Criticism > Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism > Italian Romanticism - Italian Romantic Theory

1. Printable Version
2. Download PDF
3. Cite this Page
4. Tweet This

ITALIAN ROMANTIC THEORY

Francesco De Sanctis

SOURCE: "The New Literature," in History of Italian Literature, translated by Joan Redfern, 1931. Reprint, Basic Books, Inc., 1959, pp. 833-947.

[In the following excerpt, De Sanctis describes the philosophical underpinnings of Italian Romanticism.]

[At the opening of the nineteenth] century the Abate Monti was still in his zenith, with lesser planets revolving around him. Foscolo in his solitude was planning his Grazie, and Romagnosi was transmitting to the new generation the thought of the vanquished century. And precisely in 1815, amid the clamour of mighty events, there came to the light that little booklet called Inni which nobody bothered about. The eighteenth century was closed by Foscolo's Odes; the nineteenth was opened by Manzoni's Hymns. The first poems of the new century had names such as "Christmas," "The Passion," "The Resurrection,"...

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass

1. Introduction
2. Representative Works
3. Origins And Overviews
4. Italian Romantic Theory
5. The Language Of Romanticism
6. Further Reading
7. Copyright

1. Literary Theory
2. Romanticism