Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Leonard Johnson and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net Studies in the Poetry of Italy II. ITALIAN BY OSCAR KUHNS _Wesleyan University_ [Illustration] =Chautauqua Press= CHAUTAUQUA, NEW YORK MCMXIII COPYRIGHT, 1901, BY OSCAR KUHNS Third Edition, 1913 =The Chautauqua Print Shop= Chautauqua, New York PREFACE In writing this book the author has endeavored to give a connected story of the development of Italian literature from its origin down to the present. In so doing, however, he has laid chief stress on those writers whose fame is world-wide, and thus, owing to lack of space, has been obliged to treat in the briefest manner those writers who, although famous in Italy itself, are not generally known to the world at large. It is hoped that the reader may be led to study more in detail this literature, which although ranking with the greatest of the world-literatures, has been to a large degree neglected in England and America. The translations from Dante's New Life and of the story from Boccaccio have been made by the author, inasmuch as during the writing of this book he could not obtain access to the standard translations. It is to be noted also, that owing to unavoidable delay in the transmission of the manuscript, the author has not been able to read the proof. FLORENCE, Italy. CONTENTS BOOK II. ITALIAN CHAPTER PAGE I. THE ORIGINS OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 173 II. DANTE: LIFE AND MINOR WORKS 193 III. THE DIVINE COMEDY 214 IV. PETRARCH 263 V. BOCCACCIO 283 VI. THE RENAISSANCE AND ARIOSTO 297 VII. TASSO 316 VIII. THE PERIOD OF DECADENCE AND THE REVIVAL 337 STUDIES IN THE POETRY OF ITALY CHAPTER I THE ORIGINS OF ITALIAN LITERATURE The first thing that strikes the attention of the student of Italian literature is its comparatively recent origin. In the north and south of France the Old French and Provençal languages had begun to develop a literature before the tenth century, which by the end of the twelfth had risen to a high degree of cultivation; indeed, by that time the Provençal had attained its highest point, and had already begun to decline. In Italy, however, we cannot trace the beginning of a literature, properly so-called, farther back than the thirteenth century.