SOURCE: "Literature and the Opera," in Italy in the Age of the Risorgimento, 1790-1870, Longman, 1983, pp. 254-71.

In the following essay, Hearder surveys the major works of poetry, fiction, and drama produced by Italian artists in the period 1790-1870.

Italian nationalism in the nineteenth century was one aspect of the romantic movement. Yet to make such a generalization at once creates difficulties, since development of Italian literature in the period 1790-1870 involved the purifying and simplifying of an Italian national language, which can be seen as an essentially classical movement operating against the diversities of provincial dialects. The purification of the language can perhaps best be considered within the context of a study of the writing of Manzoni's masterpiece I Promessi Sposi, and will therefore be postponed until the novels of the period are surveyed. The creation of a genuinely national Italian literary language certainly owed more to...