Sprachen (3 vols., Leipzig, 1890-99), a fourth volume of which is in preparation.

Dictionaries: Petrocchi, Novo dizionario della lingua italiana (Milan, 1884-91), one of the best of the dictionaries wholly in Italian, also published in an abridged form; Tommaseo e Bellini, Dizionario della lingua italiana (Turin, 186579); Rigutini and Fanfani, Vocabolario italiano della lingua parlata (3d ed., Florence, 1893); Fanfani, Vocabolario della lingua italiana (3d ed., Florence, 1891); id., Vocabolario della pronunzia toscana (ib., 1863); id., Vocabolario dell' uso toscano (ib., 1863); Blanc, Vocabolario dantesco (Leipzig, 1852; Italian trans., 2d ed., 1877, and since). The Italian-English and English-Italian dictionaries of Baretti and Millhouse are unsatisfactory; a better one is that of Edgren (New York, 1902). A good Italian-German dictionary is that of Valentini. There are numerous dictionaries of Italian dialects, some of which are mentioned in Groeber, Grundriss, vol. i. (Strassburg, 1888). For further bibliography, this last-named work may be consulted.

ITALIAN LITERATURE. The tenacity of Latin tradition in Italy retarded considerably the rise and development of literature in the vulgar tongue. Until the first half of the thirteenth century Latin continued to serve in Italy for the writing of chronicles, historical and narrative poems, heroic legends (many of them introduced from France; e.g. the story of Charlemagne and his knights, of Arthur and his Round Table, the mediaval account of the fall of Troy, and the history of Alexander the Great), religious legends and lives of the saints (cf. the famous collection of the Bishop of Genoa, Jacopo da Voragine (1230-98), known as the Legenda Aurea), didactic and scientific works (grammars, encyclopædias, and moralizing treatises), religious lyrics (hymns like the "Stabat Mater" and the "Dies Iræ"), and liturgical plays and inysteries (the prototypes of the first Italian dramas, the rappresentazioni sacre). But Latin was not the only language written in Italy before the time when Italian was thought dignified enough for literary use. The poets of Southern France had already wandered into Italy before the end of the twelfth century, and when the Albigensian crusade drove them forth in the early years of the fourteenth century the troubadours crossed the Alps in still greater numbers and sang throughout the land of the Apennines their Provençal songs of love and political strife. There soon arose a school of Italian poets who

imitated the methods of these Provençal troubadours, and, disdaining their native tongue, wrote in the foreign Provençal. Prominent among them

were:

Alberto Malaspina (c.1165-1210), Lanfranco Cigala (c.1200-c.1260), Bonafacio Calvo (c.1200-70), and especially Sordello (c.1200c.1270). Like the speech and song of Southern France, the speech and verse of Northern France also entered Italy at an early date. The jongleurs brought the chansons de geste into the north of Italy, and there, especially in the domain of Venice, great currency was given to the stories of Charlemagne, of his mother, Berte, of his knights like Ogier le Danois, and the heroes of the Carolingian cycle. The chansons de geste were introduced in their native speech. Soon, however, Italians took them up and told the

stories in an Italianized form of French (cf. Niccolò da Verona's Prise de Pampelune), and later still certain of the chansons were related by Italians in a mixed speech, in which Italian predominated. The epic matter thus worked over in Italy was to become of great importance for the history of the poems of chivalry in the fifteenth century. From Northern France there were imported also the fabliaux, the stories of Reynard the Fox, and the great allegorical and satirical Roman de la Rose, all of which played a part in the formation of the literature of Italy. As has already been stated (see ITALIAN LANGUAGE), we have specimens of written Italian that date back almost to the middle of the tenth century; but they have no literary significance. Nor does the eleventh century show anything of importance, and the various documents sometimes ascribed to the twelfth century are of too uncertain chronological origin, as in the case of the cantilena bellunese, the ritmo cassinese, and the cantilena di un giullare toscano, or prove little, like the jocose and isolated attempt at writing Italian verse on the part of a foreigner, the Provençal poet Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, in his bilingual contrasto. (For these documents, consult Monaci, Crestomazia italiana, Città di CasWith the thirteenth century, tello, 1889.) In all parts of Italy the popular language is however, Italian assumes literary significance. now used for the composition of verse, which for half a century remains much more important than prose in the vernacular, and in form and from France. Only after a little more than fifty content this verse continues faithful to the models years of rather servile imitation do the Italian poets venture to vary their subject matter and improve upon the borrowed forms.

It was at the Court of Frederick II. (11941250) in Sicily that the Provençal lyric manner was first imitated in Italian. Hence the early Italian poets are generally grouped together as the Sicilian school, although in point of fact they were not all Sicilians, but had Apulians and Tuscans among them. Chief among their number zio (c.1225-72), his Chancellor, Pier della Vigna were the Emperor Frederick himself, his son En

(died 1249), and Giacomo da Lentino, who was one of the most fertile of all, and was regarded by Dante as one of the best of the school. These and the other members of the movement sang of love in the conventional Provençal way, adopting the canzone as their stock poetic form, and from them the manner spread into Central Italy and Tuscany, finding acceptance especially in the towns having close relations with Frederick's Court. Thus Arrigo Testa in Arrezzo, Folcacchiero de' Folcacchieri in Siena, and many more reëchoed the Sicilian note. In at least one writer of this class, Buonagiunta Orbicciani, there is manifest a tendency to depart somewhat from the methods of the Sicilian school, and to introduce elements of Tuscan origin. This tendency becomes a certainty about 1260-80, in the lyrics of two sets of poets-the one belonging to Tuscany, the other to Bologna-and both representing a transition period during which prominence is given to the sonnet as well as to the canzone, the range of subject for poetic treatment is widened by the introduction of philosophical, religious, and political considerations, and especially of philosophical considerations as to the birth and nature of love, and an endeavor is made to

improve the style by bringing it closer to that ef composition in Latin. Of the Tuscan poets the most important was Guittone del Viva of Arezzo (1220-94), a member of the Frati godenti. In his earlier poems he adhered closely to the strict Provençal manner. In the later ones, replete with Latinisms in vocabulary and construction, he introduces speculation of a moral, religious, and philosophical nature, and, what is still more interesting, he addresses to his fellow-citizens remarks on matters of contemporary political interest. This attention to political matters of the day is stressed also in other members of the Florentine group, of whom Monte Andrea and Frescobaldi may receive a passing mention. The greatest departure from the mannerisms of the Sicilian school was made by the Bolognese group of writers, and the best of all these was Guido Guinizelli (c.1230-76), who was the first true poet in Italian. In his better canzoni and sonnets he applies Guittone's innovations to much better purpose, and in verses combining beauty of form with spontaneity of expression he discusses the origin and characteristics of love. From Guinizelli dates the dolce stil nuovo, which reached its height of excellence in the sublime poetry of Dante. The methods of Guittone and Guinizelli were adopted by the Florentine Chiaro Davanzati (c. 1230-?), whose conception of love is, however, rather more theological than purely philosophical. In many ways like Guinizelli, and especially so in the genuineness of his poetic note, was the Florentine Rustico di Filippo (c.1230-c.1280), who in his sonnets was the first to import a humorous element into Italian verse. More generally known to fame than he is still another Florentine, Brunetto Latini (c.1220-c.1294), whom a too literal interpretation of a statement made by Dante (Inferno, xv.) has caused to be considered as the latter's tutor. He was certainly a great factor in promoting culture in his own time. To Brunetto Latini, in addition to prose works and certain minor poems, there must also be ascribed the first allegorical poem in Italian, the Tesoretto. Possibly he intended this to be a sort of preface to his encyclopædic work, Li livres dou tresor, which he wrote in French. The verse so far mentioned was more or less learned in its nature; of a more popular origin was the verse that appeared in connection with the religious movements of the thirteenth century of the Flagellants, the Franciscans, and others.

To about 1224 belong the famous Laudes Creaturarum or Cantico del sole of Saint Francis of Assisi, and throughout the thirteenth century there were produced in both Umbria and Tuscany many laudi, a sort of religious verse, which, given the form of a dialogue, developed into the first dramas of Italy. Many of these laudi were composed by Jacopo (or Jacopone) dei Benedetti of Todi (c.1230-1306), a tertiary of the Franciscans from 1268 on. In Northern Italy there flourished a didactic poetry written for the inculcating of moral and religious teaching by clerics who stood in close relations with the people, and who had, moreover, the intention of counteracting the efforts of the jongleurs that were spreading a knowledge of the French chansons de geste and other profane literature. The earliest of these writers was perhaps Gherardo Patecchio (Girardo Pateg, c.1228), author of the Tedii and the Splanamento de li proverbii de

Salomone. Hardly later than the middle of the thirteenth century was the Libro of Uguçon de Laodho (Lodi), a rhymed account of Christian beliefs. The Sermon of the Milanese Pietro da Barsegapé seems to have been written not later than 1264. More culture is visible in the didactic and narrative verse of the monks, Bonvesin da Riva and Giacomino da Verona, produced during the second half of the thirteenth century. Giacomino's poems belong to the class of literature dealing with visions of the other world, as does also an anonymous poem-styled atrovare-which originated in Reggio.

To Northern Italy, a favorite haunt of the wandering jongleurs, belongs also at this time much narrative verse in Italian showing the foreign material of the chansons de geste (cf. the Buovo d'Antona, almost wholly Italian in treatment), and the beast epic (cf. Rainardo e Lesengrino, in two Venetian versions), thoroughly acclimated in Italy, after having passed through Franco-Italian intermediary forms. There was some writing of history in verse, but more interest attaches to Guidaloste da Pistoia's canzone on the taking of Torniella by the Sienese (1253), and especially to a Bolognese sirventese on the conflicts between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, composed shortly after 1280. Proofs are not lacking of the existence of a crude and thoroughly popular poetry (cf. the cantastorie), which was occasional in its nature and had reference to matters chiefly of local significance. Some elements of this spontaneous poetry of the people entered the more strictly literary forms; thus they were adopted by the didactic poets of the north, who strove to popularize their works, by the authors of religious lyrics, and even by certain poets of Tuscany and the South (Giacomino Pugliese, etc.), who utilized them in their love poems. Exceedingly popular in its nature, and yet influenced by literary conventions, is the so-called Contrasto di Cielo dal Camo (or d'Alcamo; consult A. d'Ancona, Studj sulla letteratura italiana dei primi secoli, Ancona, 1884), which, ascribed by a misreading of the manuscript to a Ciullo d'Alcamo, was long erroneously thought to be the earliest Italian poem. It really belongs to the period between 1231 and 1250, and has the form of a love debate between a maiden and an over-ardent admirer.

Italian prose of literary moment did not appear until the second half of the thirteenth century. As has been said, many narrative and didactic works were written in Latin. Moreover, like Brunetto Latini, certain other Italians adopted French for their productions; thus, Aldobrando, a Tuscan, composed in French prose his little treatise Le régime du corps (1256), and Rusticiano da Pisa employed the same language in his compilation of tales about Arthur and his knights (c.1270) and in his account of the journey of Marco Polo. Italian prose was first used to any great extent in translations of Latin didactic, moral, and historical works, and of French legends of an heroic or a religious nature. From French came the Dodici conti morali, the Fatti di Cesare, the Istorietta troiana (based on Benoît de Sainte-More's Roman de Troie), the Tavola ritonda, and the Tristano, all apparently of the thirteenth century, as is also at least one of the versions of the Libro dei Sette Savi.

The Disciplina clericale came in through a French version of Petrus Alphonsus's Latin text.

Among the renderings from Latin figured the Storie de Troia e de Roma, made, seemingly, soon after 1250, the moral distichs of Cato, the Pamphilus de Amore, the Trattati morali of Albertano da Brescia (two Tuscan versions, 1268 and 1275), and the various treatises attributed to the diligent translator Bono Giamboni. These all may belong to the time before 1300. The Esopic fables were also soon translated and became very popular. Original works in prose began to appear later. All may belong to this time. Noteworthy among them were the letters of Guittone d'Arezzo (1220-94), which display an unmistakable attempt to create a sort of poetical prose in Italian; the didactic works of Guidotto da Bologna (before 1266), of Tommaso Gozzadini (second half of the thirteenth century), of Ristoro d'Arezzo (1282), and especially the Introduzione alla virtù of Bono Giamboni (second half of the thirteenth century); certain chronicles and his torical accounts; and, most interesting of all, certain collections of tales. Already in the thirteenth century professional tellers of tales (favolatori, novellatori) wandered about Northern and Central Italy relating stories derived from all possible sources. Written collections of their tales, or of similar ones, were the Conti di antichi cavallieri (second half of the thirteenth century), consisting at least in part of rather free versions of matter originally French and Latin, and the Novellino, worked over in many versions even before the end of the thirteenth century, and displaying no little skill in the art of story-telling, which Boccaccio was to develop to the fullest before another century had passed.

Having considered Italian literature in its lisp ing, almost wholly imitative childhood, we now approach the period of Italian letters, when the great Tuscans, Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch, made their native dialect the predominant one of the Peninsula. The earliest of the three, Dante, stood at the height of a poetic movement which he himself styled the dolce stil nuovo, and which developed the principles already enunciated and illustrated by Guido Guinizelli and the Tuscan and Bolognese poets of the transition period. The idealizing of woman, brought about partly by the rise of the worship of the Virgin in the twelfth century and partly a natural consequence of the development of a philosophy of love and its origin, formed the subject matter of the verse of the dolce stil nuovo poets. Among these were Dante, his friend Guido Cavalcanti (c.12501300), Lapo Gianni (died after 1328). Dino Frescobaldi (died 1313), Gianni Alfani (still alive in 1310), Cino Sigisbuldi of Pistoia (died c.1337), and a number of younger men whose verse forms a link between the lyric methods of Dante and those of Petrarch. During the activity of Dante and the dolce stil nuovo poets there were some poets of a humorous and sarcastic turn of mind, like Cecco Angiolieri (still living in 1319) and Folgore di San Gimignano (flourished c.1315), and others of didactic and allegorizing tendencies, like the unknown authors of the Fiore-an imitation of the Roman de la Rose and possibly the work of Ser Durante (c.1300)-and of the Intelligenza (a work descriptive of Intelligence as a personification of universal knowledge, which was erroneously attributed to the Florentine chronicler Dino Compagni), and like Francesco da Barberino (1264-1348), who composed the Documenti d'amore and a treatise on etiquette

entitled Del reggimento e dei costumi di donna. The allegorical methods of the Fiore and the Intelligenza, and of Francesco da Barberino's poems, are present likewise in the Divina Commedia of Dante, who most brilliantly elaborates them.

Dante Alighieri (q.v.), who was born in 1265 and died in 1321, probably produced most of his work in the fourteenth century; the Vita Nuova alone seems to belong to the thirteenth century. This latter is a poetical account of the rise and growth of his love for Beatrice, set in an explanatory framework of prose. His abiding fame and excellence must be based on his Divina Commedia, a magnificent vision in which the poet pictures himself as guided first by his master Vergil through Hell, the realm of the damned, and Purgatory, the mount of temporary suffering where sin is purged from the soul, and as led afterwards by his idealized love Beatrice through the spheres of Paradise, where dwell the eternally blessed. The Divina Commedia is the most glorious production of the Middle Ages, of which it is the fullest artistic expression. The vision, a form often used before Dante's time, but with nothing like his skill; the allegory, a vivid portrayal of hundreds of men and women, and an endeavor to epitomize all human knowledge as scholastic philosophy comprehended it; frequent lyric outbursts; and, most striking of all, an autobiography, everywhere present and always grandly-these are the chief inner characteristics of the poem, which in its outer form displays an admirable metrical structure, depending principally upon the use of the terza rima and the hendecasyllabic verse. Another work of Dante's in the vulgar speech, which he now for all time made the norm of Italian, and one especially interesting for his conception of philosophy, is the Convivio (or Convito), a fragment in which the prose commentary and the verse text are intended to present to men a feast of reason. Some more or less doubtful short poems in Italian and certain works in Latin constitute the rest of his literary endeavors. A rival of Dante, Francesco Stabili, known as Cecco d'Ascoli (12571327), who was finally burned as a heretic, wrote the Acerba, a didactic poem in which he sought to sum up all matters of scientific interest, and to heap ridicule upon Dante's splendid creations of fancy. Still another noteworthy representative of the allegorical poetic movement, now declining, was Jacopo Alighieri (died probably during the plague of 1348), Dante's son, and the author of the Dottrinale. A number of political ballads, and of laudi that show a continued development of the dramatic form, are to be counted as part of the verse output of the fourteenth century. In so far as prose is concerned, translations from Latin and French still constituted the more important part of that produced during this first period of Tuscan supremacy, as it had done in the earlier periods of the literature. Bartolomeo da San Concordio (1262-1347) and Filippo Ceffi were prominent among the translators of Latin works. Many of the translations remain anonymous-as, for example, the various versions of the Æsopic fables, and of many legends of the saints, and the translation from the French known as the Libro di Fioravante. Didactic compilations and treatises are frequent enough at this time, many of them being due

equally important with the tale, and the writers of the former are much more numerous than in the first half of the century, although by no means so imposing, and they include among their best representatives Matteo Villani (1300-63), the brother of Giovanni Villani, whose Chronicle he continued, Marchionne Stefani (c.1320-85), and Donato Velluti. Travel literature is well represented in the Libro d'oltramare of Niccolò da Poggibonsi.

The Renaissance, heralded by Petrarch and Boccaccio, becomes all-important in the fifteenth century, when the humanists, aided by the recently invented printing-press, diffused a knowledge of the literature of ancient Greece and Rome through the length and breadth of the land, and ultimately through the whole Occident. Florence is still to the fore in this period, but there are now other important centres of learning and literary productivity, such as Naples, where the House of Aragon ruled; Ferrara, where the Dukes of Este were the patrons of men of letters; Rome, Mantua, Venice, Bologna, and Milan. In other words, although the Florentine influence still remained predominant, the literature of this period is more truly a national one in that it is not confined to a single region, but comes into being all through the peninsula. Here we need not enumerate the many writers engaged in translating from Greek and Latin, or writing only in the latter language. We need only bear in mind that for us their chief importance lies in the fact that they gave to the Italian people those elements of culture and humanism which, blended with the more popular and mediæval elements already manifested in the preceding periods, were to produce the brilliant and thoroughly national literature of the sixteenth century. Taking up the works of those who wrote in the vulgar tongue, we find in the Della famiglia of Leon Battista Alberti (c.1407-72) a picture of the ideal domestic life of the Renaissance age. Of a more popular coloring and especially notable because of their relation to the chivalrous matter, which is approaching nearer and nearer to artistic perfection of treatment, are the prose romances I reali di Francia and Guerino il Meschino. These were compiled by Andrea da Barberino (1372-1431) and give versions still read by the people at large of the epic traditions formerly written in French and in Franco-Venetian. Likewise popular in their constitution were the burlesque poems of Domenico Giovanni (c.1390-1448), surnamed I Burchiello. Probably of the first half of the fifteenth century was the anonymous poem Orlando, written in ottava rima, which harks back to the chansons de geste, as the name Orlando, i.e. Roland, indicates, and which, crude though it be, was a prototype of the chivalrous poem, especially so as it later entered into the composition of Pulci's work. Religious lyrics or laudi, and profane lyrics, mainly dance songs and strambotti, were developed along the same lines as in the fourteenth century, until in the verse of Leonardo Giustiniani (1388-1446) they received a more finished treatment, due to his tendency to combine classic and popular elements. Religious dramas or rappresentazioni sacre ap pear with greater frequency than before. From the middle of the century on, there becomes more decidedly manifest the tendency to elevate popular poetry by infusing into it elements of

culture with which the Renaissance had endowed the leading spirits of the land. This was the case particularly in three centres of great literary activity-Naples in the south, Ferrara in the north, and Florence in the centre of the country. Many of the writers of the Court of Ferdinand I. at Naples used the Neapolitan dialect, but they tempered it with forms borrowed from Tuscan and Latin. The most famous of their number was Jacopo Sannazaro (1458-1530), who wrote in the more general speech and in mingled prose and verse his pastoral romance, Arcadia, which, combining factors drawn from Boccaccio's Ameto with others borrowed from classic antiquity, soon made its fortune in the world. It was at Ferrara, one of the various literary centres of the north, that the best work of the time was produced, and there, living in close relations with the ducal rulers, Matteo Maria Boiardo, Count of Scandiano (1434-94), composed his celebrated Orlando innamorato, a poem in octaves which happily blends together elements from two of the chief Old French cycles of legends, that of Charlemagne and that of the matière de Bretagne, and adds to these elements of popular tradition certain others of classical origin, such as Homeric and Vergilian episodes; so that the Orlando innamorato, the first true romantic poem in Italian, marks the arrival of the chivalrous poem at a stage where it can be said to have a genuine artistic value. As a humanist Boiardo translated classical works, and as a Petrarchist he wrote sonnets and love poems that make him the most successful imitator of the master during this century. At Florence, Antonio Manetti (1423-97) produced his attractive Novella del grasso legnaiuolo, and Girolamo Savonarola (1452-98) composed poems and sermons replete with asceticism. But the most illustrious writers of the Florentine group were Luigi Pulci (1431-87), Lorenzo de' Medici (144992), and Politian (1454-94). To Pulci we owe the Morgante Maggiore. He elaborated the mat ter contained in the Orlando and the Spagna, and added to this epic matter of French origin sentiments and tendencies of his own of a humorous character. As a poem of chivalry, the Morgante is certainly devoid of the serious spirit that animates Boiardo's work, but it must not be deemed an intentional parody of chivalry. style and tone it is one of the most charming productions of the century. Lorenzo de' Medici (il Magnifico), a most liberal patron of the arts, wrote love poems, idyls, pastorals, satires, dramatic poems, laudi, and carnival songs, and by these personal efforts exercised a great deal of influence for the better upon the circle of writers about him. In Politian (Angelo Ambrogini, known as Poliziano from his native place, Montepulciano) there comes to light the noblest and highest type of the Italian humanist of the fif teenth century; for in him we find the classic and modern traditions in perfect union. His Orfeo (1472 or 1483) was the first profane drama in the language, his Stanze per la giostra are as finished in form as the best works of the sixteenth century, and his Rime, or love songs, reveal the influence of the culture of the Renaissance upon lyric forms of popular origin. Politian's death, coming near the end of the century. nearly coincides with the end of the Renaissance period. It is followed by a new classic period in Italian literature-called by the Italians the

In