page_title: Italian Renaissance
section_title: Literature and poetry
hierarchical_section_title: Italian Renaissance / Culture / Literature and poetry
context_page_description: The Italian Renaissance was a period in the Italian history that covered the 15th and 16th centuries, spreading across Europe and marking the transition from the Middle Ages to Modernity. Proponents of a "long Renaissance" argue that it began in the 14th century and lasted until the 17th century. The French word renaissance means "rebirth" and defines the period as one of cultural revival and renewed interest in classical antiquity after the centuries labeled the Dark Ages by Renaissance humanists. The Renaissance author Giorgio Vasari used the term "Rebirth" in his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects in 1550 but the concept became widespread only in the 19th century, after the works of scholars such as Jules Michelet and Jacob Burckhardt.
  The Renaissance began in Tuscany, and was centred in the city of Florence. Florence, one of the several city-states of the peninsula, rose to economic and political prominence by providing credit for European monarchs and laying down the groundwork for capitalism and banking.
context_section_description: The thirteenth-century Italian literary revolution helped set the stage for the Renaissance. Prior to the Renaissance, the Italian language was not the literary language in Italy.  It was only in the 13th century that Italian authors began writing in their native language rather than Latin, French, or Provençal.  The 1250s saw a major change in Italian poetry as the Dolce Stil Novo (Sweet New Style, which emphasized Platonic rather than courtly love) came into its own, pioneered by poets like Guittone d'Arezzo and Guido Guinizelli.  Especially in poetry, major changes in Italian literature had been taking place decades before the Renaissance truly began.
  With the printing of books initiated in Venice by Aldus Manutius, an increasing number of works began to be published in the Italian language in addition to the flood of Latin and Greek texts that constituted the mainstream of the Italian Renaissance.  The source for these works expanded beyond works of theology and towards the pre-Christian eras of Imperial Rome and Ancient Greece.  This is not to say that no religious works were published in this period:  Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy reflects a distinctly medieval world view.  Christianity remained a major influence for artists and authors, with the classics coming into their own as a second primary influence.
  In the early Italian Renaissance, much of the focus was on translating and studying classic works from Latin and Greek. Renaissance authors were not content to rest on the laurels of ancient authors, however.  Many authors attempted to integrate the methods and styles of the ancient Greeks into their own works.  Among the most emulated Romans are Cicero, Horace, Sallust, and Virgil.  Among the Greeks, Aristotle, Homer, and Plato were now being read in the original for the first time since the 4th century, though Greek compositions were few.
  The literature and poetry of the Renaissance was largely influenced by the developing science and philosophy.  The humanist Francesco Petrarch, a key figure in the renewed sense of scholarship, was also an accomplished poet, publishing several important works of poetry.  He wrote poetry in Latin, notably the Punic War epic Africa, but is today remembered for his works in the Italian vernacular, especially the Canzoniere, a collection of love sonnets dedicated to his unrequited love Laura.  He was the foremost writer of Petrarchan sonnets, and translations of his work into English by Thomas Wyatt established the sonnet form in that country, where it was employed by William Shakespeare and countless other poets.
  Petrarch's disciple, Giovanni Boccaccio, became a major author in his own right.  His major work was the Decameron, a collection of 100 stories told by ten storytellers who have fled to the outskirts of Florence to escape the black plague over ten nights. The Decameron in particular and Boccaccio's work in general were a major source of inspiration and plots for many English authors in the Renaissance, including Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare.
  Aside from Christianity, classical antiquity, and scholarship, a fourth influence on Renaissance literature was politics. The political philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli's most famous works are Discourses on Livy, Florentine Histories and finally The Prince, which has become so well known in modern societies that the word Machiavellian has come to refer to the cunning and ruthless actions advocated by the book. Along with many other Renaissance works, The Prince remains a relevant and influential work of literature today.
caption: Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527), the author of The Prince and prototypical Renaissance man. Detail from a portrait by Santi di Tito.
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