ITALIAN LITERARY CLASSICS
By Matthew V. Grieco
For those looking for reading material of a fictional nature, consider some of the Italian classics. Even if you’ve read them in college, or seen a film version, it might be time to delve in once again.
We’ll take as our starting point the Divine Comedy of the Florentine Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). The importance of that work cannot be overstated. Before, all great Western literary works were written in Latin. Dante established his native Tuscan dialect as a dignified and versatile medium for literature, and it eventually became the standardized Italian idiom. His influence can be discerned in countless other masterpieces, literary, artistic, and now cinematic, throughout the centuries. The Divine Comedy is a multi-layered allegorical journey through hell, purgatory, and heaven, an insight into the Medieval mind, a partial autobiography, a story of love, and more for you to discover.
Our next milestone is the Florentine Giovanni Boccaccio’s (1313-1375) Decameron. Whereas Dante’s Divine Comedy was written in poetic form, as all epics were, the Decameron was written in prose. The Decameron, meaning “Ten Days,” takes its name from the book’s framework: ten people, fleeing the city during the Black Death (bubonic plague), agree to take turns each day telling stories to divert one another. The tales are varied and entertaining. Some are inspirational, others bawdy; some are tender romances, others sober warnings. In all, though, the characters become alive. Another groundbreaker was De Claris Mulieribus(“Famous Women”), the first collection of biographies on women (106 in all, ranging from mythology to Boccaccio’s contemporaries).
Considered the first Italian historical novel is I Promessi Sposi (the “Betrothed”) by the Milanese Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873). The story is set in 1628 to 1631, under oppressive Spanish rule, but is interpreted as an indirect criticism of Austrian rule during Manzoni’s lifetime. The protagonists, Renzo and Lucia, battle a microcosmic tyranny, as they seek to reunite and be free.
Another towering historical novel is Il Gattopardo (“The Leopard”) by the Sicilian Giuseppe di Lampedusa (1896-1957). We view the Risorgimento, or Italian reunification, through the eyes of Don Fabrizio, a Sicilian prince known as the Leopard. Unlike most Risorgimento tales, which are nationalistic in tone, Il Gattopardo comes from the perspective of the old, soon to be obsolete, regime. It is all the more poignant in that the prince sees his own eclipse.
For children, there are two excellent collections of short stories: Italian Fairy Tales, edited by Peter Lum, and Italian Popular Tales, edited by Jack Zipes.