The Cambridge History of Italian Literature

Abstract

This elegantly produced single volume overview of Italian literature from its origins to 1990 should find a welcomed home on anyone's bookshelf.Whether student, scholar, or general reader, one will discover in this work a concise, yet thorough historyof a thousand years of vernacular Italian writing presented in learned, yet pleasantly readable essays by some of the most eminent contemporary Italianisti in the English-speaking world.The volume is further enriched by a map of contemporaryItaly, a chronological chart of political, literary, and "other" events, an excellent selected bibliography of primary and secondarysources, and a rich index of names.It can thus serve as a reference tool for a variety of scholarly needs.The essays themselves are arranged chronologically.They begin according to the standard divisions by centuries -"Origins and Duecento," "Trecento," "Quattrocento," "Cinquecento," "Seicento," "Settecento."Then, with "The Age of Romanticism (1800- 1870)" acting as a pivot, they suddenly turn into politically framed divisions -" The Literature of United Italy ", "The Rise and Fall of Fascism ", "The Aftermath of the Second World War (1945-65)', and "Contemporary Italy (since 1956)."Within each essay, the general overview of each literary age is subdivided as best fits that particular period.Thus, Jonathan Usher's excellent chapter on the "Origins and Duecento" views the literary output of the first centuries from the three basic

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