Editing Italy (section)

=== Literature ===
{{Main|Italian literature}}
Formal Latin literature began in 240 BC, when the first stage play was performed in Rome.<ref>Duckworth, George Eckel. [https://books.google.com/books?id=BuLEo5U9sb0C&pg=PA3 ''The nature of Roman comedy: a study in popular entertainment.''] University of Oklahoma Press, 1994. p. 3. Web. 15 October 2011.</ref> Latin literature was, and is, highly influential, with numerous writers, poets, philosophers, and historians, such as [[Pliny the Elder]], [[Pliny the Younger]], [[Virgil]], [[Horace]], [[Propertius]], [[Ovid]], and [[Livy]]. The Romans were famous for their oral tradition, poetry, drama, and epigrams.<ref>{{Cite book|url={{Google books|LHA_SydyKOYC|page=PA39|keywords=|text=|plainurl=yes}}|title=Poetry and Drama: Literary Terms and Concepts.|date=2011|publisher=The Rosen Publishing Group|isbn=978-1-6153-0490-5|access-date=18 October 2011}}</ref> In the early 13th century, [[Francis of Assisi]] was the first Italian poet, with his religious song ''[[Canticle of the Sun]]''.<ref>{{Cite book|url={{Google books|3uq0bObScHMC|keywords=|text=|plainurl=yes}}|title=The Cambridge History of Italian Literature|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1999|isbn=978-0-5216-6622-0|editor-last=Brand|editor-first=Peter|chapter=2 – Poetry. Francis of Assisi (pp. 5ff.)|access-date=31 December 2015|editor-last2=Pertile|editor-first2=Lino|editor-link2=Lino Pertile|chapter-url={{Google books|3uq0bObScHMC|page=PA5|keywords=|text=|plainurl=yes}}|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160610172548/https://books.google.com/books?id=3uq0bObScHMC&printsec=frontcover|archive-date=10 June 2016|url-status=live}}</ref>

[[File:Dante03.jpg|thumb|upright=.8|[[Dante Alighieri]], whose works helped establish modern [[Italian language]], is considered one of the greatest poets of the [[Middle Ages]]. His epic poem ''[[Divine Comedy]]'' ranks among the finest works of [[world literature]].]]
At the court of [[Emperor Frederick II]] in Sicily, in the 13th century, lyrics modelled on Provençal forms and themes were written in a refined version of the local vernacular. One of these poets was [[Giacomo da Lentini]], inventor of the [[sonnet]] form; the most famous early sonneteer was [[Petrarch]].<ref>Ernest Hatch Wilkins, ''The invention of the sonnet, and other studies in Italian literature'' (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e letteratura, 1959), 11–39</ref>

[[Guido Guinizelli]] is the founder of the ''[[Dolce Stil Novo]]'', a school that added a philosophical dimension to love poetry. This new understanding of love, expressed in a smooth style, influenced the Florentine poet [[Dante Alighieri]], who established the basis of modern Italian. Dante's work, ''[[Divine Comedy]]'', is among the finest in literature.<ref name="Bloom">{{Cite book|last=Bloom|first=Harold|author-link=Harold Bloom|url=https://archive.org/details/westerncanonbook00bloorich|title=The Western Canon|publisher=Harcourt Brace|year=1994|isbn=978-0-1519-5747-7|url-access=registration}} See also [[Western canon]] for other "canons" that include the ''Divine Comedy''.</ref> Petrarch and [[Giovanni Boccaccio]] sought and imitated the works of antiquity and cultivated their own artistic personalities. Petrarch achieved fame through his collection of poems, ''[[Il Canzoniere]]''. Equally influential was Boccaccio's ''[[The Decameron]]'', a very popular collection of short stories.<ref>{{Cite encyclopedia|title=Giovanni Boccaccio: The Decameron.|encyclopedia=[[Encyclopædia Britannica]]|url=https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/70836/Giovanni-Boccaccio/755/The-Decameron|access-date=18 December 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131219020413/https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/70836/Giovanni-Boccaccio/755/The-Decameron|archive-date=19 December 2013|url-status=live}}</ref>

Renaissance authors' works include [[Niccolò Machiavelli]]'s ''[[The Prince]]'', an essay on political science in which the "effectual truth" is taken to be more important than any abstract ideal. [[Giovanni Francesco Straparola]] and [[Giambattista Basile]], who wrote ''[[The Facetious Nights of Straparola]]'' (1550–55) and the ''[[Pentamerone]]'' (1634), respectively, printed some of the first known versions of fairy tales in Europe.<ref>Steven Swann Jones, ''The Fairy Tale: The Magic Mirror of Imagination'', Twayne Publishers, New York, 1995, {{ISBN|0-8057-0950-9}}, p. 38; Bottigheimer 2012a, 7; Waters 1894, xii; Zipes 2015, 599.; {{Citation|last1=Opie|first1=Iona|title=The Classic Fairy Tales|year=1974|url=https://archive.org/details/classicfairytale00opie_0|place=Oxford and New York|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-1921-1559-1|last2=Opie|first2=Peter|author-link=Iona Opie|author-link2=Peter Opie}} See p. 20. The claim for earliest fairy-tale is still debated, see for example Jan M. Ziolkowski, ''Fairy tales from before fairy tales: the medieval Latin past of wonderful lies'', University of Michigan Press, 2007. Ziolkowski examines [[Egbert of Liège]]'s Latin beast poem ''Fecunda natis'' (''The Richly Laden Ship'', c. 1022/24), the earliest known version of "[[Little Red Riding Hood]]". Further info: [https://web.archive.org/web/20071023044216/http://www.leithart.com/archives/003139.php Little Red Pentecostal], Peter J. Leithart, 9 July 2007.</ref> The Baroque period produced the clear scientific prose of [[Galileo Galilei|Galileo]]. In the 17th century, the [[Academy of Arcadia|Arcadians]] began a movement to restore simplicity and classical restraint to poetry.<ref>[https://www.britannica.com/topic/Academy-of-Arcadia Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Academy of Arcadia". ''Encyclopedia Britannica'']</ref>

Italian writers embraced Romanticism in the 19th century; it coincided with ideas of the [[Risorgimento]], the movement that brought Italian unification. Unification was heralded by the poets [[Vittorio Alfieri]], [[Ugo Foscolo]], and [[Giacomo Leopardi]]. Works by [[Alessandro Manzoni]], the leading Italian Romantic, are a symbol of Italian unification for their patriotic message and because of his efforts in the development of modern, unified Italian.<ref>{{Cite web|date=18 May 2023|title=Alessandro Manzoni {{!}} Italian author|url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alessandro-Manzoni|website=Encyclopædia Britannica}}</ref>

[[File:Portrait of Niccolò Machiavelli.jpg|thumb|upright=.8|[[Machiavelli]], the founder of modern [[political science]]]]
In the late 19th century, a literary movement called ''[[Verismo (literature)|verismo]]'', which extolled realism, played a major role in Italian literature. [[Emilio Salgari]], a writer of action-adventure [[swashbuckler]]s and a pioneer of science fiction, published his ''[[Sandokan]]'' series.<ref>{{Cite book|last1=Gaetana Marrone|url={{Google books|d9NcAgAAQBAJ|page=PA1654|keywords=|text=|plainurl=yes}}|title=Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies|last2=Paolo Puppa|publisher=Routledge|year=2006|isbn=978-1-1354-5530-9|page=1654}}</ref> In 1883, [[Carlo Collodi]] published ''[[The Adventures of Pinocchio]]'', which became the most celebrated children's classic by an Italian author and one of the world's [[List of literary works by number of translations|most translated]] non-religious books.<ref>Giovanni Gasparini. ''La corsa di Pinocchio''. Milano, Vita e Pensiero, 1997. p. 117. {{ISBN|8-8343-4889-3}}</ref> A movement called [[futurism]] influenced literature in the early 20th century. [[Filippo Tommaso Marinetti]] wrote ''[[Manifesto of Futurism]]'' and called for the use of language and metaphors that glorified the speed, dynamism, and violence of the machine age.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The 20th-Century art book.|publisher=Phaidon Press|year=2001|isbn=978-0-7148-3542-6|edition=Reprinted.|location=dsdLondon}}</ref>

Modern literary figures and Nobel laureates are [[Gabriele D'Annunzio]], nationalist poet [[Giosuè Carducci]] 1906 Nobel laureate, realist writer [[Grazia Deledda]] 1926 laureate, modern theatre author [[Luigi Pirandello]] in 1936, short story writer [[Italo Calvino]] in 1960, poets [[Salvatore Quasimodo]] in 1959 and [[Eugenio Montale]] in 1975, [[Umberto Eco]] in 1980, and satirist and theatre author [[Dario Fo]] in 1997.<ref>{{Cite web|title=All Nobel Prizes in Literature|url=http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110529091551/http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates|archive-date=29 May 2011|access-date=30 May 2011|publisher=Nobel Foundation}}</ref>