DEPARTMENT OF LITERATURE. CHIEF REPRESENTATIVES. DATE. TYPICAL WORKS. SOME INFLUENCES ON ENGLISH LITERATURE. Allegorical Poetry (“Visions”) DANTE ALIGHIERI 1265-1321 (_Divina Commedia_) The first model of noble style and matter in modern literature. Afforded much suggestion to Milton (_Paradise Lost_). Chaucer shows borrowings and translations in _e.g._, _House of Fame_, _Parliament of Fowles_, and the story of Ugolino in _Monk’s Tale_. Specific influences are less obvious than the general fact. Francesco PETRARCA 1304-1374 _Trionfi_ (“Triumphs”). Lyrical Poetry: (_a_) Sonnets and _Canzoni_ (Dante and his circle) 1265-1321 Francesco PETRARCA 1304-1374 Sonnets and _Canzoni_ Petrarch’s sonnets became the model for all later Italians, and thence for Englishmen. The form (modified) was introduced into England by Wyatt and Surrey (temp. Henry VIII) and sonnets, or sonnet sequences, were written by more than a hundred versifiers in the Elizabethan period. Examples are Spenser (_Amoretti_), Sidney (_Astrophel and Stella_), Watson (_Teares of Fansie_), Daniel (_Delia_), Drayton (_Idea_) Constable (_Diana_), Shakespeare. Milton’s sonnets (five of them in Italian) are of the same suggestion; and so down to them Rossetti and Mrs. Browning. The poetical collections of Elizabethans (_Tottell’s Miscellany_, _The Paradise of Dainty Devices_, etc.) are markedly Italian in _provenance_. (Lorenzo de’ Medici, etc.) 1448-1492 Sonnets and _Canzoni_. Lodovico ARIOSTO 1474-1533 Sonnets. Torquato TASSO 1544-1595 Sonnets. Giovanni Battista MARINI 1569-1625 (Various.) (_b_) Other Lyrics Gabriello Chiabrera 1551-1637 Pindaric lyrics Influenced the taste for Pindarics which appeared in Cowley, Dryden, etc. Pietro METASTASIO 1698-1782 Operatic lyrics. Heroic and Epic Verse (chiefly romantic heroics) Giovanni BOCCACCIO 1313-1375 _La Teseide_ and _Filostrato_ Chief introducer of the octave stanza (_ottava rima_), which became the type for Italian epic. Adopted in English with one modification by Chaucer (_Troilus and Cressida_), and with another by Spenser (_Faerie Queene_). Chaucer’s _Knight’s Tale_ is from Boccaccio’s _Teseide_, and his _Troilus and Cressida_ (like Shakespeare’s) from the _Filostrato_. Chaucer shows many borrowings and paraphrases. Luigi PULCI 1431-1487 _Morgante Maggiore_ (heroic romance, serious only in part). Matteo Maria BOIARDO 1430-1494 _Orlando Innamorato_ (mockingly recast by Berni fifty years later).