The 19th Century

The 19th century

After the universalism of the French Revolution and the foiled ambitions of Napoleon, new ideals made way into European and Italian society, among them a passion for the popular heritage of the country, whether in language, music or poetry, most of all because it belonged to all classes of society.
The idea of a genuine language made from below appealed to the Romantics because it emancipated itself from the past, when history had been made on the drawing board by few enlightened intellectuals who had left the people out. 

The idea that value lies in innovation and originality is also romantic, and that was one more reason, in the intentions of many, to erase much of the linguistic imports from France. Mixed attitude toward the French heritage Many French words are erased but a few important ones (as those introduced by Naponeon's modern bureaucracy) would become part of the nation's legacy. 

The Italian flag, modeled on the French would remain as the word tricolore. When the French army arrived in Italy, the Italians welcomed it. Only when they realised that liberators were conquerors, did they realise that foreign power could hardly be trusted with such matters. 

However, for all his imperialist ambitions, Napoleon brought to Italy many of the principles that had inspired the French Revolution. All citizens, French and Italian were equal under French law and his modern bureaucracy and civil code drawn on Roman Law removed the feudal relics that had slowed down Italian economy for centuries.

A new national sentiment The need for national identity built by the people, for the people called for political independence: it had inmdeed prompted the reaction to French plans, aimed, on the contrary, at building a pan-European country in which all cultures would assimilate to the French. 

Some recent historians have argued that the principle of self-determination that the King of Sardinia claimed to uphold was only another name for his territorial ambitions. Such new historians have claimed that the Italians did not want or need national unification based on the proof that the most referendums held to annex the new territories were tampered with. 

But, even conceding that, most Italians could hardly read and write and lived under extreme poverty while those who were literate were subject to a widespread anti-unification propaganda in their home states, ruled by foreign powers, the only exception being the Vatican (which then occupied Latium and Marche, a good portion of central Italy and would not accept being incorporated into a new national entity). 

There was no such thing as free press in those states and dissenters had to be anonymous. No one could expose himself unless he wanted to be imprisoned or executed on charges of high treason (as happened with the revolutionary movements of Carboneria of 1820-1 and 1830-1). 

An interesting book, now widely ignored in schools, is Silvio Pellico's Le mie prigioni, written in the high-security Spielberg prison in Austria. Pellico was sentenced to life inprisonment, then commuted to 10 years, for siding with the carbonari independentist movement. 

He was apparentluy involved in a plot against the Austrian government (which then ruled Northern Italy from Lombardy to Friuli). However, when Verdi's Nabucco was first performed in Milan (then under Austrian rule), a loud applause interrupted the performance of "Va' Pensiero", the famous air where the Jewish captives lament their slavery under Nabuchedanezar's. 

That sent an unmistakeable signal to all Italians. Rediscovering Popular and Regional Tradition Romantic writers like Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873) were generally open to popular and vernacular influence, as they rediscovered the importance played by local tradition and folklore. 

This attitude was reflected in the Romantics use of language: many vernacular words and expressions not included in volgare illustre were added at this time. In the latter half of the century, when political unification was achieved, (though positivism was openly anti-romantic) such interest produced great novels and theatre from the poorest and most ingnored regions of Italy. 

To reconstruct those environments in fiction writers like Verga ransacked the Italian dialects and to create a fresher prose. Naturalistic (Verismo is the name of the Italian movement, while French authors have Naturalisme) novelists such as Giovanni Verga (1840-1922) and Luigi Capuana (1839-1915), two outstanding Sicilians of post-unification Italy, wrote in a style that closely mimics the local dialect. 

They intended to give readers close, vivid snapshots of the lower classes and highlight some of the pressing social problems often unknown in Northern Italy and Piedmont, then the seat of the ruling Savoy dinastry . As a result, much more vernacular terms and phrases made their way into the Italian language. 

A Renewed Interest in History The 1800s are also the century when history is studied passionately, including the history of language(s). The terms linguistica and glottologia, "linguistics" and "historical linguistics" date to this time, as Grimm and Verner's laws. 

It is the time when a new awareness of national identity leads many scholars to rediscover history and revaluate the role played in it by ordinary people: 

La recherche de l'unité dans l'espace inspire les œvres è charactère social; [l'histoire] peut-être est-ce la même
recherche, mais dans le temps, qui dicte à tout un siècle sa passion pour l'Histoire... Au XIXe siècle le roman, le théâtre, la poésie trouvent dans l'Histoire non plus seulement des événements, ou même un décor : ils laprennent pour sujet... l'histoire devient alors un mythe, qui propose une interpretation pour aujourd'hui - ou pour demain." transl. "The search after spacial unity inspires works of social interest; [history] is perhaps the same search, but in time, which dictates its passion for History to an entire century...In the 19th century the novel, theatre, poetry do not just find facts and dates, or a background: they take it for a subject...then history becomes a myth, offering its onw interpretation of current or future events."] (J.Y. Tadié, Introduction à la vie littéraire du XIXe siècle.) 

Francesco de Sanctis: the History of Italian Literature 

It is to a later romantic, Francesco de Sanctis (1817-1883) that we owe the History of the Italian Literature (Storia della letteratura italiana, 1871), a monumental work which, remarkablly, he finished as the first Italian troops annexed Rome.
His Storia, initially conceived as an anthology of Italian authors for high school students, eventually grew in length and complexity, becoming a compelling work that was destined to change forever the landscape of literary criticism, influencing scholars as Benedetto Croce (1866-1952) and Gramsci (1891-1937), and being widely read by our contemporaries. 

This renewed interest in history also encouraged a series of studies on almost every discipline, and lead to the discovery of an ancestral, prehistoric language from which descended the largest historical language groups: the Proto-Greek, German, Celtic, the Italic dialects and the History of the Italian language itself. 

Proto-Indoeuropean and historical linguistics Proto-Indoeuropean, Latin's parent language, was recontructed using comparative analysis, text-dating techniques, and metaphonetics. Ancient (Aramaic, Iranian, Assyrian) and modern languages (mostly European), were scrutinised and cross-referenced, and the results pointed the origins of European languages to an area comprised between Iran and India. 

It was also proved the relationship between present intonation in many modern languages and Proto-Indoeuropean vowel pitch which had phonemic value as in Mandarin and many more Asian languages . The scholars debate about the italian standard Manzoni's I promessi sposi, (The Betrothed) is the first historical novel of Italy, and its drafting is also the work of a long research on 17th-century Lombardy. 

The developement of 19th and 20th century Italian was widely influenced by his novel (I Promessi Sposi), built using a refined version of the Florentine spoken in the first half of the century . Its great success generated numerous translations (it is known in English as The Betrothed) and given its patriotic message, inspired more Italians to fight for independence. 

Its language (though much less in its second edition of 1840) also reflects the Romantics' liberal approach. They declared their intention to part with academic tradition so that the Crusca accused them of polluting Bembo's bella lingua: the dispute was, however, much more articulated than might appear, and we need to look at at the wider spectrum between the extremes, represented by classicism and romanticism. 

Between the purists (Cesari and Puoti) and the romantics (Berchet et al.) stood classicists as Giordani, Leopardi, Monti, while Manzoni, himself a romantic, was a more moderate within his movement, as he tried to reconcile the opposite factions. 

The purists and the Crusca The purists' position was as simple as it was uncompromising: the only Italian that should be accepted was that of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. Everything before and after the 1300s must be erased. For the purists this was the best course to take since these were the guidelines given by Cardinal Bembo in the Renaissance (see above). 

Such was the stand of Antonio Cesari (Verona 1760-1828), "who considered a rollback to 14th-century Italian as the solution to the language issue and the remedy to the wave of gallicisms that had entered the Italian language in the 18th century, eventually corrupting it, he thought." (Bruni) 

The classicists and Leopardi More nuanced was the position of the classicists, whose examples for a model Italian spanned from the 1300s to the Renaissance and were moderately interested in including loans from other Italian dialects. 

Vincenzo Monti had published his Proposta di alcune correzioni ed aggiunte al Vocabolario della Crusca (1817-26) in which he distanced himself from purism, stating that not only Renaissance Italian was by no means inferior to that of Dante, but that in order for the Italian language to acquire more flexibility and richness it should not be based on literary models alone. 

To survive, the Italian language should get fresh blood from all orders of society, as doctors, lawyers, artisans, workers. Giacomo Leopardi is, however, more eclectic: while rejecting gallicisms or French loans he believed that the words common to most European languages (think of international terms of no distinct nationality as revolutionary-révolutionnaire-rivoluzionario or en.fr. document it.sp. documento etc.) must be included in the Italian language. 

His open-mindedness is also shown in his ramarkable interest in neologisms, many of which are still with us today. He strongly believed in europeismo (his coinage) and introduced such words as dispotismo, genio, sentimentale, analisi, demagogo, originalità and many others. 

A romantic view of language: Manzoni 

Manzoni believed that a national language must primarily serve practical purposes, and that priority must be given to the spoken word, the perfect model being present-day Florentine as spoken by ordinary people. If the right word can't be found in the classics, then there is no reason why it cannot be retrieved from the contemporary Florentine and if necessary from other Italian dialects.
In that respect he was in line with Machiavelli, who had enjoyed the freshness of the Florentine dialect without refusing the beauties of Dante's language. Though widely respected by academics, the purists had lost touch with the general public, a gap Manzoni tried to bridge by introducing contemporary Florentine expressions and regional colloquialisms from Lombardy, especially since many of Florentine words had almost equal synonyms in other Italian dialects and could be considered common to Italian culture. 

Including regional terms into standard Italian might encourage non-Florentine speakers learn the language and help them understand each other. (Non-Florentine words were copious in his first edition of 1822, Fermo e Lucia, and there were still many in his 1840 edition even after his massive editings). 

Manzoni complained, like the classicists that the Italian vocabulary was too small compared to other European languages, and that (and Leopardi agreed on this) the distance between written and spoken Italian was wide, especially if compared to other European languages. 

The mention of French seems a case in point, especially when it is said that the average Frenchman was able to understand Molière but that the average Italian could not make sense of Parini. When Manzoni's novel hit the bookshops it suddenly became a best seller, and this was proof enough that his Italian had finally reached across a much wider range of readers than ever before. 

Manzoni: the historical novel Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873) had been educated to the enlightened principles of the French philosophes of the Enlightenment by the scholars he had met in his native city, Milan. Inspired by the new democratic principles, he decided to write a book that supported the cause of a united Italy. 

To do so, he had to establish a standard Italian suitable for a wider Italian audience. That alone was a big political statement in a territory subject to the Austrians. His linguistic research brought him to Florence again, where, he said, he 'washed' his first draft of his novel in the waters of Arno, as he would later say. 
Although Renzo and Lucia are from Como (Lombardy), they overall sound as if they are contemporary Florentines. Against the wishes of the purists, their expression retains much of the spoken language that Italian authors prudently avoided.
 
"The Betrothed"

The Betrothed (I promessi Sposi) takes place in a little town near Lake Como, in the North of Italy. It is 1628, and most of the peninsula is occupied by the Spaniards, a hint to the Austrian dynasty which controlled most of the country at the time of Manzoni's writing. 

Two young, poor people who live near lake Como, Renzo Tramaglino and Lucia Mondella fall in love and decide to get married, but every time they ask Don Abbondio, their parson, this evades their requests. He won't do it because the local Spanish squire, Don Rodrigo, is after Lucia. He wants her no matter what and will do everything to wrench her from Renzo. 

He even has her abducted, and her boyfriend goes through incredible ordeals to have her back. Renzo and Lucia's story is set against the backdrop of 17th century Italy, which Manzoni reconstructs with increbible historical accuracy, using real documents and bringing to life historical figures like Cardinal Borromeo and the famous Nun of Monza, who interact with fictional ones in the story. 

Eventually Renzo and Lucia are reunited by the hand of Providence, get married while Don Rodrigo and his band are killed by Black Death. 19th-century neologisms The 19th century is also the age of Industrial Revolution (the first Italian railways were built in 1839, when the first steamboats start streaming down Italian rivers), modern medicine and biology. 

Many words are coined to name new inventions and discoveries: ferrovia [railway], locomotiva [locomotive], vaporiera [idem], vagone [wagon, railway car], tunnel, viadotto [railway bridge]; boro [boron], cloro [chlorine], alluminio [alluminum], calcio [calcium], iodio [iodine]; batteri [bacteria], omeopatia [homeopathy], paleontologia [paleontology], litografia [lithography], fotografia [photography], dattilografo [typist]. 

Politics Even political strife enriched the Italian lexicon: words like sinistra [left] and destra [right], rosso [red] and nero [black] became charged with political meaning, while rosa [pink], was associated by romantics with more peaceful endeavors. 

Even today, romances are called "romanzi rosa" and are part of 'letteratura rosa'. Magenta and Solferino, two battles that decided the fate of Italy were later associated with colors: the yellow cartridge of my printer reads 'magenta'. 

Solferino is a kind of reddish color though it is less known on the net. Everyday life (.....) Italy's Unification and After Italy was basically unified in three steps: 1. The First War of Independence (1848-9) 2. The Second (1859-1861) and 3. the Third (1862-1866), during which Florence became the capital of the new Kingdom of Italy (1865-71) and hosted Italy's first parliament until Rome was liberated by Italian troops in 1870. 

When the first Italian soldiers entered Rome through the Breach of Porta Pia, the Pope retreated to a nerby hilltop (Castel Gandolfo), from where he cursed the Savoy Dinasty and threatened to excommunicate Catholic members the parliament unless they boycotted the assembly. 

End of the litigation: the Concordato This litigation that divided moderate and right-wing Catholics would only be settled in 1929 when Italy's dictator Benito Mussolini and the Pope signed the Concordato, whereby the Holy Father recognised the temporal power of the Italian state, (keeping only a small piece of land for San Peter's and a small area around it). 

In exchange, Mussolini introduced the compulsory teaching of Catholicism in all Italian schools, which he imposed on religious minorities that so far were recognised by the Italian state. The Second Vatican Council Latin, however, not Italian, was still the language of religious ceremonies. 

Thanks to Pope John XXIII Latin and the Second Vatican Council, the official language of the Vatican ceased to be used at mass, helping more people learn standard Italian by listening to sermons. The Catholic Bible (the CEI version is to date the official version of the Catholic Bible) could finally be translated and printed in Italian. 

Bettino Craxi and the Second Concordato Even though in postwar Italy minority students were exempted from divinity classes, the exclusive teaching of Catholicism was justly seen unfair to non-believers, such as Jews, or Protestants. 

The new Pacts signed by prime minister Bettino Craxi and John Paul II finally replaced the teaching of catholicism with the History of Religions. Bureacratese enters Italian life Political unification saw the creation of a vast burocracy, police and army whose members often moved from and to Italian states as far apart as Sicily and Piedmont. 

As a consequence, written Italian was greatly influenced by this army of clerks and soldiers that generally did not belong to the linguistic élites: many original Tuscan words were changed, new one were added under the influence of the dialects they brought to the young Italian nation. 

Many more bureaucratic terms introduced in laws and decrees made their way into the spoken language from all parts of the country and have affected the way the Italians speak especially in formal contexts, where they are actually abused and have become clichés, especially among the less educated. 

A titolo di .... in qualità di...(as), godere del diritto di... (have a right to) ove è ubicato...(where he lives...) adibito a.... (for)avere facoltà di....(to can) a prescindere da...(except for) nell'ambito di....(within) ad uso di....(as) a norma di....conformemente a... in conformità a...(under) in via eccezionale .... (exceptionally), a titolo esplicativo ... (for example) in, a seconda di....(depending on) per quanto attiene... (as for) in ottemperanza a...., in osservanza....(under...) secondo quanto stabilito (according to) are stock phrases widely used on TV. 

Ascoli vs. Manzoni 

But the problem of Italian as a two-lane language remained: the people on one side, the intellectuals on the other (whose discussions were far from over). In 1867, 6 years from Italy's Unification Emilio Broglio, the minister of education (the first ever appointed), charged Manzoni to write Dell'Unità della lingua e dei mezzi per diffonderla (On the usefulness of our language and the means to spread it), a report on the state of the language with suggestions on ways to spread it and teach it. 

It was a painful research in which the writer had to co-ordinate the work of a team of scholars, with the help of his precious notes he had used in writing I Promessi Sposi. Manzoni's conclusions were not much different to what he had been saying in the first half of the century: it was necessary to update the language using present-day popular Florentine and compile a grammar inspired to French ones. 

Manzoni's studies encouraged Broglio to ask him to oversee the edition of the Novo vocabolario della lingua italiana secondo l'uso di Firenze (1868), which was widely bought and used by schools all over the country. But no sooner was Manzoni's report out than an eminent scholar, although in part recognising linguistic merits of I Promessi Sposi, insisted that it was wrong to rely on spoken Florentine as this was not the language used by educated people: he rejected the romantic view that popular culture must be better because it is spontaneous, made by the many, and not corrupted by academia. 

As an historical linguist, closer to the German tradition rather than the French, he pointed out that Manzoni did only see things in a present perspective. For example, he wanted to replace UO in open syllables with open O just because the current Florentine had bono (it. buono). But why having this change, Ascoli said, when UO is in fact an old Florentine heritage? Furthermore, Ascoli was convinced that Italy's situation was similar to Germany's in many respects: in both countries the national language was the sum of a mediation from all its regions, rather than the 'dictatorship' of one dialect (as that of Paris) on the others. 

Being educated in the 1850s, and not during the Romantic Age, Ascoli was inclined to believe in a sort of linguistic Darwinism: Italian would be the survival of the fittest, in which many dialects would compete to influence the Italian vocabulary and grammar. With their authority, Italian scholars might affect, but not deviate altogether the course of the river. 

The question of double spellings Due to different pronunciation and a lack of consensus about spelling, one word might often be written in two, sometimes even three different ways: obedire or obbedire [obey], republicano or repubblicano [republican], decembre or dicembre [December], conspirazione or cospirazione [conspiracy], ozione or opzione [option], decentramento, dicentramento, or dicentramento [decentralising]. 
Italians could not yet make their mind about what plurals to have for words in -cia and -gia, as in roccia [rock] and ciliegia [cherry]: -ce or -cie, -ge or -gie? Rocce or roccie, ciliege or ciliegie ? North and South at odds over doubles Twin consonants were and are one of the biggest problems even for native speakers. 

Though a definitive spelling has been established as we write, consonants are often misspelled especially in the North and the South, being spoken and written with either one consonanttoo few (vantagio instead of vantaggio in the North) or too many (aggio instead of agio). 

This problem has worsened in recent times, when less attention is given to spelling and diction and little grammar is taught at school. The turn of the century: the final spelling of articles However, the grammatical use and spelling of articles became uniform at the turn of the nineteenth century: il, lo, la [the], un, uno, una [a, an]. 

Then it was agreed once and for all to use masc. il + noun beginning with a consonant (for eg. il muro, the wall) except for the group S+ consonant (as ST) and Z, for which masc. lo would apply [lo stemma, "the coat of arms", lo zerbino, "the mat"]. Whenever accompanied by articles, prepositions could form new ones with them: di + lo ("of + the", m., see fr. du) = dello; di + la ("of + the" f.) = della; di + gli ("of + the", m.pl.) = degli; di + le ("of + the" f.pl.) = delle. 

A similar rule is applied to it. a (en. "to, at") + determinative : al, allo, agli, alle (see fr. au, pl. aux). New colloqualisms produced by Unification Some of the coinages from regional literature have survived into modern Italian and are used in everyday conversation. 

Their origins are tied to the way of life of 19th century Italy: if you were drafted in Sicily and sent to a military compound in Piedmont, and did not know your way round you had to arrangiarsi. On a cold winter day your friend from Turin could offer you a cicchetto, but when the colonel refused to send you home on leave for Christmas, you had better not piantare una grana with him, and follow the orders. 

If you refused, the least he might want to do is send you to a guardina (prison cells for soldiers). Happily, your girlfriend from Venice would call and say ciao (a word from Venice, coming from Lat. sclavus, 'slave', akin to "I am your servant" in old-fashioned english) to you and give you a panettone she had bought in Milan. 

When you were sent to Rome your new fellow servicemen could make fun of you, the new uncivilised burino coming from the North, but as you got off your new friends might take you to some diner to enjoy a spaghettata. You might love that cute brunette serving at your table, a ciociara from Frosinone. 

You would not mind if your jealous company could call you a mafioso for getting back to Sicily with the prettiest girl in Rome, the important was that your Italian, if not your pockets, had been enriched by your trip and that there would be many picciotti from your hometown coming to your wedding. 

Italy's second language Despite the relative impopularity of France among Romantics in the Romantic Age, the foreign language Italians mostly drew on was French. Only recently has been reversed (1990s) in favor of the English language. 

But in the 19th-century French was still the language of the courts, of bon ton and avant-garde culture and no educated person or anyone pretending to be so could do without it. The snobs who used it with affectation or excessively, however, were mocked by satirists in the most unforgiving way. 

On the other hand French, not English, was taught in schools. French was the fashionable language of the high classes and sports, not to mention diplomacy, while English was still considered the low-collar language of artisans, engineers or seamen. 

When the late 19th century rich left their villas at night, they were ready to join their ladies who had dressed up for the evening all décolletées, exibiting their beautiful necklaces for the soirée. They would join their friends for a caffé concerto, where a chanteuse would cheer them up and the soubrettes would dance a can-can on the stage. 

Maybe the ladies would finish their menu with marron glacé and chat with their friends on a couch, while the men retreated to a fumoir to smoke their cigars, play poker, and maybe ask the chanteuse in her garçonnière to join them. 

Gabriele D'Annunzio's decadentist novels are set up in the high society of turn-of-the-century Rome and Il piacere (Pleasure), portrays the brilliant society of turn-of-the-century Rome. The cliché of French as the chic language, the 'sibling language' of Italian, therefore generally considered easier to learn, has probably damaged the progress of ESL and German in Italy. 

Some parents think that learning more languages (especially at an early age) can generate confusion in pupils, as if one head could only contain one language: that many languages can be learned simultaneously without interference is a fact proven by science.

The 18th Century

The 18th century

The Enlightenment On the whole the 1700s were less interested in poetry or literarure though than philosophy and politics. The flamboyant baroque that dominated the preceding century turns into a simplified decoration mainly used for decoration: the Rococo.

As the century progresses, sobriety becomes the canon. Science breaks new ground and becomes the center of interest in the name of pragmatism and progress. Philosophy is still used with the meaning of "love of knowledge", but the knowledge coming from the exact sciences, as maths and physics. 

Literature is no longer a leader, but becomes a means to an end, it is made to serve causes as campaigns for democracy or social justice and scientific articles are sometimes put into verse. Science seems divorced from the realm of humanities and poetry which can only be ancillary to more important causes. 

Literature as a conduit for science High-brow literature is scientific in the modern sense of the world. For the first times economics, sociology, history, architecture, physics, biology, medicine, agriculture and even the arts and crafts are grouped by the philosophes in collective efforts, as encyclopedic dictionaries (the Encyclopédie sparks a cultural revolution and even attracts the interest of monarchs and princes. 

Les lumières, or the Enlightenment was a sort of pre-positivism mostly inspired by the intellectual environment of late 17th century England and the so-called libertines or free-thinkers and blooms in France in the 18th. From there it spread to most European countries, even touching Prussia and Russia. 

Lombard Philosophes say no to the Crusca Inspired by France and England, many countries start liberal reforms inspired to the principles of tolerance, equality and fiscal justice, though rusults vary depending on the state we are looking at. Alessandro and Pietro Verri even founded Il Caffé (1764-1766), a magazine about contemporary culture where they advocated the cause for Italy's unification and the enlightened ideas of the philosophes. 

Many Italian states were foreign dominions: some, like Lombardia and Veneto (then forming one state), had been annexed to the Austrian Empire. It is only natural that the Verri and many more intellectuals looked to France's culture as a model, and praised French, regarded as a modern language as opposed to the Italian, considered immature because it was still anchored to Bembo's literary canon. 

It is with such ideas in mind that Alessandro Verri published in the Caffé his Rinunzia davanti al notaio al Vocabolario della Crusca ('Refusal of the Crusca Dictionary before a notary').in 1764. To this environment belonged Beccaria, and the younger Manzoni. 

The prestige of France may explain to some extent why the literary debate about the italian language stalls and the French language penetrates so widely in the grammar and lexicon. There seems to be no consensus about what Italian should sound like, whether and how it should be reformed and by whom., says Migliorini. Florence declines as a cultural hub, and a new school founded in 1690 in Rome, the Arcadia, go as far as mocking the Florentines, accusing the Crusca of sticking to an old-fashioned language that has lost its grasp with the present. 

Italy divided over the Crusca The Romans despised Florentine for being full of gross and vulgar words, labeling it unfit to play a pivotal role on the linguistic scene. The conservative North and the South insisted on maintaining the old Florentine diction of the 14th century based on Petrarch, Dante, and Boccaccio (volgare illustre) without proposing those much-needed reforms or changes to update a language that is growing old-fashioned. 

One happy exception is Milan, where the Verris and other readers of the Caffé were were more inclined to experiment. French as the perfect linguistic model But the prestige of French meant that even many of the inherent qualities of the Italian language were regarded as defects.

There were many loan words and expressions from France, and at this point the Italian language seems to be influenced by the stricter word order of the French phrase (more similar to the English), against the traditional Italian model which reflects the looser word-order of Latin embraced by Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. Milan's intellectuals were generally against tradition and much attracted by the turn of phrase of the scientific literature that came from France or Britain. 

The fact that French texts were widely read and esteemed generated such words as Madama [fr. Madame, en. madam], madamosella [fr. mademoiselle, en. young lady], bidè [fr. bidet], baionetta [fr.baïonnette], mitraglia [mitrailleuse, en. machine-gun], bloccare [fr. bloquer, en. block], picchetto [fr. piquet, en.picket], marionetta [fr. marionette, [en. puppet], rondò [rondeau], minuetto [minuet], oboe [hautbois], cretino [crétin], abile [fr.habile, en.able], autorizzare [fr.authoriser], concorrenza [fr.concurrance, en. competition], guadagnare [al gioco: gagner, en. win], interessante [fr. intéressant, en. interesting], intraprendente [fr. entreprenant, en. enterprising], intrapresa [fr. entreprise, en. enterprise], liquore [fr. liqueur], manifattura [fr.manufacture], pubblico [fr. public], rapporto [fr. rapport, en. relationship], toccante [fr. touchant, en. touching], travaglio [fr. travail, en. work]. Or expressions as bel mondo [fr. beau monde, en. high society], colpo d'occhio [fr. coup d'œïl, en. look], presenza di spirito [fr. présence d'ésprit, en. presence of spirit], sangue freddo [fr. sang-froid, en. courage], far la corte [faire la cour, en. seek after], dar carta bianca [donner carte blanche, en. give carte blanche], a misura che [fr. à mesure que, en. by, the more...], toilette or toletta. 

Changes in syntax are not just apparent in the re-arrangement of the sentence after the French word-order (Mario non fa che lavorare [Mario ne fait que travailler, en. Mario only works], though the native 'Mario lavora soltanto' is not discarded). They affect phrases in the excessive use of the partitive (as in più di amicizia [< fr. plus d'amitié, en. more friendship] or troppo di generosità [trop de générosité, en. too much generosity]. 

Such phrases were used quite often, but this was a timely fashion: they were scrapped in the following century when the prestige of France declined in the eyes of the intellectuals. If a lesser attention to the classics and literature implied less control, it also meant there could be room for the long-banned imports from Italian dialects that had so far despised by the purists. 

Since most dialects are morphologically and phonetically compatible with Florentine, introducing non-Florentine or popular Tuscan words words allowed for more technical words and colloquialisms to enter the Italian language. The French Revolution and the Empire The enlightened ideals from France and Italy would soon provide the fuel for the American, and a few years later, the French Revolutions, and from there the new spirit of freedom would spread to the rest of the world. 

But when the French Revolution turned into imperialism and French troops under Napoleon conquered Italy, the disillusionment about France caused a rejection of the French language, which in the minds of many could be no longer associated with freedom and democracy. 

Such reaction seemed to suggest that national sentiment had been re-awakened in Italy, though it is fair to say that Napoleon's tyranny stirred mixed feelings among the people who met his armies: corvés and feudal injustice were abolished by the French, and goods could circulate freely: no more taxes to cross bridges or get in or out of the city. 

These were freedoms that the Italians experimented to their advantage, and welcomed. Butit was not the freedom that they had been promised, So, not even when the old foreign powers were re-enstated in the old continent following the Congress of Vienna (1815) could the march towards unification be stopped: consequently, the Italian language continued to make headway as the language of one Italy, though amongst impediments. 

Most Italians were still raised in their local dialect and many of those who could go to school were usually raised with French. But they were more and more determined in learning the national language. Such was the case of a new talented Lombard who became the author of the first great novel ever written in Italian: I promessi sposi (The Betrothed) by Alessandro Manzoni was the book that helped many to learn the language, while pleading for the cause of Italian unification.

The 17th Century

Baroque, Counter-Reformation and Science The English-speaking world has a pivotal year in the history of its language: 1611, when the Authorised Version of the Holy Bible, also known as the King James' Bible was finished. A year later another great work reached was published in Italy: it was The Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca. The purpose of the first Italian dictionary was to establish a norm and catalogue old and new words. The Accademia della Crusca had been founded in 1583 in Florence with an aim to protect the budding Italian language and encourage Italians how to use it correctly. 
Its motto is taken from Petrarch: "Il più bel fior ne coglie'' means, in English, "it picks of the most beautiful flower", that is, it (the Crusca Academy) selects and preserves the best of the Italian language. Curiously, the Sala delle Pale (Lit. "The Hall of Shuffles"), where the board meet, has chairs whose backs look like big shuffles. 


Their shape hints at the act of "separating the wheat from the chaff". After undergoing a big revision in 1623, the 1691 edition made the Vocabolario the biggest dictionary ever compiled in the Western World. Indeed, the 1600s were not without accomplishments. 

This was the Age of Milton, who also contributed to the development of Italian studies on his visit to Italy before the English Civil War. It was also the time when a Florentine scientist invented the telescope. By watching the stars, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) proved that Keptler's theory that the earth revolved around the sun. 

Visionaries under Inquisition Galileo's findings discredited Ptolomeus's theories endorsed for centuries by the Catholic Church. Dante himself in his Commedia had put the earth at the centre of the universe, surrounded by invisible spheres, each them carring a planet, all of them enclosed by the empiraeum, a bright sphere containing the Paradise. 

Philosopher Giordano Bruno had, too, intruduced new, revolutionary concepts in the later 1500s, assuming there could be intelligent creatures living on other planets similar to the earth. But his unorthodox theories, adding to his homosexuality attracted the attention of the Inquisition. 
Spain ruled over most of Italy: it was the worst of times to be a visionary. In fact, the century opens with an ominous warning to free-thinkers: Bruno is burnt at the stake in the spring of 1600 in the Campo dei Fiori. A few years later, Galileo would be subjected to a long trial by the Inquisition for having published his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo, 1632) under the auspices of the pope but widely condemned by the Jesuits. 

His work, basically an illustration of the heliocentric theory and the introduction of the modern trial-and error system of scientific enquiry, was not just a giant milestone for science. It was one of the major books written in the Italian language. Galileo's contribuition to scientific prose His contribution to Italian prose is significant, especially at a time when scientific treatises were still being written in Latin. 

Unfortunately, this was the book as earned him a trial by the Inquisition (1633) and a life sentence (after he had recanted all his theories), commuted to house arrests in Florence thanks to the help of influential friends. Such a sentence must have been hard upon him, who was already old and ill when he wrote the Dialogue. He died shortly after, being even denied medical care for his hernia and having lost his sight, in 1642. 

Galilei is widely remembered for his pioneering work in the field of science, but his contribution to modern Italian is often overlooked. His scientific background contributed a style which though quite faithful to Bembo's standard couple clarity of expression with many new technical words then widely ignored for not belonging in literature or poetry. 

Here is an excerpt about sunspots, in which it is proven, against Ptolomoeus's theory, that the sun rotates around its axis: 

Fu il primo scopritore ed osservatore dele macchie solari, siccome di tutte l'altre novità celesti, il nostro Academico Linceo; e queste scopers'egli l'anno 1610, trovandosi ancora alla lettura delle Matematiche nello Studio di Padova, e quivi ed in Venezia ne parlò con diversi, de i quali alcuni vivono ancora: ed un anno doppo le fece vedere in Roma a molti Signori, come egli asserisce nella prima delle sue Lettere al Sig. Marco Velsero, Duumviro d'Augusta. Esso fu il primo che, contro alle opinioni de i troppo timidi e troppo gelosi dell'inalterabilità del cielo, affermò tali macchie esser materie che in tempi brevi si producevano e si dissolvevano; che, quanto al luogo, erano contigue al corpo del Sole, e che intorno a quello si rigiravano, o vero, portate dall'istesso globo solare, che in sé stesso circa il proprio centro nello spazio quasi di un mese si rivolgesse, finivano loro conversioni: il qual moto giudicò sul principio farsi dal Sole intorno ad un asse eretto al piano dell'eclittica, atteso che gli archi descritti da esse macchie sopra il disco del Sole apparivano all'occhio nostro linee rette ed al piano dell'eclittica parallele (...) 
(Galileo, Dialogo, III, 438) 

tr.

Linceo, our Academician, was the first to discover and observe sunspots, as well as all the other novelties of the heavens, and these he discovered in the year 1610, while he was a lecturer in mathematics in the Faculty of Padua, and it was here as well as in Venice that he discussed the issue with a number of people, some of whom are still living: and, one year later, he showed them to several gentlemen, as he states in the first of his letters to Mister Marco Velsero, Augusta's Duumvir. He was the first who, against the opinions of those who were too timid and jealous of the immutableness of the heavens, said that such spots were substances that were no sooner made than dissolved; that, as far as their location was concerned, belonged to the body of the sun and revolved around it, viz carried by the very globe of sun which turned around its center in about a month and that ended up revolving around it: which motion he first thought to be caused by the sun turning around an axis at right angles in respect to the plane of the ecliptic, giving that the arcs produced by such spots on the sun disk looked to us like straight lines parallel to the plane of the ecliptic (...) (Galileo, Dialogues, III, 438) "

Galileo trusted the vernacular with his far-reaching and sophisticated science. Linguistically, he has knowingly coupled the heritage from his native Tuscany with the "polished" manners of literary tradition...with the "mechanic" lexicon, also by endorsing such clarity...to those who did not know latin" (Salinari). 

Orthodoxy strikes at the Italian language One of the most noticeable characters of the 17th century is that, unlike the Renaissance, it is a century of paradox: one the one side, the orthodox (purist in language and moralistic in literature), on the other, the rebels who strove to did the opposite and shock traditional society, disregarding the linguistic and moral establishment, from Marino's scholarly, but sensual and exotic verse to much vernacular literature whose writers used words from dialect or just vulgar language if only to shock and dazzle the audience. 

The academic environment of Counter-Reformation was hostile to innovation, and not just in what might appear to endanger Catholic dogmas. This conservatism in linguistics, implied dictating taste rather than discuss it, to catologue words rather than create new one. Less than three century had passed from the lively, stimulating discussions about the future of Italian and the creative work of those who had literally invented a new language.

The attitude of humanists in the 1600s is quite different and transpires in almost all aspects of Italian life. The linguists seem more interested in stockpiling old words rather than keeping the language fresh and up-to-date, while a large group of Baroque writers disseminate a host of new words that the establishment refuses to admit they even exist. 

Most of the intellectual élite refused to acknowledge it was imperative to add new technical words (Galileo was a remarkable exception ) to the Dictionary though science, then rapidly evolving, needed them badly. It is something that has not only been observed by Migliorini et al. but noted by Manzoni in his masterpiece novel set in the early 1600s, for which he did a lot of research about the 1600s. 

The Betrothed (see the speech of the notorious attorney Azzecca-Garbugli, asked to defend Renzo's case, but in fact evading most of the his problems with his most obscure and rhethorical language. There are other such characters who express themselves in that manner, and are those who actually slow down Renzo's efforts to rescue Lucia from her kidnapper.) 

The Age of Baroque This is, however, a great century for the visual arts: baroque, San Peter's Cathedral and Bernini's architecture being one of the biggest accomplishments. Baroque literature, however, though linguistically original and innovative in a number of ways, does not either produce any great works able to rival those of the past centuries. Rather, it is replete of bad imitations of Dante and Petrarch. 

The word manierismo, "mannerism" dates appropriately to the final decades of the Renaissance and anticipates some of the fashions which Baroque will take to excess. Writers who try their best to pump new blood into the drying literary vein often produce texts that are either unintelligible for their abundant rhetoric or so full of extravagant embellishments that it takes the big Vocabolario and a scholarly knowledge to get a grasp of the meaning. 

Where science is not directly concerned, form overwhelms in weight content itself and, like Baroque decoration, is often more imposing than the underlying architecture, the statues, the arches that should be the center of attention. Baroque in the visual arts and literature Today, when an Italian refers to an obscure text, he or she may say it is concettoso. 

And it is the use of 'concetti', inherited from medieval literature, that abounds in Baroque works, and to a good extent, in Metaphysical Poetry. When used moderately, such devices may add value to a poem. But many Baroque writers abused them, making their text so obscure and their speeches so long-winded looking like riddles, being so full of imagery and metaphors as to suggest a game of mirrors or even the deliberate use of cryptic language. 

The masque is a constant in Baroque theatre, and script writers enjoy creating characters who change in shape and identity, such as mythological figures often playing on sexual ambiguity or double identity. Such ambiguity also reflects in language and style. 

Baroque literature can juggle with words as much as Baroque decorations distort geometry and volumes: as you walk past the long columnade in St. Peter's Square and head for the obelisk you get the feeling that outer rows of the round square slide magically on each other to dwindle in one row when you get to the monument. You see them moving but they do not. 

Michelangelo's Moses looks like he is turning his torso because of the optic effects applied to the
marble. A similar philosophy was applied to language, with mixed results. While the Crusca's stand on language was uncompromising and close to Galileo's scientific prose, many writers rebelled not just to academic, but classical conventions, calling for absolute freedom in the name of originality and creativeness. 

As a result, their period may take a zig-zag pattern, moving from one image to another without any apparent link between sentences, the phrase may be overburdened with adjectves to impress the reader. Oxymorons and hyperboles may be compared to the optic illusions of Bernini in Saint Peter's Square. 

Gianbattista Marino, one of the greatest poets of the age, exemplifies the new taste in his Adone, a narrative poem in octaves. I have italicised the concetti and the Baroque imagery in both the original and my translation: 

Sotto questa fontana a chiome sciolte 
su 'l bel fitto meriggio aveano usanza 
le Napee del bel loco in un cerchio accolte 
vaghe caròle esercitare in danza. 
Com'Ila in lor le luci ebbe rivolte, 
D'infiammarle tra l'acque ebbe possanza, 
onde nel vivo e lucido cristallo 
rotto nel mezzo abbandonaro il ballo 
Come la stella nel mar divelta cade 
da l'azzurro seren del ciel estivo, 
o qual strisciando per oblique strade 
fende il notturno vel raggio festivo, 
così la rara e singolar beltade 
rapita in giù dentro quel gorgo vivo, 
precipitando tra le chiare linfe 
trovossi in braccio alle gelate Ninfe. 

Translation: 

Under this fountain, their hair loose 
In a thick shade the Nymphs did use 
Of that beautiful place in a circle gathered 
Carols sublime sing on their dances. 
As Ila her lights to them had pointed 
She could enflame them out of water 
So that that living and bright crystal 
Once broken in its middle they stopped dancing 
Like a star falling in the sea 
From the azure serene of summer sky 
Or, when crawling along its oblique way 
Breaks the night's shadow the festive ray 
So that rare and striking beauty 
Once ravished down that living funnel 
Having fallen down those clear fluids 
Found herself embraced by the cool symphs 

In the Baroque everything is changing and moving: curiously, the love of masks, stage-machines, lighting effects and ballets of bizarre and mythological figures are the flip-side of the same religious art that inspired Bernini and Michelangelo. 

The words of Marino dazzle the mind much as much as St. Peter's columnade dazzles the eye: its great power lies in that it can hardly pinned down by reason. Rather, it enchants and persuades without it. It can produce great religious prose: Donne, as some Italian preachers, created powerful sermons that still move and enthrall readers. 

Comedians were particularly successful in turning traditional rhetoric figures as calembours, oxymorons, assonances, chiasms to achieve grotesque effects. A notorius device recurrent in satirists is tonodidactics, consisting of taking a common sentence and replacing some its morphemes: as to make it sound like the original though the spelling tells quite another thing: the producer made a film > the producer met a Phil Baroque's dazzling language If the extragavant use of concetti could not produce high-brow literature, Baroque writers could nonetheless pride themselves on inventing some remarkably odd words. 

They were always looking for the strangest espressions to surprise and shock their audiences, and ransacked the dialects when they could not find any good Italian ones. Many more neologisms have come to us from the arts and crafts as well, though not officially acknowledged by scholars: regulations and instruction manuals for artisans were also widely printed in Italian, and only technical terms in current use had to be included in glossaries so that artisans and engineers could earn their living. 

Obviouly this met with the purists opposition, but it could not be helped. The Crusca's conservatism The Accademia della Crusca expunged those technical terms from its dictionary. As a result, non-natives coming to Italy on business often complained about not being able to find in the Dizionario any explanation for the commonest words Italians used in the workplace. 

Some of these were only added much later, when this conservative attitude no longer prevailed: the ideal purpose of the Dictionary was to present its readers with a range of words recommended for academic debate or polite usage and the grammar rules to follow in that context. 

Despite the Crusca's conservatism, Tuscany was the most open to change: more resistance came from other states: the Vatican, for eg. continued to discourage the use of the Italian though virtually no one spoke Latin except during the mass. 

It would be unwise, however, to infer that the ban received unanimous support even in the highest hierarchies of the Church. Spelling reform The 1600s witnesses the introduction of some spelling changes that had been proposed one century earlier as the graphic distinction between U and V. 

One would no longer write sentences as: l'vomo vero è vno solo, but "l'uomo vero è uno solo". No longer would writers use Xs in words (compare: exemplo with essempio, esempio), It. e and ed instead of et, and -zi /-zzi were used instead of previous -ti or -tti (compare gratie with grazie, actione with azione). 

Such changes were to remain in present-day Italian. t and c replaced th and ch in Greek words, in which the h, only etymological, not sounded, disappeared (compare theatro with teatro, christiano with cristiano). Milton, Italian Scholar Most would not expect to find John Milton in the
History of Italian. 

But as he could rival or even oustrip his Italian contemporaries in the art of sonnet-writing I will not just call him an English, but an Italian poet. He spoke Italian, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew with great ease, and it is virtually impossible find a blemish in his Italian Songs and Sonnets he left us.
 
He was befriended by the great Florentines of the time, who soon recognised his literary genius. In Florence, Milton was welcomed as their peer.by the Accademia degli Svogliati, where he stopped for some time on his tour of continental Europe in 1638-9. 

That was the time when he also visited Venice, Siena, Naples and the Vatican, probably paying a visit to Galileo then at house arrests at Arcetri (Florence). But his stay was unfortunately short, as the Puritans' campaign against James II soon recalled him to London. 

The Renaissance was known almost a century later in many European countries, and having playwrights as Shakespeare, Jonson, and of poets like Donne and Milton working in the early 1600s may explains why Elizabethan and Jacobean Literature looks more to Mannerism and
Baroque than the Italian Renaissance of the mid 1550s. 

Let us have a look at Sonnet 3: 

Qual in colle aspro,  al imbrunir di sera 
L'avezza giovinetta pastorella 
Va bagnando l'herbetta strana e bella 
Che mal si spande a disusata spera 
Fuor di sua natia alma primavera, 
Cosi Amor meco insù la lingua snella 
Desta il fior novo de strania favella, 
Mentre io di te, vezzosamente altera, 
Canto, dal mio buon popol non inteso 
E'l bel Tamigi cangio col bel Arno. 
Amor lo volse, ed io a l'altrui peso 
Seppi ch'Amor cosa mai volse indarno. 
Deh! foss'il mio cuor lento e'l duro seno 
A chi pianta dal ciel si buon terreno. 

Which you can read in William Cowper's translation: 

As on a hill-top rude, when closing day Imbrowns the scene, some past'ral maiden fair Waters a lovely foreign plant with care, That scarcely can its tender bud display Borne from its native genial airs away, So, on my tongue these accents new and rare Are flow'rs exotic, which Love waters there, While thus, o sweetly scornful! I essay Thy praise in verse to British ears unknown, And Thames exchange for Arno's fair domain; So Love has will'd, and oftimes Love has shown That what He wills he never wills in vain. Oh that this hard and steril breast might be To Him who plants from heav'n, a soil as free.