Initiation into Literature by Émile Faguet
page 84 of 168 (50%)
page 84 of 168 (50%)
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SALVATOR ROSA; TASSONI; MAFFEI.--The great painter Salvator Rosa devoted himself hardly less to literature; he left lyrical poems and particularly satires which are far from lacking spirit, though often destitute of taste. Satiric, too, was the paradoxical Tassoni, who scoffed at Petrarch, and who in his _Thoughts_, long prior to J.J. Rousseau, was the first, perhaps (but who knows?), to maintain that literature is highly prejudicial to society and humanity, and who achieved fame by his _Rape of the Bucket_: that is, by a burlesque poem on the quarrel between the Bolognese and the inhabitants of Modena about a bucket. Maffei (intruding somewhat on the eighteenth century), good scholar and respected historian, produced in 1714 his _Merope_, which was an excellent tragedy, as Voltaire well knew and also testified. HISTORIANS AND CRITICS.--In prose there are none to point out in the eighteenth century in Italy except historians and critics. Among the historians must be noted Davila, who spent his youth in France near Catherine de' Medici, served in the French armies, and on his return to Padua devoted his old age to history. He wrote a _History of the Civil Wars in France_ which was highly esteemed, and which Fenelon recollected when writing his _Letter on the Pursuits of the French Academy_. The foregoing are what must be mentioned as notable manifestations of literary activity in Italy during the seventeenth century, but let it not be forgotten that the scientific activity of the period was magnificent, and that it was the century of Galileo, of Torricelli; of the _four_ Cassini, as well as of so many others who were praised, as they deserved to be, in the _Eulogies of the Learned_ of Fontenelle. |
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