Apart from the useful Macmillan Dictionary of Italian Literature[1], it must be all of 50 years since a substantial survey in English of the whole extent of Italian literature was published. In the meantime, scholarly and critical studies of specific periods and of individual writers, classical and modern, have proliferated and have radically revised one’s understanding of Italy’s rich and influential literature since the thirteenth century. From that intellectual ferment has emerged this elegant compendium of erudite studies, all presented lucidly and accessibly for the general reader as well as for scholars and students.
Peter Brand of the University of Edinburgh and Lino Pertile of Harvard University have assembled an impressive international team of 19 scholars, each a specialist well able to give a distillation and authoritative assessment of current research and criticism in his or her field of competence. Blessedly, all 19 authors write interestingly, even entertainingly. Their individual judgements and opinions are well grounded and well argued. I have rarely found an academic work so very easy and pleasant to read, and so immediately convincing.
Italian literature in the vernacular (as distinct from writing in Latin) has its origins in the “sweetly and subtly written” thirteenth‐century poetry by such as Cino da Pistoia, Dante, Francis of Assisi, Guittone d’Arezzo, and with the nomenklatura bards of Sicily. These latter found much of their inspiration in the technically sophisticated, lyrical and passionate verse of Provence. Jonathan Usher’s “Origins and Duecento” is a masterly introduction to the poetry and prose of this formative period, yet to be fully explored. The seven succeeding centuries of Italian literary creation are traversed, initially, in conventional chronological progression up to the Settecento, each section with subsidiary chapters on genres, on major writers such as Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch, and on minor writers of each century.
A more flexible pattern begins with Giovanni Carsaniga’s splendid “The Age of Romanticism (1800‐1870)”, embracing particularly interesting studies of Monti, Foscolo, Leopardi, and of Manzoni and the novel. “The literature of united Italy (1870‐1910)” succeeds in making that relatively uneventful period interesting. Felicity Firth on Pirandello is a triumph of brisk dissection.
All the contributors to this exciting panorama of Italian literature effortlessly achieve excellence. It is invidious to make more of one author than of another. I must, nevertheless, express my admiration for Robert Dombroski’s keenly perceptive “The rise and fall of Fascism (1910‐45)”. My only regret here is for the startling brevity of his shrewd analysis of the relationship of philosophy and literature from Croce to Gramsci, and for his rather dismissive treatment of notable anti‐fascist writers such as Ignazio Silone (of Fontamara fame). John Gatt‐Rutter in his “The aftermath of the Second World War (1945‐56)” is intuitive and genuinely enlightening in his dashing, skilfully compact discussion of Neo‐realism. His mere page and a bit on Pier Paolo Pasolini left me avid for more, though. “Contemporary Italy (since 1956)” by Michael Caesar brings one up to the end of the 1980s. Much of Caesar’s material here was new to me and introduced me to many writers amply meriting attention. A valuable innovation is the tracing, by David Kimbell (at pp. 336‐40 and pp. 450‐6), of the development of opera as an art form and of opera’s intimate association with literature.
For reasons of space, footnotes are very sparse and the period‐matched bibliographies (pp. 607‐73) highly selective but generally well chosen. Regrettably, the editors have opted for a lackadaisical, half‐baked style, sans publisher and pagination. A well‐stocked map of modern Italy; a helpful, tripartite chronology (political events, literature, other arts); and a competent, adequately analytical index supplement the text to good purpose.
Editors, authors, and Cambridge University Press alike have every right to be proud of their immaculate creation, surely bound to become a standard work of reference. It is enthusiastically recommended for reference and general libraries at all levels, and destined, too, for my own, personal delectation for years to come.
