Italian literature

Introduction
Early vernacular literature
- The influence of France
- The Sicilian school
- The Tuscan poets
- The new style
- Comic verse
- Religious poetry
- Prose
The 14th century
- Dante (1265–1321)
- Petrarch (1304–74)
- Boccaccio (1313–75)
- Popular literature and romances
- Religious and historical literature
The Renaissance
- The age of humanism
- The rise of vernacular literature
- Political, historical, biographical, and moral literature
- Poetry
- Drama
- Narrative
17th-century literature
- Poetry and prose
- Music drama and the Accademia dell’Arcadia
Developments in the 18th century
- Reform of the tragic theater
- Goldoni’s reform of comedy
- The world of learning
- The Enlightenment (Illuminismo)
Literary trends of the 19th century
- Romanticism
- Opposing movements
- The Risorgimento and after
- The veristi and other narrative writers
The 20th century
- Gabriele D’Annunzio’s nationalism
- Benedetto Croce’s criticism
- Literary trends before World War I
- The “return to order”
- Luigi Pirandello
- The Hermetic movement
- Social commitment and the new realism
- Other writings
- The end of the century
  - Poetry after World War II
  - Experimentalism and the new avant-garde
  - Dialect poetry
  - Theater
  - Women writers
  - Fiction at the turn of the 21st century
  - Facing the new millennium

References & Edit History Related Topics

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Baldassare Castiglione

Commedia dell'arte

Gabriele D'Annunzio

Benedetto Croce

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Luigi Pirandello

Related Questions

Dante Portrait of Italian poet Dante Alighieri.

Italian literature

Written by

Anthony OldcornAll

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Britannica Editors

Italian literature, the body of written works produced in the Italian language that had its beginnings in the 13th century. Until that time nearly all literary work composed in Europe during the Middle Ages was written in Latin. Moreover, it was predominantly practical in nature and produced by writers trained in ecclesiastical schools. Literature in Italian developed later than literature in French and Provençal, the languages of the north and south of France, respectively. Only...

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