SOURCE: “Alfieri, The Poet,” in Builders of United Italy, Henry Holt and Company, 1908, pp. 1-39.

In the following excerpt, Holland considers how the circumstances of Alfieri's life and his opposition to tyranny shaped his writings, and additionally how Alfieri's writings influenced the development of Italy as a unified whole.

Alfieri was more than a great poet, he was the discoverer of a new national life in the scattered states of Italy. Putting aside consideration of his tragedies as literature, no student of the eighteenth century can fail to appreciate his influence over Italian thought. It was as though a people who had forgotten their nationality suddenly heard anew the stories of their common folk-lore. The race of Dante, of Petrarch, and of Tasso spoke again in the words of Alfieri.

It was high time that disunited Italy should find a poet's voice. There was no vigor, no resolution...