few of his later films were released in the United States, but in 1994 he received a special Academy Award for his achievement in film.

Pietro Aretino

Pietro Aretino (1492-1556), Italian poet, born in Arezzo. Banished from his native town for having written a satirical sonnet on papal indulgences, he moved to Rome, where he won the favor of Pope Leo X for his brilliance and wit. Aretino's vicious satire won him many enemies, who were able to force him to leave Rome when he published some lewd sonnets. He was supported for a time by the Italian patron of the arts Giovanni delle Bande Nere. In 1527 Aretino settled in Venice. Known as the Scourge of Princes, he was feared by those who wished to avoid his ridicule and fawned upon by those who wished to gain his favor. Among the rulers who showered fortunes on him were Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and King Francis I of France. Aretino's poetical works include five comedies and a tragedy.

Ludovico Ariosto

Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533), Italian poet, born in Reggio nell’Emilia. At an early age he wrote comedies that were favorably noticed by Ippolito I Cardinal d’Este. From 1503 to 1517 Ariosto was one of Ippolito’s courtiers. He then entered the service of the cardinal’s brother, Alfonso I, duke of Ferrara. Aristo’s greatest poem, the Orlando Furioso (1st version, 1516; final version, 1532), is ostensibly a continuation of the unfinished epic poem Orlando Innamorato (1487), by the Italian poet Matteo Maria Boiardo. Actually, the poem is a tribute to the patrons of Ariosto, the Este family, and its real hero is Ruggiero d’Este, the legendary founder of the house. Many critics consider it among the finest epics written because of its vigor and exalted style. Ariosto’s other works include comedies such as La Lena (The Wind, 1529), as well as odes, satires, and sonnets.

Matteo Bandello

Matteo Bandello (1485-1561), Italian writer, born in Castelnuovo Scrivia. He is one of the best-known Italian Renaissance writers of tales. His stories are similar to those of the earlier Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio. Bandello narrated, among others, the story of Romeo and Juliet, and it is thought that through an intermediate source, a number of Elizabethan playwrights, including Shakespeare, made use of Bandello's plots.

Giambattista Basile

Giambattista Basile (circa 1575-1632), Italian writer, born in Naples. Written in his native Neapolitan dialect, his most important works include a well-known collection of 50 fairy tales and folktales entitled The Tale of Tales (1634; trans. 1932). Among them are versions of the familiar stories “Cinderella,””Puss in Boots,””Snow White,” and “Beauty and the Beast.”

Ugo Betti

Ugo Betti (1892-1953), Italian writer, born in Camerino. A judge by profession, he wrote several plays, as well as poetry and fiction in his free time. A volume of verse, Il re pensieroso (The Thoughtful King), written while he was a prisoner of war (1917-18), was published in 1922. It is for his plays, however, that Betti is best known. Most of them are concerned with the themes of responsibility and guilt, justice and compassion. Occasionally he displayed a talent for comedy, as in Summertime (1937; trans. 1957). Scrutinizing his own profession, he wrote what is considered his major work, Corruption in the Palace of Justice (1944; trans. 1962), a drama in the form of a judicial inquiry.

Giovanni Boccaccio

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-75), Italian writer and humanist, one of the great authors of all time.

Boccaccio was perhaps born in Paris, the illegitimate son of a Florentine merchant and a French noblewoman. Reared in Florence, he was sent to study accounting in Naples about 1323. He abandoned accounting for canon law and gave that up for classical and scientific studies. He took part in the life of the court of Robert d’Anjou, king of Naples. The king is supposed to have had an illegitimate daughter, Maria de Conti d’Aquino. Although proof of her existence has not been established, she is said to have been Boccaccio’s mistress and to have inspired a great deal of his work. She is, perhaps, the Fiammetta immortalized in his writings.

Returning to Florence about 1340, Boccaccio performed various diplomatic services for the city government, and in 1350 he met the celebrated poet and humanist Petrarch, with whom he maintained a close friendship until Petrarch’s death in 1374. In 1362 Boccaccio was invited to Naples by a friend, who promised him the patronage of Queen Joanna of that city. A cold reception at the court of the queen led him to seek the hospitality of Petrarch, who was then in Venice (1363). Rejecting Petrarch’s offer of a home, however, he returned to his estate in Certaldo (near Florence). Boccaccio’s last years, in which he turned to religious meditation, were brightened by his appointment in 1373 as lecturer on Dante. His series of lectures was interrupted by his illness in 1374, and he died the next year.

Boccaccio’s most important work is Il Decamerone (Ten Days’ Work), which was begun in 1348 and completed in 1353; it was first translated into English, as The Decameron, in 1620. This collection of 100 witty, high-spirited stories is set within a framework. A group of friends, seven women and three men, all “well-bred, of worth and discretion,” to escape an outbreak of the plague have taken refuge in a country villa outside Florence. There they entertain one another over a period of ten days (hence the title) with a series of stories told by each member of the party in turn. Each day’s storytelling ends with a canzone; these canzoni represent some of Boccaccio’s most exquisite lyric poetry. At the conclusion of the 100th tale, the friends return to their homes in the city. The Decameron is the first and finest prose masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance. It is notable for the richness and variety of the tales, which alternate between tragedy and earthy humor, for the brilliance of the craftsmanship, and for its penetrating character analysis. In this work Boccaccio gathered material from many sources: the French fabliau, Greek and Latin classics, folklore, and observations of contemporary Italian life.

Boccaccio’s other writings include three works thought to be inspired by his love for Maria d’Aquino: his first long prose romance Il filocolo (circa 1336), L’amorosa Fiammetta (Amorous Fiammetta, 1343-44), both stories of rejected lovers; and Il corbaccio (The Old Crow, c. 1354). His Il filostrato (c. 1338) and Teseida (1340-41) are poems in ottava rima, a verse form he brought to perfection (see Versification). He also wrote a life of Dante, with a commentary on the Divine Comedy, and a number of scholarly, scientific, and poetic works in Latin, including De Claris Mulieribus (Concerning Famous Women, 1360-74). Matteo Maria Boiardo

Matteo Maria Boiardo (1441?-94), Italian poet, born in Scandiano, and educated at the University of Ferrara. The dukes of Ferrara were his steadfast friends and patrons. Boiardo began his career by writing some Latin poems in imitation of Virgil. His greatest work is Orlando Innamorato (Roland in Love, 1487), an unfinished epic about the hero of the Charlemagne legend, Roland. This poem inspired Orlando Furioso (The Madness of Roland, 1516), the masterpiece of the 16th-century poet Ludovico Ariosto. The distinctive contribution of Boiardo is the introduction into poetry of the romantic and chivalrous spirit of the Arthurian legends and of classical elegance. The Innamorato is also notable for the rich color of its characterizations and the urbanity of its comic vein.

Ferruccio Benvenuto Busoni

Ferruccio Benvenuto Busoni (1866-1924), Italian composer, pianist, conductor, and author, born in Empoli. He received his first musical instruction from his parents, both musicians, and later studied composition at Graz, Austria, and Leipzig, Germany. He taught piano and composition in various European cities, as well as at the New England Conservatory, Boston (1891-1893). His tours of Europe and America established Busoni as one of the great concert pianists of the early 20th century. Devoted to the progress of modern music, Busoni invented several new scales; as a conductor he emphasized the works of his contemporaries. He wrote several books on musical theory and criticism. Much of his critical writing was collected in English translation in The Essence of Music (1965). Although he composed an enormous amount of music, his most important contributions were in fostering modern music; in teaching; and in transcribing, arranging, and annotating much of the keyboard music of Johann Sebastian Bach. His monumental unfinished opera Doktor Faust (1916-1924), for which Busoni wrote his own libretto, was completed after his death by his pupil the Spanish-German composer Philipp Jarnach. The opera had its premiere in 1925.

Italo Calvino

Italo Calvino (1923-85), Italian writer. Born in Cuba, of Italian parents, Calvino moved to Italy in his youth. After World War II activity as a partisan in the Italian Resistance, he settled in Turin, where he earned his degree in literature. He was a realistic writer in his first novel, The Path to the Nest of Spiders (1947; trans. 1956). He then turned to techniques of a genre that became known as magic realism, characteristic of his allegorical novels The Nonexistent Knight & The Cloven Viscount (1952-59; trans. 1962). These and the later works Cosmicomics (1965; trans. 1968); If on a Winter's Night a Traveler (1979; trans. 1981); and Mr. Palomar (1983; trans. 1985) demonstrate Calvino's unique blend of fantasy, scientific curiosity, and metaphysical speculation.

Giosuè Carducci

Giosuè Carducci (1835-1907), Italian poet, critic, and teacher, generally regarded as the greatest Italian poet of the late 19th century. He was born in Val di Castello, Tuscany (Toscana), and educated at the University of Pisa. From 1860 to 1904 he was professor of Italian literature at the University of Bologna. Carducci was opposed to the papacy, the monarchy, and the romantic sentimentalism that dominated Italian literature at the time. He advocated a return to the pagan spirit in religion and a revival of the classical spirit and forms in literature. As a young man he frequently expressed his radical ideas in his poetry, but in his later years his writing became less polemical. He was the first to adapt successfully classical Latin meters to modern Italian verse.

In 1906 Carducci became the first Italian to receive the Nobel Prize for literature. Among his best works are New Rhymes (1861-87; trans. 1916), Pagan Odes (1877-89 trans. 1950), and Lyrics and Rhythms (1899; trans. 1942).

Baldassare Castiglione

Baldassare Castiglione (1478-1529), Italian diplomat and writer, born in Casatico, near Mantua (Mantova). Throughout his life he held a number of posts in the great courts of Italy and Spain, and it was upon his observations of courtly life that he based the work for which he is best known, Il cortegiano (1528; The Courtyer, 1561). Written in the form of a dialogue, it is a treatise on the accomplishments and code of behavior essential for the ideal courtier. Translated into many languages, the book became a primer of aristocratic manners, influencing Renaissance nobility and writers throughout Europe, including, notably, the English courtier-poet Sir Philip Sidney. Apart from its importance as a book of etiquette, Il cortegiano is a firsthand source of 16th-century social and intellectual history.

Castiglione also wrote pastoral and courtly poetry in Italian and Latin, including the verse drama Tirsi (1506).

Guido Cavalcanti

Guido Cavalcanti (1250?-1300), Italian poet, born in Florence. During the civil war in Florence between the political parties known as the Guelphs and Ghibellines, Cavalcanti became the head of the Ghibellines. In 1266 the Ghibellines were exiled to Sarzana, in northwestern Italy; Cavalcanti contracted malaria there and died soon after his return to Florence. The author of many sonnets expressing idealistic love, Cavalcanti was the most important Florentine poet before Dante, his friend and admirer. Translations of many of Cavalcanti's sonnets, originally published as Canzone d'amore (Song of Love), were included in Dante and His Circle (1874) by English poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Cino da Pistoia

Cino da Pistoia (1270?-1337?), Italian poet and statesman. Cino da Pistoia was born Guittoncino dei Sighibuldi to an old and noble family in Pistoia, and he studied law in Bologna and traveled in France. Cino da Pistoia and his family belonged to the Ghibelline party, a northern Italian political faction (see Guelphs and Ghibellines), but after its defeat they joined the Neri (Blacks) faction. When the Bianchi (Whites) became supreme in 1303, da Pistoia went into exile until the Neri returned to power in 1306. While in exile, da Pistoia wrote verses to his beloved Selvaggia that showed his pain over their separation, and he also reproduced situations and themes from the poem “Vita nuova” by Italian poet Dante Alighieri.

In 1309 da Pistoia was ambassador to Florence, and the following year he went to Rome with Lodovico of Savoy, vicar of Henry VII of Luxembourg, to prepare the emperor's coronation. Cino da Pistoia hailed the arrival of the emperor as the cure for the political ills of Italy, which distressed him profoundly. When Henry died suddenly in 1313, da Pistoia wrote two canzoni, or short lyric poems, lamenting the loss. From 1321 to 1331 da Pistoia taught jurisprudence in the universities of Siena, Florence, Perugia, and Naples. He then returned to Pistoia, where he held public office until his death.

During his lifetime, da Pistoia wrote approximately 100 sonnets and other lyrics. These reveal da Pistoia’s belief that love must be mutual in order to endure. Dante Aligheri, da Pistoia’s friend and contemporary, praised him, as did the Italian poet Petrarch, who was clearly inspired by da Pistoia's elegance of verse, his freshness of imagery, and the sweetness of his melodic line. Cino da Pistoia adopted various attitudes from Dante, and some of these Petrarch borrowed and perpetuated. One such attitude was a peculiar reverence upon the death of a beloved. This idealization of death marked the transition, in the mysticism of the Middle Ages (5th century to 15th century), from the life of reason to the life of mystic contemplation, which was a mystic death. Whereas Dante portrays the effects of the sentiment of love, da Pistoia, with his legal background of analysis, probes the psychological springs of love and often becomes dull in the process. Like Italian poet Guido Cavalcanti, though, da Pistoia’s sorrows of love for the departed woman are forgotten for newfound torments over a more earthly lady. Vittoria Colonna

Vittoria Colonna (1492-1547), Italian poet and friend of Michelangelo. She was born into a noble Roman family in Marino, near Rome, and at the age of 17 married Fernando Francisco de Ávalos, marques de Pescara. After his death from battle wounds in 1525, she lived on their estate, in Rome, and in retirement in various convents. Although her poetry, consisting of religious poems and love sonnets idealizing her husband's memory, was esteemed at the time, she is better known today for her intellectual friendships with leading writers, artists, and reformers. Most notable is that with Michelangelo, whom she met in Rome in 1538. They exchanged sonnets and letters, and he was at her deathbed. Her work is contained in Poetry and Letters (trans. 1860).

Gabriele D’Annunzio

Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863-1938), Italian novelist, poet, and playwright. Although present-day critics find little of permanent value in his works, his extraordinary ability to translate sensations into language is undeniable. His florid style mirrored the romantic, flamboyant quality of his career and personality.

D'Annunzio was born in Pescara, Abruzzi, on March 12, 1863, and educated in Florence and at the University of Rome. He left Abruzzi in 1881 for Rome. There he wrote essays for the newspaper Tribuna. A year later he won fame with Canto nuovo (New Song, 1882), a volume of poems that dealt with the joy of living. D'Annunzio then turned to the novel, producing The Triumph of Death (1894; trans. 1896), which has colorful descriptions of Abruzzi life.

After 1898, the theater held D'Annunzio's attention. During a love affair with the Italian actor Eleonora Duse, which lasted from 1897 to 1902, he wrote several plays for her, including Gioconda (1898; trans. 1902) and Francesca da Rimini (1902; trans. 1902). The novel The Flame of Life (1900; trans. 1900) is a candid and cruel account of their relationship. The Daughter of Jorio (1904; trans. 1907), widely regarded as his most vital play, was drawn from Abruzzi peasant life.

In 1912 D'Annunzio was left bankrupt and fled to France to escape his creditors. While in France he wrote several works in French; the most famous is Le martyre de Saint Sébastien (The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, 1911), a play in verse, to which the French composer Claude Debussy set incidental music.

D'Annunzio served with distinction in the Italian armed forces during World War I. Immediately after the war he won notoriety by leading soldiers to occupy Fiume (now Rijeka, Croatia) in defiance of the Allied powers. After he was forced to leave the city he retired to his estate on Lake Garda, where he lived until his death on March 1, 1938. He was an outspoken supporter of Italian fascism.

Dante Alighieri

Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), Italian poet, and one of the supreme figures of world literature, who was admired for the depth of his spiritual vision and for the range of his intellectual accomplishment.

Dante was born in Florence between late May and early June 1265, into a family of the lower nobility. His mother died in his childhood, his father when Dante was 18 years old. The most significant event of his youth, according to his own account, was his meeting in 1274 with Beatrice, the woman whom he loved, and whom he exalted, first in La vita nuova (The New Life) and later in his greatest work La divina commedia (The Divine Comedy). Scholars have identified Beatrice with the Florentine noblewoman Beatrice Portinari.

Little is known about Dante’s education, although his works reveal an erudition that encompassed nearly all the learning of his age. He was greatly influenced by the works of the Florentine philosopher and rhetorician Brunetto Latini, who appears as an important figure in The Divine Comedy. Dante is known to have been in Bologna about 1285, and he may have studied at the university there. During the political struggles that occurred in Italy at this time he initially supported the faction known as the Guelphs against the party known as the Ghibellines (see Guelphs and Ghibellines). In 1289 he was with the Guelph army of Florence at the Battle of Campaldino, in which the Florentines triumphed decisively over the Ghibelline armies of Pisa and Arezzo. About this time he married Gemma Donati, a member of a prominent Florentine Guelph family.

Grazia Deledda

Grazia Deledda (1875-1936), Italian novelist influenced by the verismo (realism) movement, and known for the realistic details and engaging story lines of her works. She was born in Nuoro, Sardinia, and moved to Rome in 1900. A prolific writer, she produced many novels and short stories evocative of the hard life and emotional conflicts of the people of Sardinia. Elias Portolu (1903) develops the story of an ex-convict in love with his sister-in-law. Cenere (1904; Ashes, 1908) concerns a mother and her illegitimate son. Her most famous novel, La madre (1920; The Mother, 1923), explores the relationship between a priest and his devoted mother. Deledda won the 1926 Nobel Prize in literature. Her autobiographical novel Cosima (1937) was published posthumously.

Umberto Eco

Umberto Eco, born in 1932, Italian writer and literary scholar, best known for his first novel, Il nome della rosa (1980; The Name of the Rose, 1983), a murder mystery set in a medieval monastery. In the academic world he is known as a leader in the field of semiotics, the study of signs and symbols.

Eco was born in Turin, Italy. After earning a doctorate from the University of Turin in 1954, he worked on cultural programs for Italy’s state-owned broadcasting network. From 1956 to 1970 he taught aesthetics and semiotics at various Italian universities, and in 1971 he became a professor of semiotics at the University of Bologna. Since then Eco has also been a visiting professor at several universities in the United States, including New York University, Yale, and Columbia.

While Eco’s theoretical work in semiotics has influenced scholarship, it is as a columnist for Italian newspapers and magazines and as a fiction writer that he is popularly known. In addition to The Name of the Rose, Eco has written several other novels that draw on his extensive knowledge of history, philosophy, and literature. Il pendolo di foucault (1988; Foucault’s Pendulum, 1989) is a fantasy about the universal appeal of secret societies. L’isola del giorno prima (1994; The Island of the Day Before, 1995), another quirky and philosophical novel, involves an Italian nobleman shipwrecked in the South Pacific in 1643. Baudolino (2000; translated 2002) takes place in Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade and examines the human propensity to invent in the process of recording history. The illustrated novel La misteriosa fiamma della regina Loana (2004; The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, 2005) tells of a man experiencing amnesia who revisits his childhood home in the hope of recovering his memory.

Eco’s theoretical works include Opera aperta (1962; The Open Work, 1976), a study of aesthetics; La struttera assente (1968), which he revised and translated into English as A Theory of Semiotics (1976); The Limits of Interpretation (1991), written in English; and Sulla letteratura (2002; On Literature, 2004). His writings on aesthetics include Storia della bellezza (2004; History of Beauty, 2005) and Storia della bruttezza (2007; On Ugliness, 2007). Dario Fo

Dario Fo, born in 1926, Italian playwright and actor, who won the 1997 Nobel Prize for literature. He has received both criticism and wide popular acclaim for comedies that satirize such authorities as the Roman Catholic Church and the Italian government. As a performer, Fo has helped revive and revitalize the theatrical traditions of medieval and Renaissance Europe.

Fo was born into a working-class family in Sangiano, a small town on Lake Maggiore in northern Italy. He attended Milan’s Academy of Fine Arts, the Brera Art Academy, and a polytechnic institute in Milan. In 1950 he joined a theater troupe, where he began writing and performing his own semi-improvised scenes. Three years later Fo joined a comedy revue and began performing satirical sketches, many of which lampooned political figures. One of the performers in the cast, Franca Rame, became Fo’s wife the following year, and the two later collaborated on many plays and sketches. The revue met with popular and critical success, but the government closely monitored their performances, due to Italy’s rigid libel laws.

During the late 1950s and the 1960s Fo and Rame led their own performance group. They mainly produced satires examining government bureaucracy, the Roman Catholic priesthood, and social issues such as divorce (then illegal in Italy). Fo used his gifts for clowning and mime to mock long-held Italian beliefs about history, religion, and middle- class values.

In 1969 Fo developed what is generally considered his masterpiece, Mistero buffo (translated as Comic Mysteries, 1988). The one-man show is essentially a retelling of the Gospels (the biblical accounts of the life of Jesus Christ), into which Fo inserts his own improvised commentary on religious tradition and contemporary issues. He drew inspiration from the comic techniques of medieval and Renaissance traveling performers, who used stock characters and improvised plots in their shows, and from medieval mystery plays, which provided moral and religious teaching (see Miracle, Mystery, and Morality Plays). Mistero buffo also introduced grammelot, a sort of gibberish that Fo invented by combining the sounds of several European languages. After the play was televised in 1977, Roman Catholic Church authorities described it as “the most blasphemous show in the history of television.” But the show gained considerable popularity, and Fo has performed it all over the world hundreds of times, using no props and clothed simply in a dark turtleneck and trousers.

Morte accidentale di un anarchico (1970; Accidental Death of an Anarchist, 1980) is another of Fo’s well-known shows. Based on the true story of an anarchist who either fell or was pushed to his death from a fourth-story window, the show attacks police corruption and the machinations of political parties. Fo’s other works include Gli arcangeli non giocano al flipper (1959; Archangels Don’t Play Pinball, 1987), about the triumph of a simple-minded man over government bureaucracy, and Non si paga, Non si paga! (1974; We Can’t Pay? We Won’t Pay!, 1978), about people protesting taxation in Italy.

Antonio Fogazzaro

Antonio Fogazzaro (1842-1911), Italian novelist and poet, born in Vicenza, and educated at the University of Turin. His first successful novels were The Woman (1881; trans. 1907) and Daniele Cortis (1885; trans. 1887). They were the first of a series of prose works in which he enunciated the conflict between sensual desire and religious aspiration. His own devout Roman Catholicism was brought into question with the publication of The Patriot (1896; trans. 1906), The Sinner (1900; trans. 1907), and The Saint (1905; trans. 1906). The Patriot is considered his best work. In The Saint, Fogazzaro demanded reform and modernization of the church, which placed the novel on the Index of Forbidden Books. Similarly, his last novel, Leila (1910; trans. 1911), was also banned by the church.

Much of Fogazzaro's writing is autobiographical, revealing spiritual wanderings, conflicts between spiritual and mundane influences, and at least one unhappy love affair.

Ugo Foscolo

Ugo Foscolo (1778-1827), Italian poet and patriot, born on the island of Zákinthos (Zante), Greece. He moved to Venice, Italy, about 1793 and there became famous for his drama Tieste (1797). Disillusion with Napoleon produced The Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis (1798-1802; trans. 1818), often considered the first modern Italian novel. As an Italian patriot Foscolo joined the French in 1799 in fighting the Austrian invaders of Italy. During his years of service he did translations from the classics and from English and wrote lyric poetry. In 1806, returning to Milan, he wrote a patriotic poem, “The Sepulchres” (trans. about 1820), protesting one of Napoleon's edicts. When Napoleon fell and the Austrians returned, Foscolo fled to exile in England, where, until his death, he taught and wrote critical essays.

Girolamo Fracastoro

Girolamo Fracastoro (1478?-1553), Italian physician, scientist, author, and poet. His early observations on the nature and spread of infectious disease led to his recognition as the father of scientific epidemiology, the study of the incidence of disease and the influence of environmental factors on disease patterns. His most famous work was the narrative poem Syphilis sive morbus Gallicus (1530, ), which described a new sexually transmitted disease, now called syphilis, and its treatment.

Fracastoro was born in Verona. He studied literature, mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, and medicine at the University of Padua, where he later taught philosophy beginning in 1502. One of his colleagues at the university was Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, the father of modern astronomy. Fracastoro’s interest in astronomy led him to write Homocentrica sive de stellis liber (1538), which foreshadowed aspects of the Copernican model of the solar system.

Fracastoro also maintained a private practice as a physician in Verona. At the Council of Trent in 1545, the 19th ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church, he served as a medical consultant to Pope Paul III. In addition, he conducted research into contagious and epidemic diseases. This work culminated in the publication of De morbo Gallico (1538), which first described his theory of infection, and De contagione et contagiosis morbus et curatione (1546), which described different types of contagious disease and the manner in which they are transmitted. Fracastoro suggested that infections are carried from one person to another by tiny bodies capable of self-replication. Three centuries later, French scientist Louis Pasteur and German scientist Robert Koch confirmed his theories

Carmine Gallone

Carmine Gallone (1886-1973), Italian motion-picture director, active for nearly 50 years and noted for filming musicals and operas. After writing poems and stage plays early in his career, he began writing and directing motion pictures in 1913, working in Italy, Germany, Austria, and France and building elaborate melodramas and epics around a group of actors that included his wife, Soava Gallone. Among his popular successes are La Figlia del la tempesta (The Daughter of the Storm, 1920) and Gli ultimi giorni di Pompeii (The Last Days of Pompeii, 1926). With the advent of sound in motion pictures (see Motion Pictures, History of: Sound Films), Gallone specialized in musicals, such as Die Singende Stadt (1930; The City of Song, 1931) and Le Chant du Marin (Sailor's Song, 1931), and opera adaptations starring Italian tenor Beniamino Gigli. Scipione l'Africano (Scipio Africanus, 1937), an epic of ancient Rome, was financed by the fascist government of Italy during the time of its invasion of Ethiopia (1935-1941; see Italy: The Ethiopian Campaign).

After World War II (1939-1945), Gallone made more films from operas, including Rigoletto (1947), Cavalliera rusticana (Fatal Desire, 1953), and Madama Butterfly (1955), and more historical epics, such as Cartagine in fiamme (Carthage in Flames, 1959). He retired from filmmaking in 1962.

Pietro Germi

Pietro Germi (1914-1974), Italian motion-picture director, writer, and actor, noted both for his early cultural dramas and for his later social comedies. Born in Genoa, Italy, Germi studied acting and directing at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (Experimental Center for Cinematography) in Rome. He had a few small acting roles before making his debut as a director in 1945 with Il Testimone (The Testimony). Germi usually set his stories in the stark, impoverished landscape of Sicily. His early motion pictures are characterized by relatively straightforward camerawork, the political concerns of their plots, and Germi's preference for filming on location rather than in studios. The films address social issues such as corruption, as in In Nome della legge (In the Name of the Law, 1948), or immigration, as in Il Cammino della speranza (The Path of Hope, 1948).

In the 1960s Germi turned to a different genre of film and became well known as a director of satirical romantic comedies, such as Divorzio all'Italiana (Divorce Italian Style, 1961), for which he shared an Academy Award for best screenplay with Ennio DeConcini and Alfredo Giannetti and for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for best director. His other notable films of this period include Sedotta e abbandonata (Seduced and Abandoned, 1964) and Signore e signori (The Birds, the Bees and the Italians, 1966), which won the prestigious Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) award, for best picture, at the Cannes Film Festival in 1966.

Natalia Ginzburg

Natalia Ginzburg (1916-1991), influential Italian novelist, whose work explores family relationships, especially the roles of women within them, against a wider social background. Ginzburg was born Natalia Levi in Palermo, Sicily. In 1936 she married antifascist activist Leone Ginzburg, whom she had met while working at the Rome publishing company Einaudi, of which he was a founder. From 1940 to 1943 Ginzburg was with her husband in Abruzzi, a region southeast of Rome, where he was in internal exile, sent by the Italian fascist regime (1923-1943) (see Italy:The Fascist Dictatorship). Her first novel, La strada che va in città was written in Abruzzi and published under the pen name Alessandra Tournimparte in 1944, the same year that her husband was executed in Rome. The novel was translated into English under Ginzburg's own name as The Road to the City in 1949 and was republished in Italian under her own name in 1975.

After World War II (1939-1945), Ginzburg returned to Einaudi as an editor and in 1950 married Gabriele Baldini, a professor of English literature. From 1959 to 1962 she was in charge of the Italian Institute of Culture in London. Ginzburg was elected to the Italian Parliament as a member of a small left- wing party in 1983.

Her novels include E stato così (1947; The Dry Heart, 1949); Tutti i nostri ieri (1952; A Light for Fools, 1956); Le voci della sera (1961; Voices in the Evening, 1963); Lessico famigliare (1963; Family Sayings, 1967); and La città e la casa (1984; The City and the House, 1987).

Carlo Goldoni

Carlo Goldoni (1707-93), Italian playwright, considered the founder of modern Italian comedy. He was born in Venice. At the age of 14 he joined a group of traveling players, and during the next ten years he acquired an education, including a degree in law from the University of Padua. In 1731 he returned to Venice and began practicing law and writing plays. The first of these were tragedies, at that time the only form for dramatic composition regarded seriously.

Although his tragedies met with some success, he was dissatisfied with this medium. He conceived the idea of reforming the Italian stage by eliminating the masques and buffooneries with which it abounded and by writing comedies in the manner of the 17th-century French dramatist Molière, but based on Italian characters and life. Between 1738 and 1763 Goldoni wrote about 150 comedies, including The Mistress of the Inn (1753; trans. 1856) and The Fan (1763; trans. 1911).

In 1761 Goldoni left Venice to manage the Italian theater in Paris. In 1770 he composed a comedy in French, The Beneficent Bear (trans. 1849), for the wedding of the future king Louis XVI and Marie- Antoinette. In retirement at Versailles he wrote his Memoirs (1787; trans. 1877). A royal pension granted in 1787 was revoked during the French Revolution, and Goldoni died in poverty.

Battista Guarini

Battista Guarini (1538-1612), Italian poet, born in Ferrara. After 15 years in the service of the duke of Ferrara, he resigned and withdrew to his family estate, the Villa Guarina, where he wrote his most notable work The Faithfull Shepheard (1590; trans. 1647). This play, a pastoral tragicomedy, polished in style, was translated into many languages and became popular during the 17th century. It set the pattern for a code of refinement and gallantry that lasted until the late 18th century. Guarini's work lacks the deep feeling and sentiment of his predecessor at the court of d'Este, Torquato Tasso.

Sergio Leone

Sergio Leone (1929-1989), Italian motion-picture director, most responsible for popularizing a genre of European films about the American frontier known as spaghetti Westerns.

Leone was born in Rome, the son of silent-film director Vincenzo Leone and motion-picture actor Francesca Bertini. After acting in a small part in Ladri di biciclette (The Bicycle Thief, 1948), by Italian director Vittorio De Sica, Leone worked as a director's assistant and screenwriter, eventually codirecting one of his screenplays, Gli ultimi giorni di Pompeii (The Last Days of Pompeii, 1960).

Leone's first motion picture about the American West, Per un pugno di dollari (A Fistful of Dollars, 1964), was based on Yojimbo (The Bodyguard, 1961), an action drama about Samurai warriors by Japanese director Akira Kurosawa that Leone set in frontier America. The film, a commercial success, brought immediate renown to its lead actor, American Clint Eastwood, and spawned two sequels: Per qualche dollaro in più (For a Few Dollars More, 1965) and Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, 1966).

Other spaghetti Westerns by Leone include C'era una volta il west (Once Upon a Time in the West, 1968) and Giù la Testa (A Fistful of Dynamite or Duck, You Sucker, 1971), set during the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920). He later turned down offers to direct The Godfather, a film about the American mafia, so he could direct his own gangster epic, Once Upon a Time in America (1984). Leone frequently worked with Italian composer Ennio Morricone, whose distinctive musical scores are often associated with the spaghetti Western.

Giacomo Talegardo Francesco

Giacomo Talegardo Francesco Di Sales Saverio Pietro Leopardi (1798-1837), Italian poet and scholar, whose work is characterized by an intensely pessimistic point of view—alleviated in some of the lyrics by his exquisite sensibility and perfection of form. Conte Giacomo Talegardo Francesco Di Sales Saverio Pietro Leopardi was born in Recanti and privately educated. Leopardi first attracted public notice with his patriotic ode “All'Italia” (To Italy, 1818), but today he is known as the greatest lyric poet of 19th-century Italy.

One of Leopardi's first poems, a visionary work imitative of medieval verse, was Appressamento della morte (Approach of Death, 1816; pub. 1835). It expresses the lonely despair of his unhappy childhood. Disappointed love inspired one of his greatest early lyrics, “A Silvia” (To Sylvia), and a later fruitless love affair occasioned some of his saddest poetry. His verse was collected in I canti (1831; trans. 1962). One of his most important philosophical writings, Operette morali (1827; trans. in Essays, Dialogues and Thoughts, 1893 and 1905), is a dialogue expounding a doctrine of despair.

Primo Levi

Primo Levi, (1919-1987), Italian novelist, essayist, and scientist, whose works were greatly influenced by his imprisonment at the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz in Southern Poland. Levi was born into a Jewish family in Turin, Italy. He studied chemistry at the local university from 1939 to 1941. In 1943, he was working during World War II as a research chemist in Milan, Italy, when German intervention in northern Italy prompted him to join an anti-fascist resistance group. Levi was captured and deported in 1944 with other Italian Jews and political prisoners to the concentration camp at Auschwitz, where he survived by doing laboratory work for the Nazis. He resumed his career as an industrial chemist in 1946, retiring in 1974 to concentrate on writing.

Levi's many books include Se questo è un uomo (1947, translated and originally published as If This Is a Man, later changed to Survival in Auschwitz, 1959), a personal observation of the inhumane treatment of prisoners at Auschwitz; La tregua (1958, originally published as The Truce, also published under the title The Reawakening, 1963), which describes his long journey home by way of Poland and Russia; II sistema periodico (1975, The Periodic Table, 1984), a group of stories that use chemical elements as metaphors for human personalities; and Se non ora, quando? (1982; If Not Now, When?, 1985), which describes his wartime resistance group's efforts to counter a prevalent belief in the passivity of Jews in the face of persecution by Nazis.

Alessandro Manzoni

Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873), Italian novelist, poet, and playwright. Alessandro Francesco Tommaso Antonio Manzoni was born in Milan. As a young man he espoused the rationalism and skepticism prevailing in French literature of the Enlightenment. After 1808 his position was that which generally characterized romantic Italian literature of the first half of the 19th century: a combination of ardent patriotism and devout Roman Catholicism. He took part in the unsuccessful Milanese revolt of 1848 against Austrian rule and in 1860 became a senator in the legislative body of the new kingdom of Italy. Before 1825 he was known as a poet and playwright. Among his writings of this period were an ode on Napoleon's death, Il Cinque Maggio (The Fifth of May, 1822), the volume of religious lyrics Inni Sacri (Sacred Hymns, 1810), and the romantic tragedies Count of Carmagnola (1820, trans. 1868) and Adelchi (1822, trans. 1868). Manzoni is best known for The Betrothed (1825-27, trans. 1834), a romantic historical novel of life in Milan under Spanish rule in the 17th century. The work, a classic of world literature, set a standard for modern Italian prose and influenced later novelists. It has been translated into many languages. The Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi wrote (1874) his Requiem to honor Manzoni's memory and it is sometimes called the “Manzoni Requiem.”

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944), Italian poet and editor, founder and chief spokesperson for the international art movement known as Futurism. The tenets of Futurism were outlined in a series of published declarations, the Futurist Manifestos, in which Marinetti challenged the status quo in all of the arts and eventually also in politics.

Marinetti was born in Alexandria, Egypt. He studied at Saint Francis Xavier, a Jesuit College in Egypt, but was expelled and finished school in Paris. He earned a law degree from the University of Genoa, Italy, sometime before 1900. Writing in French, Marinetti published his first book of free verse, La Conquête des Étoiles (Conquest of the Stars), in 1902. It was followed by a number of other works of poetry, prose, and drama as well as an international literary journal, La Poesia, which he published from 1905 to 1909. His first Futurist Manifesto appeared on the front page of the Paris newspaper Le Figaro in 1909.

Marinetti's Futurist vision—communicated in the manifestos as well as in frequent lectures, theatrical performances, and readings—rejected conventional morality and traditional values, including poetic values, which he saw as timid, nostalgic, and sentimental. Futurism turned away from the 19th-century romantic interest in nature toward a 20th-century fascination with technology, speed, and city life. His substitution of the image of the modern racing car for the classical winged symbol of poetry demonstrates his intent not to kill poetry but to remake it in modern terms.

The Futurist movement affected poetry, theater, architecture, music, and art, and its practitioners included Italian artists Umberto Boccioni and Giacomo Ballá and Italian architect Antonio Sant'Elia. Futurism was directly related to other art movements of the early 20th century, sharing anarchic tendencies with dada and surrealism, the glorification of individual action with expressionism, and, with cubism, the breakdown of visual form. While all of these movements rejected traditional aesthetics to make way for new perceptions, only Futurism led directly into politics.

Marinetti's dramatic positions in the aesthetic realm, such as the assertion “for art can be naught but violence, cruelty and injustice” (first Futurist Manifesto, 1909), later translated into a sympathy for fascism, glorifying war, nationalism, racism, and discrimination against women. Futurist gatherings before World War I (1914-1918) often resulted in the flinging of spaghetti and rotten fruit, to such battle cries as “Burn the Museums!” and “Let's Kill the Moonlight!” (title of Marinetti's 1909 poem, published in Poesia V). But Futurism's consequences became more serious when, following World War I, Marinetti joined the fascist party and began promoting the cause of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Marinetti quit the party in 1920, but he supported it intermittently thereafter, and Mussolini appointed him a founding member of his Italian Academy in 1926.

Giambattista Marino

Giambattista Marino (1569-1625), Italian poet, born in Naples. Included among his patrons was Marie de Médicis, queen consort of France. Marino (or Marini) is known chiefly as the author of Adone (1623), a poem of more than 40,000 lines, recounting the story of Venus and Adonis. His florid, grandiose style inspired a literary fashion called marinismo. Other poems of Marino's are contained in the collection La lira (1608-14).

Eugenio Montale

Eugenio Montale (1896-1981), Italian poet, critic, and Nobel laureate, born in Genoa. Montale served in the Italian army in World War I. After working for a magazine and a publishing house, in 1928 he was named head of the Gabinetto Vieusseux Library in Florence, a post he lost in 1938 because of his anti-Fascist views. For ten years he translated English and American authors into Italian; then, in 1948, he began to write for Corriere della Sera, the Milan newspaper for which he subsequently became literary and music critic. He wrote five volumes of poems, including Ossi di seppia (Bones of the Cuttlefish, 1925), Le occasioni (Occasions, 1939), and La bufera e altro (The Storm and Other Things, 1956); these have been republished in a collected volume, Poesie (1958; trans. 1964). For his poetry he was awarded the 1975 Nobel Prize for literature.

Alberto Moravia

Alberto Moravia, pseudonym of ALBERTO PINCHERLE (1907-1990), Italian writer, born in Rome. As a youth, while recovering from tuberculosis, he began writing about the moral difficulties of people socially alienated and trapped by circumstances. A stark, realistic style characterizes his work. His first novel, Time of Indifference (1929; trans. 1953), brought him immediate fame in Italy. The novel The Fancy Dress Party (1941; trans. 1952), a satire on the World War II Fascist leaders, was suppressed, and Moravia later went into hiding. His postwar writings include Two Adolescents (1944; trans. 1950); The Woman of Rome (1947; trans. 1949), a novel about an Italian prostitute; and A Ghost at Noon (1954; trans. 1955), dealing with marriage and married love. In his most famous work, Two Women (1957; trans. 1958), he drew upon his own wartime experiences to relate a story of two Italian refugees. The Empty Canvas (1960; trans. 1961) deals with the hopelessness of modern humanity, and The Lie (1965; trans. 1966) with the plight of a novelist. Later works include the political allegories Time of Desecration (1978; trans. 1980), about the pathology of terrorism; and 1934 (1982; trans. 1983), ostensibly the story of an encounter between a young Italian anti- Fascist and a German girl. Erotic Tales (1983; trans. 1986) is a collection of 20 of Moravia's short stories.

Giovanni Pascoli

Giovanni Pascoli (1855-1912), Italian poet and literary scholar. His first published work, Myricae (Tamarisks, 1891), was a collection of short lyric poems that reflect his youthful psychological turmoil; the sadness of his orphaned childhood is further expressed in Canti di Castelvecchio (Songs of Castelvecchio, 1903, 1907), usually considered his most moving verse. This strain of melancholy had great influence on the group of early 20th-century Italian poets known as the crepuscolari (“twilight poets”). Pascoli's later works, for example, Poemi conviviali (Convivial Poems, 1904), are more formal in style and theme, however, often reflecting his knowledge of classical antiquity. He wrote ably in Latin and also translated English poetry. He is renowned for his innovative, eclectic vocabulary, his ability to recreate the sounds and sights of nature, and his evocations of domestic tranquility. A translation of his selected poems was issued in 1938.

Pier Paolo Pasolini

Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975), Italian motion-picture director and writer of poems, short stories, novels, and essays, best known for his controversial cinematic portrayals of individuals in conflict with mainstream society. Born in Bologna, Italy, Pasolini published poems at the age of 19, while studying at the University of Bologna. His endorsement of Communism during World War II (1939-1945) prompted his arrest in 1943 by German forces then occupying Italy. Pasolini later escaped from a German prison camp and settled in the countryside of Friuli, Italy. In 1950 he moved to Rome, where he wrote poems, essays, and stories influenced by theories of class struggle in the work of Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci.

Pasolini's first feature films as a director, Accatone (1961) and Mamma Roma (1962), are sympathetic portrayals of thieves, pimps, prostitutes, and other social outcasts in the slums of Rome. His later films include satires of conventional society, such as Teorema (Theorem, 1968) and Il porcile (Pigsty, 1969); and radical interpretations of religious and literary texts, such as Il vangelo secondo Matteo (The Gospel According to St. Matthew, 1964); Medea (1970), from the tragedy by ancient Greek dramatist Euripides; and Il decamerone (The Decameron, 1970), from the tales of Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio. His last film, Salò o le centiventi giornate i Sodoma (Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom, 1975), is based on the novel The 120 Days of Sodom, by French writer the Marquis de Sade, and the Inferno, a narrative poem by Italian writer Dante Alighieri. The film expresses Pasolini's loss of optimism that sexual and social reforms would take place in Italy. In 1975 Pasolini was murdered in Ostia, Italy, by a 17-year-old boy who claimed Pasolini had made sexual advances toward him. Cesare Pavese

Cesare Pavese (1908-1950), Italian poet and novelist. He also translated the writings of numerous Americans into Italian and wrote literary criticism. His anti-Fascist writings led to his imprisonment, which in turn led to his creative writing. During World War II he was part of the Resistance. Pavese's fiction generally deals with the conflicts of contemporary life, such as the search for self identity—as in The Moon and the Bonfires (1950), regarded as his best novel. Pavese's most highly regarded verse is his love poetry in Death Will Stare at Me Out of Your Eyes (1951).

Petrarch

Petrarch (1304-1374), Italian poet and humanist, who is considered the first modern poet. His perfection of the sonnet form later influenced such English poets as Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, and Edmund Spenser. His wide knowledge of the classical authors and his restoration of the classical Latin language earned him his reputation as the first great humanist; but he also played an important role in the development of Italian as a literary language.

Petrarch was born Francesco Petrarca on July 20, 1304, in Arezzo. Until he was eight years old, his family lived in Tuscany (Toscana); then in 1312 they moved to Avignon, France. In 1326, after the death of his father, Petrarch, who had been studying law at Bologna, returned to Avignon, where he took minor orders in the church about 1330. On Good Friday in 1327 he first saw Laura (probably Laure de Noves, 1308?-1348), a Frenchwoman whose name he was to immortalize in his lyrics and who inspired him with a passion that has become proverbial for its constancy and purity.

During a lifetime spent principally in the service of the church and the Visconti family, Petrarch traveled widely throughout Italy as well as France, the Low Countries, and Germany. In Florence, Italy, in 1350, he met the poet Giovanni Boccaccio, with whom he had previously corresponded. From 1353 to 1374 Petrarch remained in Italy, in Milan, and from 1361 to 1374 in Padua (Padova), Venice, and Arquà. Possibly as a result of his travels, he developed a strong belief in the role of a unified Italy as the cultural heir of the Roman Empire. Highly respected in his lifetime, he was made poet laureate by the Senate of Rome in 1341. He died in Arquà on July 18 or 19, 1374.

Petrarch wrote in Latin and in Italian. His Latin works include “Africa” (1338- 1342), an epic poem about the Roman conqueror Scipio Africanus, and De Viris Illustribus (Concerning Famous Men, 1338?), a series of biographies. Also in Latin are his eclogues and epistles in verse, the dialogue Secretum (1343), and the treatise De Vita Solitaria (1346-1356). His vast collection of letters is important for its historical and biographical details.

Petrarch's most famous work is the collection of Italian verses, Rime in vita e morta di Madonna Laura (after 1327). Better known as Canzoniere (Songbook), it has been translated into English as Petrarch's Sonnets (1931). These sonnets and odes, almost all inspired by Petrarch's unrequited passion for Laura, express the character of the man and the reality of a strong sentiment. Also inspired by his love for Laura is his series of Italian poems, I Trionfi (1352-1374).

Luigi Pirandello

Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936), Italian writer, who is considered the most important Italian dramatist of the period between World War I (1914-1918) and World War II (1939-1945). He won the 1934 Nobel Prize in literature.

Pirandello was born in Agrigento, Sicily, and educated at the Universities of Rome and Bonn. He taught Italian literature at the Normal College for Women in Rome from 1897 to 1921, when his growing reputation as a writer enabled him to devote himself entirely to a literary career. Pirandello became internationally known in 1921 through his play Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore (1921; Six Characters in Search of an Author, 1922), about six fictional characters who appear on stage, unfinished by their creator yet desiring to be real.

Pirandello's writings deal mainly with people of the lower middle class and are concerned with philosophical ideas such as the human conflict between instinct and reason, which often leads to an existence full of inconsistencies. Pirandello also asserts that specific actions are not right or wrong in themselves, but only in the way that humans regard them, and that an individual has not one definite personality but many, depending on how that person appears to the people with whom he or she comes in contact. Without faith in any fixed standards of ethics, morality, politics, or religion, characters in Pirandello's tales and plays find reality only in themselves, and then discover that they themselves are unstable and inexplicable beings.

Pirandello expressed in humorous terms his deep pessimism and his pity for the confusion and suffering of the human condition. The humor is, however, grim and disturbing, and it explores the embarrassing and sometimes painful recognition of the absurdities of human existence. Pirandello was also an important innovator in stage technique, avoiding the limitations of realism by using elements of fantasy to create the effect he wanted.

Pirandello's other plays include Il piacere dell’onestà (1917; The Pleasures of Honesty, 1923), Così è (se vi pare) (1917; Right You Are If You Think So, 1922), Enrico IV (1922; Henry IV, 1922), and Come tu mi vuoi (1930, As You Desire Me, 1931). He also wrote the novel L’esclusa (1901, The Outcast, 1925) and the short- story collection Pensaci, Giacomino (1933; Better Think Twice About It, 1935).

Politian

Politian, full name ANGELO POLIZIANO (1454-1494), Italian humanist scholar, teacher, and poet of the Renaissance. Born in Montepulciano in Tuscany (Toscana) and originally named Angelo Ambrogini, he was educated in Florence. He became tutor to the sons of the Florentine statesman Lorenzo de' Medici, and by the age of 30 was a professor of Greek and Latin literature in Florence. He attracted pupils from all the cities of Italy and from distant parts of Europe, among them Michelangelo, the German scholar Johann Reuchlin, and the English humanists Thomas Linacre and William Grocyn.

Although Politian died at the age of 40, his writings are numerous. He translated into Latin various Greek works, including the Enchiridion of Epictetus, the Charmides of Plato, and the history of Rome by the Greek historian Herodian (died after AD 238). He composed Latin poems, called Sylvae, on Greek and Latin authors and declaimed these poems in his lectures. His most learned production was the Miscellanea (1489), critical observations on ancient authors, which greatly influenced succeeding scholars. Politian was as accomplished a poet in Italian as in Latin. His many works include Orfeo, a lyrical drama with musical accompaniment, one of the earliest dramatic compositions of Renaissance Italy.

Marco Polo

Marco Polo (1254-1324), Venetian traveler and author, whose account of his travels and experiences in China offered Europeans a firsthand view of Asian lands and stimulated interest in Asian trade.

Marco Polo was born in Venice, one of the most prominent centers of trade in medieval Europe, into a merchant family. Venetian merchants of the day traded regularly throughout the Mediterranean region. They also maintained trading posts in port cities on the Black Sea, where they obtained silk, porcelain, and other goods that came from China over the Silk Road, an ancient trade route linking China with Rome. Little is known about Marco Polo’s early life, because his own account of his travels, published later in his life, is the primary source of biographical material about him. Polo probably received a fairly typical education for children of merchants at that time, learning how to read, write, and calculate.

Marco Polo’s account is also the primary source of information about the travels of his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo Polo, who were jewel merchants. They left Venice in 1260 on a commercial venture to the Black Sea ports of Constantinople (now İstanbul, Turkey) and Soldaia (now Sudak, Ukraine). From Soldaia they continued farther east to trading cities on the Volga River in present-day Russia. In 1262 a war broke out behind them and prevented them from returning home, so they proceeded farther east to the great Central Asian trading city of Bukhara (in present-day Uzbekistan). After three years there they joined a diplomatic mission going to the court of Kublai Khan, the Mongol ruler of China. The khan received them warmly and expressed a desire to learn more about Christianity. He asked the Polo brothers to return to Europe and persuade the pope to send Christian scholars who could explain the religion to him. Niccolò and Maffeo journeyed back to Europe in 1269 to satisfy the khan’s request.

The pope appointed two missionaries to accompany the Polos on their return to the Mongol court. The party set out in 1271, this time with Niccolò’s son Marco. Soon after their departure from Acre (now ‘Akko, Israel) the missionaries became concerned about hazardous conditions along the route and abandoned the embassy. The three Polos continued the journey. Judging from Marco’s account, they most likely traveled overland through Armenia and Persia (now Iran) to Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, north through Persia to the Oxus River (now Amu Darya) in Central Asia, up the Oxus to the Pamirs, across the mountains and around the southern edge of the Takla Makan Desert to Lop Nur (in present-day Xinjiang Uygur (Uighur) Autonomous Region in western China), and across the Gobi Desert. In 1275 they reached the summer court of Kublai Khan at Shangdu (about 300 km/about 200 mi north of present-day Beijing). Marco’s account records that the khan warmly welcomed the party and arranged accommodations for them.

The Polos spent the next 17 years in China. Kublai Khan took an immediate liking to Marco, who was an engaging storyteller and conversationalist, and sent him on numerous diplomatic missions throughout his empire. Marco not only carried out his diplomatic assignments but also regaled the khan with interesting stories and observations about the lands he visited. Salvatore Quasimodo

Salvatore Quasimodo (1901-1968), Italian poet and critic, born in Modica, Sicily. He began to write while working as a civil engineer. By 1938 he had published five books of poems. From 1940 he was drama critic of the journal Tempo. He founded the hermetic school of Italian poets, who, unable to speak out openly against fascism, had to write in veiled terms.

A collection of his writings on the theater appeared in 1961. Quasimodo also translated much classical Greek and Latin literature as well as works of Shakespeare and modern British and American poets. He was awarded the 1959 Nobel Prize in literature for expressing “the tragic experience of our time.”The Selected Writings of Salvatore Quasimodo (1960) was the first major collection of his work to appear in English. Other works include The Poet and the Politician and Other Essays (1964) and a posthumously published volume, To Give and to Have and Other Poems (1969).

Jacopo Sannazzaro

Jacopo Sannazzaro (1456-1530), Italian poet. His masterpiece is the first pastoral romance, Arcadia. This partly autobiographical, partly symbolic work is made up of short narrative prose sections linked by verse in dialogue or monologue form. Its main theme, that of an idyllic haven from the toils and troubles of the everyday world, persisted in Western literature for many centuries, as in the Arcadia of the English poet Sir Philip Sidney. Sannazzaro served as court poet to the king of Aragón.

Ettore Scola

Ettore Scola, born in 1931, Italian motion-picture director and screenwriter of social comedies and historical films. Born in Trevico, Avellino, Scola studied law at the University of Rome and wrote for satirical magazines before coscripting numerous films, mainly comedies, beginning in 1953. The first film he directed was Se permette parliamo di donne (Let's Talk About Women, 1964), starring Italian actor Vittorio Gassman.

Scola's subsequent films consistently offered insightful commentary on political and social issues through stories set in a variety of contemporary and historical periods. For example, Brutti, sporchi, e cattivi (Down and Dirty, 1976) is a satire on life among slum dwellers; Una giornata particolare (A Special Day, 1977) depicts Rome under Fascism in 1938; La Nuit de Varennes (The Night at Varennes, 1982) brings together Anglo-American political philosopher Thomas Paine and Italian adventurer Casanova during the French Revolution (1789-1799); and La famiglia (The Family, 1987), Scola's most autobiographical film, is an epic of life in Rome between 1906 and 1986.

Sebastiano Serlio

Sebastiano Serlio (1475-1554), Italian baroque architect and writer, whose illustrated treatise on architecture was the first work to address the practical aspects of design and construction. Serlio's treatise spread a working knowledge of Italian Renaissance architectural practice throughout Europe (see Renaissance Art and Architecture).

Born in Bologna, Italy, Serlio began his career as a painter. About 1514 he moved to Rome and took employment in the Vatican workshop under Italian painter and architect Baldassare Peruzzi. After the troops of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V sacked Rome in 1527, Serlio went to Venice. There he began work on his treatise L'architettura (first complete edition, 1584; translated as The Booke of Architecture, 1611). In its final form, the work comprised seven books written and published separately over a period of about 15 years.

The first installment to appear in Serlio's series was Book IV (1537). It treats the classical orders—the five traditional architectural systems (Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite; see Column) used in organizing a classical building, each with its own proportions, column style, and ornamentation. Book III (1540) contains plans and elevations for more than 50 ancient buildings from various parts of the Roman world, along with modern counterparts designed by Italian architects Donato Bramante, Raphael, and Serlio's own master, Peruzzi. For the first time, a wide public had access to measured drawings of famous classical buildings, including theaters, temples, and public baths.

Serlio presented a copy of his third book to French King Francis I, who invited him to France to serve as architect at the royal castle in Fontainebleau. Serlio moved to France in 1541 and spent the rest of his life as painter and architect to Francis I. While in Fontainebleau, Serlio continued to produce installments of his treatise. Books I and II (1545) deal with geometry and perspective, Book V (1547) treats churches, and Book VII (published posthumously, 1575) covers various practical challenges such as renovating medieval structures and building on irregular sites. A further book (1551; not intended as part of the treatise but nevertheless published again, this time as Book VI in the 1584 edition) treats gateways. Ignazio Silone

Ignazio Silone, pseudonym of SECONDO TRANQUILLI (1900-1978), Italian writer, born in Pescina, L'Aquila Province. He joined the Italian Socialist Youth Movement in 1917 and later became a member of the Communist Party and editor of several radical political newspapers. He left the Communist Party in 1930 and because of Fascist persecution went into exile. He returned to Italy in 1944 and thereafter remained active in the Socialist Party. Silone's most popular novels, both written while he was in exile, are Fontamara (1933; trans. 1934; revised 1960) and Bread and Wine (1936; trans. 1937; revised 1962). They realistically describe the life of the Italian peasant in the 1930s, totally rejecting Fascism and urging reform. His later works include the play And He Hid Himself (1945; trans. 1946), continuing the theme of Bread and Wine; and the collected stories and essays, Emergency Exit (1965; trans. 1968).

Torquato Tasso

Torquato Tasso (1544-95), Italian poet, considered the most influential poet of the Italian Renaissance, author of the verse epic Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered).

Tasso was born March 11, 1544, in Sorrento, son of the poet Bernardo Tasso. After studying at the University of Bologna, in 1560 he continued his education in law and philosophy at the University of Padua. There he composed his first epic poem Rinaldo (1562). In 1565 he entered the service of Luigi Cardinal d'Este and went to live in Ferrara, where he became an admired member of the court of Alfonso II, duke of Ferrara, and the cardinal's brother. The Este family was known for its patronage of the arts, and since the 15th century the dukes of Ferrara had employed the talents of the great poets Lodovico Ariosto and Matteo Maria Boiardo. In 1573 Tasso completed the pastoral drama Aminta (1580; trans. 1627), a lyrical idealization of court life. Its presentation at a court fete in 1573 was highly acclaimed, and it is recognized today as one of the finest works of its genre.

In 1575 Tasso completed his epic on the First Crusade, Gerusalemme liberata (1581; Jerusalem Delivered,1600). It is the culmination of Renaissance literary tradition, in that it attempts to revive the classical heroic epic and to reconcile it with the religious requirements of the Counter Reformation. Before publishing the work, Tasso requested the opinions of the notable critics of the day, and the unfavorable reception given the poem, combined with a blow on the head, convinced the author that he was being persecuted. In 1579, following several violent outbursts, Tasso was confined in the hospital of Sant'Anna in Ferrara, where he remained for seven years. During this period, he revised Gerusalemme, defended it in dialogues and essays, and wrote occasional poems. In July 1586, because of the intervention of the prince of Mantua (reigned 1587-1612), Tasso was allowed to leave the hospital.

Tasso next went to Mantua (Mantova), where he composed a poetic tragedy, Torrismondo (1586). In 1587 he left Mantua and spent several years in restless wandering, while further revising his epic according to the judgment of his critics. The result, considered markedly inferior to the original poem, was published in Rome in 1593 as Gerusalemme conquistata (The Conquest of Jerusalem), and was dedicated to Tasso's latest patron, Cinzio Cardinal Aldobrandini. In 1594 plans were made for Tasso to be crowned in Rome as poet laureate. He died in Rome, on April 25, 1595, however, before the honor could be conferred.

Taviani

Taviani, surname of two brothers, Vittorio (1929- ) and Paolo (1931- ), Italian motion-picture directors and screenwriters of films based on 20th- century historical subjects. They share the writing and directing of all their films. The Taviani brothers were born in the village of San Miniato, Pisa, and began their careers by making short documentary films and working as assistants to Italian director Roberto Rossellini and other notable filmmakers. In 1962 the Taviani brothers made their first feature film, Un uomo da bruciare (A Man for Burning), about Sicilian peasants oppressed by the Mafia. Their later work includes Padre padrone (Father Master, 1977), based on the childhood of Italian writer Gavino Ledda under the control of his brutal peasant father; La notte di San Lorenzo (The Night of the Shooting Stars, 1981), a child's view of the people of San Miniato escaping from invading German forces in 1944; and Good Morning Babylon (1987), the story of two Italian craftsmen working in Hollywood, California, on the epic film Intolerance (1916) by American director D. W. Griffith. While the Tavianis' films are generally based on historical events, their work is distinguished by representations of history as a matter of interpretation rather than objective fact. The Tavianis have received numerous awards for their films, including the top two prizes at the Cannes Film Festival in 1977, for Padre padrone.

Giorgio Vasari

Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574), Italian writer, painter, and architect, best known for his book on the lives of major Italian Renaissance artists.

Vasari was born on July 30, 1511, in Arezzo. Trained in art as a child, he went to Florence, where he worked in the studio of Andrea del Sarto and won the patronage of the Medici family. Among Vasari's major surviving paintings are murals in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, and the Vatican in Rome.

As an architect Vasari was a follower of his brilliant contemporary Michelangelo. Among the important buildings he designed are the Palazzo degli Uffizi in Florence, now a museum, and a number of palaces and churches in Pisa and Arezzo. It is as a writer, however, that he is most famous. His Lives of the Artists (1550, revised 1568; trans. 1912-1914, 10 volumes), one of the earliest works on art written by an artist of merit, is a primary source of information about the artists of the Italian Renaissance. The revised edition includes his autobiography in addition to the lives of Michelangelo and other major painters of the time. Vasari's book offers his personal evaluation of the works of these artists, as well as discussions on the state of the arts. His easy, natural writing style helped to make his book one of the most enduring of art histories. He died in Florence on June 27, 1574.

Giovanni Verga

Giovanni Verga (1840-1922), Italian novelist, short-story writer, and playwright, who was a leader of the verismo (realist) movement and one of Italy's most influential writers. He was born into a landowning family in Catania, Sicily, and lived in Florence and Milan before returning to Catania. He first wrote fashionable romances; not until he began writing about Sicilian farmers and fishers did his true genius become apparent. In his short stories and in his novels Cavalleria Rusticana (1880; trans., with other stories in the same volume, by D. H. Lawrence), I malavoglia (1881; The House by the Medlar Tree,1890), and Mastro-Don Gesualdo (1889; trans. 1923), Verga depicted the life and customs of the Sicilian peasantry in a detailed, dramatic, and starkly realistic manner. His verismo style of writing, based on keen observation, strongly influenced the realist approach of post-World War II writers and film-makers. Verga wrote a stage version of Cavalleria Rusticana (produced 1884), which was the basis of Pietro Mascagni's opera (1890). I malavoglia is the source of the film Terra Trema (1948) of Luchino Visconti.