Part 15 (1/2)
The Spaniards, in fabricating paper, subst.i.tuted flax for cotton, which was more scarce and dear; but it was not till the end of the thirteenth century that paper mills were established in the Christian states of Spain, from whence the invention pa.s.sed, in the fourteenth century only, to Treviso and Padua. Tournaments were first inst.i.tuted among the Arabians, from whom they were introduced into Italy and France. Gunpowder, the discovery of which is generally attributed to a German chemist, was known to the Arabians at least a century before any trace of it appeared in European history. The compa.s.s, also, the invention of which has been given alternately to the Italians and French in the thirteenth century, was known to the Arabians in the eleventh. The number of Arabic inventions, of which we enjoy the benefit without suspecting it, is prodigious.
Such, then, was the brilliant light which literature and science displayed from the ninth to the fourteenth century of our era in those vast countries which had submitted to the yoke of Islamism. In this immense extent of territory, twice or thrice as large as Europe, nothing is now found but ignorance, slavery, terror, and death. Few men are there capable of reading the works of their ill.u.s.trious ancestors, and few who could comprehend them are able to procure them. The prodigious literary riches of the Arabians no longer exist in any of the countries where the Arabians or Mussulmans rule. It is not there that we must seek for the fame of their great men or for their writings. What has been preserved is in the hands of their enemies, in the convents of the monks, or in the royal libraries of Europe.
9. EDUCATION.--At present there is little education, in our sense of the word, in Arabia. In the few instances where public schools exist, writing, grammar, and rhetoric sum up the teaching. The Bedouin children learn from their parents much more than is common in other countries. Great attention is paid to accuracy of grammar and purity of diction throughout the country, and of late literary inst.i.tutions have been established at Beyrout, Damascus, Bagdad, and Hefar.
Such is the extent of Arabic literature, that, notwithstanding the labors of European scholars and the productions of native presses, in Boulak and Cairo, in India, and recently in England, where Ha.s.sam, an Arabian poet, has devoted himself to the production of standard works, the greater part of what has been preserved is still in ma.n.u.script and still more has perished.
ITALIAN LITERATURE.
INTRODUCTION.--1. Italian Literature and its Divisions.--2. The Dialects.
--3. The Italian Language.
PERIOD FIRST.--1. Latin Influence.--2. Early Italian Poetry and Prose.--3.
Dante.--4. Petrarch.--5. Boccaccio and other Prose Writers.--6. First Decline of Italian Literature.
PERIOD SECOND.--1. The Close of the Fifteenth Century; Lorenzo de'
Medici.--2. The Origin of the Drama and Romantic Epic; Poliziano, Pulci, Boiardo.--3. Romantic Epic Poetry; Ariosto.--4. Heroic Epic Poetry; Ta.s.so.--5. Lyric Poetry; Bembo, Molza, Tarsia, V. Colonna.--6. Dramatic Poetry; Trissino, Rucellai; the Writers of Comedy.--7. Pastoral Drama and Didactic Poetry; Beccari, Sannazzaro, Ta.s.so, Guarini, Rucellai, Alamanni.
--8. Satirical Poetry, Novels, and Tales; Berni, Grazzini, Firenzuola, Bandello, and others.--9. History; Machiavelli, Guicciardini, Nardi, and others.--10. Grammar and Rhetoric; the Academy della Crusca, Della Casa, Speroni, and others.--11. Science, Philosophy, and Politics; the Academy del Cimento, Galileo, Torricelli, Borelli, Patrizi, Telesio, Campanella, Bruno, Castiglione, Machiavelli, and others.--12. Decline of the Literature in the Seventeenth Century.--13. Epic and Lyric Poetry; Marini, Filicaja.--14. Mock Heroic Poetry, the Drama, and Satire; Ta.s.soni, Bracciolini, Andreini, and others.--15. History and Epistolary Writings; Davila, Bentivoglio, Sarpi, Redi.
PERIOD THIRD.--1. Historical Development of the Third Period.--2. The Melodrama; Rinuccini, Zeno, Metastasio.--3. Comedy; Goldoni, C. Gozzi, and others.--4. Tragedy; Maffei, Alfieri, Monti, Manzoni, Nicolini, and others.--5. Lyric, Epic, and Didactic Poetry; Parini, Monti, Ugo Foscolo, Leopardi, Grossi, Lorenzi, and others.--6. Heroic-Comic Poetry, Satire, and Fable; Fortiguerri, Pa.s.seroni, G. Gozzi, Parini, Giusti, and others.
--7. Romances; Verri, Manzoni, D'Azeglio, Cantu, Guerrazzi, and others.
--8. History; Muratori, Vico, Giannone, Botta, Colletta, Tiraboschi, and others.--9. Aesthetics, Criticism, Philology, and Philosophy; Baretti, Parini, Giordani, Gioja, Romagnosi, Gallupi, Rosmini, Gioberti.--From 1860 to 1885.
INTRODUCTION.
1. ITALIAN LITERATURE AND ITS DIVISIONS.--The fall of the Western Empire, the invasions of the northern tribes, and the subsequent wars and calamities, did not entirely extinguish the fire of genius in Italy. As we have seen, the Crusades had opened the East and revealed to Europe its literary and artistic treasures; the Arabs had established a celebrated school of medicine in Salerno, and had made known the ancient cla.s.sics; a school of jurisprudence was opened in Bologna, where Roman law was expounded by eminent lecturers; and the spirit of chivalry, while it softened and refined human character, awoke the desire of distinction in arms and poetry. The origin of the Italian republics, giving scope to individual agency, marked another era in civilization; while the appearance of the Italian language quickened the national mind and led to a new literature. The spirit of freedom, awakened as early as the eleventh century, received new life in the twelfth, when the Lombard cities, becoming independent, formed a powerful league against Frederick Barbarossa. The instinct of self-defense thus developed increased the necessity of education. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Italian literature acquired its national character and rose to its highest splendor, through the writings of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, whose influence has been more or less felt in succeeding centuries.
The literary history of Italy may be divided into three periods, each of which presents two distinct phases, one of progress and one of decline.
The first period, extending from 1100 to 1475, embraces the origin of the literature, its development through the works of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and its first decline in the fifteenth, when it was supplanted by the absorbing study of the Greek and Latin cla.s.sics.
The second period, commencing 1475, embraces the age of Lorenzo de' Medici and Leo X., when literature began to revive; the age of Ariosto, Ta.s.so, Machiavelli, and Galileo, when it reached its meridian splendor; its subsequent decline, through the school of Marini; and its last revival towards the close of the seventeenth century.
The third period, extending from the close of the seventeenth century to the present time, includes the development of Italian literature, its decline under French influence, and its subsequent national tendency, through the writings of Metastasio, Goldoni, Alfieri, Parini, Monti, Manzoni, and Leopardi.
2. THE DIALECTS.--The dialects of the ancient tribes inhabiting the peninsula early came in contact with the rustic Latin, and were moulded into new tongues, which, at a later period, were again modified by the influence of the barbarians who successively invaded the country. These tongues, elaborated by the action of centuries, are still in use, especially with the lower cla.s.ses, and many of them have a literature of their own, with grammars and dictionaries. The more important of these dialects are divided into three groups: 1st. The Northern, including the Ligurian, Piedmontese, Lombard, Venetian, and Emilian. 2d. The Central, containing the Tuscan, Umbrian, the dialects of the Marches and of the Roman Provinces. 3d. The Southern, embracing those of the Neapolitan provinces and of Sicily. Each is distinguished from the other and from the true Italian, although they all rest on a common basis, the rustic Latin, the plebeian tongue of the Romans, as distinct from the official and literary tongue.
3. THE ITALIAN LANGUAGE.--The Tuscan or Florentine dialect, which early became the literary language of Italy, was the result of the natural development of the popular Latin and a native dialect probably akin to the rustic Roman idiom. Tuscany suffering comparatively little from foreign invasion, the language lost none of its purity, and remained free from heterogeneous elements. The great writers, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, who appeared so early, promoted its perfection, secured its prevailing influence, and gave it a national character. Hence, in the literature there is no old Italian as distinct from the modern; the language of Dante continues to be that of modern writers, and becomes more perfect the more it approaches the standard fixed by the great masters of the fourteenth century. Of this language it may he said that for flexibility, copiousness, freedom of construction, and harmony and beauty of sound, it is the most perfect of all the idioms of the Neo-Latin or Romanic tongues.
PERIOD FIRST.
FROM THE ORIGIN OF ITALIAN LITERATURE TO ITS FIRST DECLINE (1100-1475).
1. LATIN INFLUENCE.--During the early part of the Middle Ages Latin was the literary language of Italy, and the aim of the best writers of the time was to restore Roman culture. The Gothic kingdom of Ravenna, established by Theodoric, was the centre of this movement, under the influence of Ca.s.siodorus, Boethius, and Symmachus. It was due to the prevailing affection for the memories of Rome, that through all the Dark Ages the Italian mind kept alive a spirit of freedom unknown in other countries of Europe, a spirit active, later, in the establishment of the Italian republics, and showing itself in the heroic resistance of the communes of Lombardy to the empire of the Hohenstaufens. While the literatures of other countries were drawn almost exclusively from sacred and chivalric legends, the Italians devoted themselves to the study of Roman law and history, to translations from the philosophers of Greece, and, above all, to the establishment of those great universities which were so powerful in extending science and culture throughout the Peninsula.
While the Latin language was used in prose, the poets wrote in Provencal and in French, and many Italian troubadours appeared at the courts of Europe.
2. EARLY ITALIAN POETRY AND PROSE.--The French element became gradually lessened, and towards the close of the thirteenth century there arose the Tuscan school of lyric poetry, the true beginning of Italian art, of which Lapo Gianni, Guido Cavalcanti, Cino da Pistoia, and Dante Alighieri were the masters. It is mainly inspired by love, and takes a popular courtly or scholastic form. The style of Gianni had many of the faults of his predecessors. That of Cavalcanti, the friend and precursor of Dante, showed a tendency to stifle poetic imagery under the dead weight of philosophy. But the love poems of Cino are so mellow, so sweet, so musical, that they are only surpa.s.sed by those of Dante, who, as the author of the ”Vita Nuova,” belongs to this lyric school. In this book he tells the story of his love for Beatrice, which was from the first a high idealization in which there was apparently nothing human or earthly.