Italian literature

The literature of Italy originated in the 13th century with the Sicilian school, which imitated Provençal poetry.

Medieval The works of St Francis of Assisi and Jacopone da Todi reflect the religious faith of that time. Guido Guinicelli (1230–c. 1275) and Guido Cavalcanti developed the spiritual conception of love and influenced Dante Alighieri, whose Divina commedia/Divine Comedy (1307–21) is generally recognized as the greatest work of Italian literature. Petrarch was a humanist and a poet, celebrated for his sonnets, while Boccaccio is principally known for his tales.

Renaissance The Divina commedia marked the beginning of the Renaissance. Boiardo dealt with the Carolingian epics in his Orlando innamorato/Roland in Love (1487), which was completed and transformed by Lodovico Ariosto as Orlando furioso/The Frenzy of Roland (1516). Their contemporaries Niccolò Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini (1483–1540) are historians of note. Torquato Tasso wrote his epic Gerusalemme liberata/Jerusalem Delivered (1574) in the spirit of the Counter-Reformation.

17th century This period was characterized by the exaggeration of the poets Giovanni Battista Marini (1569–1625) and Gabriello Chiabrera (1552–1638). In 1690 the ‘Academy of Arcadia’ was formed, including among its members Innocenzo Frugoni (1692–1768) and Metastasio. Other writers include Salvator Rosa, the satirist. 18th century Giuseppe Parini (1729–1799) ridiculed the abuses of his day, while Vittorio Alfieri attacked tyranny in his dramas. Carlo Goldoni wrote comedies.

19th century Ugo Foscolo is chiefly remembered for his patriotic verse. Giacomo Leopardi is not only the greatest lyrical poet since Dante but also a master of Italian prose. The Romantic Alessandro Manzoni is best known as a novelist, and influenced among others the novelist Antonio Fogazzaro. A later outstanding literary figure, Giosuè Carducci, was followed by the verbose Gabriele d'Annunzio, writing of sensuality and violence, and Benedetto Croce, historian and philosopher, who between them dominated Italian literature at the turn of the century.

20th century Writers include the realist novelists Giovanni Verga and Grazia Deledda, winner of the Nobel Prize in 1926, the dramatist Luigi Pirandello, and the novelists Ignazio Silone and Italo Svevo. Poets of the period include Dino Campana and Giuseppe Ungaretti; and among the modern school are Nobel prizewinners Eugenio Montale and Salvatore Quasimodo. Novelists of the post-Fascist period include Alberto Moravia, Carlo Levi, Cesare Pavese, Vasco Pratolini, Elsa Morante, Natalia Ginsburg, Giuseppe Tomasi, Prince of Lampedusa, and the writers Italo Calvino, Leonardo Sciascia, and Primo Levi.