The first general language of Italy was the Latin, and so strongly was
the Italian mind dominated by the influence of ancient Rome that her
earliest writers sought to keep alive the Roman tradition. This spirit
of freedom led to the establishment of the Italian Republics, and after
the Lombard cities threw off the yoke of Frederick Barbarossa they
turned their chief attention to education and literature. The spirit of
chivalry and chivalric poetry never took such root in Italy as it did
in other European countries. Nevertheless, Italy was not uninfluenced
by the Crusades, and the Arabs, establishing a celebrated school of
medicine at Salerno, gave a new impetus to the study of the classics.
In Bologna was opened a school of jurisprudence, where Roman law was
studied, and these schools, or universities soon appeared in other
parts of Italy.
The Italians devoted more time to the study of law and history, and to
making translations from the Greek philosophers, than to the
cultivation of chivalric poetry, although many of the Italian poets
wrote in Provencal and French; and Italian Troubadours made journeys to
the European Courts.
It has been said that the only poetry that has any real power over a
people is that which is written or composed in their own language. This
is especially true of Italy. Following this early Latin period came
Dante, the most glorious, and inventive of the Italian poets, and
indeed one of the greatest masters of verse in the world. He perfected
the Tuscan, or Florentine dialect, which was gradually becoming the
literary language of Italy. Petrarch, who succeeded Dante, is greatest
in his Italian poems, and it is by these that he is best known, while
his Latin works, which he hoped would bring him fame, have been almost
forgotten.
In the fifteenth century the use of the national language in literature
entirely died out, through the rise of the Humanists, and the craze for
Greek and Latin classics; but toward the end of the fifteenth century,
under Lorenzo de'Medici and Leo X, interest in their own literature
among the Italians began to revive again. Ariosto and Tasso wrote their
magnificent epics; and once more Italian poetry was read and
appreciated, and reached the height of its renown. Again in the
seventeenth century it declined under the influence of the Marini
school; whose bad taste and labored and bombastic style, was
unfortunately imitated in both France and Spain. In the eighteenth
century, under the patronage of Benedict XIV, the Arcadian poets of the
Marini school were banished from literature, and other and more
brilliant writers arose, possessed of the true national feeling. Under
Pope Pius VI, by whom he was liberally patronized, Quirico Visconti
undertook his "Pio Clementine Museum," and his "Greek and Roman
Iconography," said to be the two greatest archaeological works of all
ages.
With the rise of Napoleon, Italy was flooded with French writings, and
French translations, not always of the best, and even the French
language was used instead of the Italian. The Italian literature again
suffered a decline, and it was not until after the treaty of Vienna in
1815 that the foreign influence was again shaken off. It will thus be
seen that it was when Italian poets wrote in their own language that
their greatest and most lasting success was attained. During the
periods when a craze for imitating foreign works existed, the national
languages deteriorated. In Germany, under the Emperor Maximilian, a
crown was publicly bestowed on any poet who achieved success in Latin
verse, while no reward or emolument was given to those who wrote in
German. The religion of Humanism in Italy went to such lengths that
many seemed to lose not only their belief but also their good sense, as
they considered it vulgar to talk of the Deity in the language of the
Bible. God was spoken of in the plural--gods. The Father was Jupiter,
the Son, Apollo; and the Devil, Pluto; but these various errors had no
lasting or far-reaching influence. The Divine Comedy, the most powerful
and lifelike exponent of the thoughts and feelings of the age in which
Dante lived--an allegory, written in the form of a vision, at a time
when men believed that the things that are unseen are eternal--is the
most perfect and magnificent monument of earthly love, refined and
spiritualized, that has ever been written. It stands alone; for no man
of any country, coming after Dante, has been able to write from the
same motive, and in the same spirit, that he did. Petrarch, the next
greatest after Dante, is chiefly celebrated for his lyrical poems,
which were used as models by all the most celebrated poets of the South
of Europe. They are written in two forms, the canzone taken from the
Provencals, and the sonnet, taken from the Sicilians. Petrarch kept up
a wide correspondence with the literary men of Europe; and through his
influence a sort of literary republic arose which joined together the
literati of many different countries. Boccaccio, next in rank to
Petrarch, evolved a poetry consisting of Norman wit and Provencal love,
joined to an elaborate setting of his own. He took Livy and Cicero for
his models, and tried to combine ancient mythology with Christian
history, the result being that his writings were not so fine as they
would have been had they displayed a greater freedom a of style. His
most celebrated work is the Decameron, the idea of which is taken from
an old Hindu romance which was translated into Latin in the twelfth
century. Most of these tales have also been found in the ancient French
fabliaux, and while Boccaccio cannot be said to have really invented
them, he did clothe them anew, and his tales in their turn have been
translated into all the European languages.
It is due to Cosmo and Lorenzo de' Medici, and to Pope Leo X, that
there was such a glorious development of the fine arts in the fifteenth
century, an era whose benefits have been felt among the cultivated
nations for over three hundred years.
At the same time Poliziano created the pastoral tragedy, which served
to revive the study of Virgil. Other poets seizing on the old romance
of the Trouveres, added to them an element of mockery, in place of the
old religious belief. This new spirit was adopted by Ariosto. From the
East he borrowed the magic and sorcery interwoven in the adventures of
his knights and ladies, giants and magicians. It remained for Torquato
Tasso to revive the heroic epic in his Jerusalem Delivered, in which he
depicts the struggle between the Christians and Saracens. Neither the
Siege of Trod, nor the Adventures of Aeneas could compare with the
splendid dramatic element in Tasso's immortal poem, which has been said
to combine the classic and the romantic style in a new and unusual
degree.
In the sixteenth century Strapparola, an Italian novelist, wrote a
number of fairy tales, which have been a treasure house for later
writers, and to which we are indebted for Puss in Boots, Fortunio, and
other stories which have now become familiar in the nursery lore of
most modern nations. Bandello, in the same century, was a novelist from
whom Shakespeare and other English dramatists have borrowed much
material.
One thing which is peculiar to Italy, and which has found its way into
nearly the whole civilized world, is Italian Opera or melodrama. It was
an outcome of the Pastoral drama, and first took shape in 1594 under
Rinuccini, a Florentine. But the true father of Italian opera is
Metastasio, who flourished in the eighteenth century. He regarded opera
as the national drama of Italy, and raised it to a plane that it has
ever since retained; though of late years it has become more the
fashion to cultivate German opera.