Italian Literature: A Very Short Introduction by Peter Hainsworth

Italian Literature: A Very Short Introduction Reviews

• 
  Al Maki

  I found it a useful introduction to Italian writing. It's short, it's tight, it tries to cover the most significant concerns. Rather than working historically or by genre the authors reviewed the material using a series of points of view: politics, tradition and so on, passing over some central figures, Dante for example, a number of times. I liked the method and I gained some insight into Italian writing and an understanding of some specific issues that had interested me.
• 
  Falah Al-Otaibi

  مرجع قيمة للأدب الإيطالي، حيث تناول الكاتب أثر الأدب في نواحي الحياة الإيطالية بكل أطيافها ، الاجتماعية من طبقية ورقيق و جغرافيتها من سهل و نهر و شاطيء عتيق، و تاريخ السياسي السحيق، و ارتكز على ثلاث كتّاب هم في نظر الكاتب المدارس الثلاث التي قام عليها الأدب الإيطالي، ليوناردو ديفتشي و بترارك و دانتي أليغييري، حيث قال الأدب الإيطالي لا يخرج منهم الثلاث، و ضرب امثلة كثيرة على ذلك، وكانت الفصول تتحدث عن التاريخ من بداية تأسيس إيطاليا حتى يومنا هذا.
• 
  Lisa

  Along with Dagny a.k.a Madame Vauquer from the Vauquer Boarding House and Jonathan from Intermittencies of the Mind I am reading The Leopard (1958) by Sicilian author Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, so I thought I’d take a look at another VSI. But it’s not really surprising that Italian Literature, a Very Short Introduction doesn’t mention Lampedusa because he was so very much out of step with postwar developments in Italy. In the wake of fascism, Italian literature was generally brutally realist, while Lampedusa’s book is a nostalgic novel set in pre-unification Italy. It doesn’t fit into the characteristics of Italian literature in this period at all.
  
  This VSI is not like the mostly chronological structure of the French VSI which I read a little while ago. After a useful four-page introduction, the book is framed as general discussions of problematic trends and issues:
  •History
  •Tradition
  •Theory
  •Politics
  •Secularism
  •Women
  
  (Women get a chapter all of their own because (Ferrante Fever aside) they have been almost invisible in Italian literature.)
  
  As you might expect from the country that brought us Dante and Petrarch, there is a lot about poetry in this VSI, and interesting as it was, (and will be again when I get round to reading The Divine Comedy) it was less useful for my purposes than the French VSI. This is because there isn’t really much in the way of an Italian 19th century novel, which is where my interest in literature began as a teenager. Nothing like an Austen, or a Dickens, or a Zola. The great 19th century Italian novel is The Betrothed (I Promessi Sposi) (1840) by Alessandro Manzoni and it’s notable as a milestone in the development of the modern, unified Italian language, but it sounds rather dull and didactic to me.
  
  To read the rest of my review please visit
  https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/01/11/i...
• 
  John

  One of the best in this VSI series that I've found. I liked the pair's take on Dante in the same enterprise. Thematically rather than strictly chronological chapters show how skilled lecturers can take a few phrases from samples texts to guide newcomers into literary style, political controversy, refined styles, regional distinctions, and which until at least the ebbing of momentum in the 1990s as the language stabilized by television weakened dialects and themes directly tackling Italian issues and legacies, preoccupied six centuries of poets, dramatists, and eventually novelists. Too bad, as Tim Parks has also noted, that today's writers in Italian tend to have lost interest.
• 
  John

  A good intro to Italian literature since Dante with good comparisons an parallels. It is a small investment in time and money to expand one's brain. I have never been able to 'get into' Italian literature or cinema an so read this book to see why that might be the case. I will give this book some thought for a while an read a second time in the future.
• 
  Mahmoud Bayome

  يتحدث الكتاب في ست فصول عن بعض النماذج الأدبية من الأدب الإيطالي مع ذكر خصائصها ومعلومات عنها..الكتاب ملئ بالتفاصيل والهوامش وفيه بعض الفصول المليئة بالتفاصيل والتي قد تصل إلى حد الإملال أحيانا لكنه جيد عامة
• 
  Elisa

  讲的都是重要的问题，解释了很多从自己的阅读经验中能够隐约察觉但说不清楚的东西。
• 
  Diego Fleitas

  This was overall a rather helpful little text with sharp synopses of history, politics, and specific writings to name a few things. Of course, the material doesn't get tremendously deep, but of the things Hainsworth referenced, he did so succinctly and tied the material together in a generally cohesive way. The explanations and interpretations of the texts were worthwhile, even for the books I had read and studied before. A fine little book, I definitely enjoyed and appreciated it!
• 
  John

  Another very short introduction that opens doors to further study.