Last year, I read Orlando Furioso and it is one of the most enjoyable and impactful books that I have read in many years. It’s that kind of book where scenes and ideas pop into your head for no apparent reason at any random time.
Thank you for your continued book recommendations! You have helped me to get better acquainted with Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, and now I look forward to beginning these!
An excellent list with several names I am not familiar with and others of whom I am aware but have never read (e.g., d'Annunzio). I would add 2 names that should at least go in the honorable mention list: Primo Levi, whose book The Periodic Table is a classic of WWII and Holocaust remembrance, and Curzio Malaparte, a former supporter of Mussolini, who wrote Kaputt, a mostly non-fiction account of his travels as a reporter for an Italian newspaper in the early 1940s, and The Skin, another mostly non-fiction book set in Naples after American forces had occupied the city.
The same or more could be said for Spanish literature and I mean from Spain. Never mind Spanish-language literatures from the Americas. Not just a vast outpouring of very high quality but an historically influential literature that was eclipsed in the 19th century not for literary reasons but for political ones when Spain lost most of its overseas colonies—and with it, its great power status—and Napoleon’s destructive rampage set it back economically for two generations. To stick to high spots: (1) the medieval poem El Cid (featuring the close friendship between the Christian hero & a Spanish Muslim & a resolution of differences through the courts, a story cycle that inspired Corneille’s Le Cid by way of his adaptation of Guillen de Castro’s play about Rodrigo’s youth), (2) the bawdy Book of Good Love and the exquisite collection of stories El conde Lucanor, both drawing on great Arabic and Jewish traditions, the latter held up as a model of concision by Borges, (3) the fabulous, pan-European bestseller La Celestina (1499), by the descendant of Jewish conversos Fernando de Rojas, globally far more influential than Chaucer to the 19th century and a great deal more complex, (4) the first picaresque novel, the widely translated and influential Lazarillo de Tormes, (5) the great picaresque successor novels, Guzman de Alfarache (in James Mabbe’s superb Jacobean translation), and Quevedo’s Buscón, (6) the hugely influential outpouring of Golden Age Spanish theater (Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina with the first and in some ways still best Don Juan, Calderon de la Barca’s Life is a Dream, key for German & English Romantics; Corneille’s Le Cid and Le menteur were, as he recognized, adaptations of Spanish plays), (7) the lyric giant Góngora (a model for many later poets including Lorca and Neruda), (8) Cervantes’s great 19th century novelistic heirs (Clarin’s La Regenta, Galdos’s Fortunata y Jacinta, Emilia Pardo Bazan’s stories and novels), the unsettling lyric poetry of Rosalia de Castro (a Spanish Emily Dickinson), (9) and the outpouring of the so-called Silver Age (1870-1936)….
Thanks a lot for this contribution. As an Italian, I guess that for most of the people that finished the high school there is a great divide between "classics" that you do in the first three/four years and "moderns" that you do in the last year.
- classics are basically from 1300 to the first world war and they go from Dante/Boccaccio/Petrarca through Tasso, Ariosto to end up with Manzoni, Foscolo, Leopardi, Verga, Pascoli and Carducci.
- moderns are pretty much all those who lived between and immediately after the world wars: Svevo, Saba, D'Annunzio, Deledda, Pirandello, Calvino, Pavese, Vittorini, Fenoglio (of course I forgot someone).
i don't know much about French, Russian and British literature but one hypothesis for the different treatment they get is that during their booming period all these three countries were empires with solid national identity, secure domestic envrionment and international posture while Italy during the entire XIX century was politically divided, controlled by foreing actors and was plagued by internal wars.
Great list! I recently read The Betrothed and just loved it.
I have only read Alessandro Manzoni’s The Betrothed -- beautiful renderings! I will add these to my list.
Last year, I read Orlando Furioso and it is one of the most enjoyable and impactful books that I have read in many years. It’s that kind of book where scenes and ideas pop into your head for no apparent reason at any random time.
It's a read unlike any other. Glad you enjoyed it!
My favourite? "Orlando Furioso". For an Italian exam, I had it. The professor was astonished.
Need to add "Sostiene Pereira" by Antonio Tabucchi.
But also the works by Elsa Morante like "La Storia" and of course Matilde Serao and her work "il ventre di Napoli"
Thanks for the list, will definitely try to read these. I would add Giorgio Bassani's the Novel of Ferrara.
Thanks for this great list!
Thank you for your continued book recommendations! You have helped me to get better acquainted with Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, and now I look forward to beginning these!
An excellent list with several names I am not familiar with and others of whom I am aware but have never read (e.g., d'Annunzio). I would add 2 names that should at least go in the honorable mention list: Primo Levi, whose book The Periodic Table is a classic of WWII and Holocaust remembrance, and Curzio Malaparte, a former supporter of Mussolini, who wrote Kaputt, a mostly non-fiction account of his travels as a reporter for an Italian newspaper in the early 1940s, and The Skin, another mostly non-fiction book set in Naples after American forces had occupied the city.
The same or more could be said for Spanish literature and I mean from Spain. Never mind Spanish-language literatures from the Americas. Not just a vast outpouring of very high quality but an historically influential literature that was eclipsed in the 19th century not for literary reasons but for political ones when Spain lost most of its overseas colonies—and with it, its great power status—and Napoleon’s destructive rampage set it back economically for two generations. To stick to high spots: (1) the medieval poem El Cid (featuring the close friendship between the Christian hero & a Spanish Muslim & a resolution of differences through the courts, a story cycle that inspired Corneille’s Le Cid by way of his adaptation of Guillen de Castro’s play about Rodrigo’s youth), (2) the bawdy Book of Good Love and the exquisite collection of stories El conde Lucanor, both drawing on great Arabic and Jewish traditions, the latter held up as a model of concision by Borges, (3) the fabulous, pan-European bestseller La Celestina (1499), by the descendant of Jewish conversos Fernando de Rojas, globally far more influential than Chaucer to the 19th century and a great deal more complex, (4) the first picaresque novel, the widely translated and influential Lazarillo de Tormes, (5) the great picaresque successor novels, Guzman de Alfarache (in James Mabbe’s superb Jacobean translation), and Quevedo’s Buscón, (6) the hugely influential outpouring of Golden Age Spanish theater (Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina with the first and in some ways still best Don Juan, Calderon de la Barca’s Life is a Dream, key for German & English Romantics; Corneille’s Le Cid and Le menteur were, as he recognized, adaptations of Spanish plays), (7) the lyric giant Góngora (a model for many later poets including Lorca and Neruda), (8) Cervantes’s great 19th century novelistic heirs (Clarin’s La Regenta, Galdos’s Fortunata y Jacinta, Emilia Pardo Bazan’s stories and novels), the unsettling lyric poetry of Rosalia de Castro (a Spanish Emily Dickinson), (9) and the outpouring of the so-called Silver Age (1870-1936)….
Dacia Maraini, Elsa Morante (I wrote an article on The Story, La Storia for anyone interested https://onvalueinculture.substack.com/p/elsa-morante-writer-as-creator-of ), Oriana Fallaci (also a very important journalist https://onvalueinculture.substack.com/p/media-culture-reality), Natalia Ginzburg, Alda Merini... for starters.
Thanks a lot for this contribution. As an Italian, I guess that for most of the people that finished the high school there is a great divide between "classics" that you do in the first three/four years and "moderns" that you do in the last year.
- classics are basically from 1300 to the first world war and they go from Dante/Boccaccio/Petrarca through Tasso, Ariosto to end up with Manzoni, Foscolo, Leopardi, Verga, Pascoli and Carducci.
- moderns are pretty much all those who lived between and immediately after the world wars: Svevo, Saba, D'Annunzio, Deledda, Pirandello, Calvino, Pavese, Vittorini, Fenoglio (of course I forgot someone).
i don't know much about French, Russian and British literature but one hypothesis for the different treatment they get is that during their booming period all these three countries were empires with solid national identity, secure domestic envrionment and international posture while Italy during the entire XIX century was politically divided, controlled by foreing actors and was plagued by internal wars.
BRAVA!
Looks like my reading list just expanded!