220-632: Italian literature is written in the Italian language , particularly within Italy . It may also refer to literature written by Italians or in other languages spoken in Italy , often languages that are closely related to modern Italian , including regional varieties and vernacular dialects . Italian literature began in the 12th century, when in different regions of the peninsula the Italian vernacular started to be used in
440-456: A Copernican change was taking place in Italian society and the world. Linked to that very idea, he was also an ardent critic of consumismo , i.e. consumerism , which he felt had rapidly destroyed Italian society from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s. He described the coprophagia scenes in Salò as a comment on the processed food industry. As he saw it, the society of consumerism ("neocapitalism") and
660-523: A Friuli based on its tradition, attached to the Catholic Church in Italy , but intent on civic and social progress , as opposed to those advocates of regional autonomy who wanted to preserve their privileges based on "immobilism". He also criticized the Italian Communist Party (PCI) for its opposition to regional devolution and preference instead for State centralisation . Pasolini founded
880-535: A PCI reform plan that he drew up in September and October 1975, among the desirable measures to be implemented, he cited the abolition of television. Pasolini opposed the gradual disappearance of Italy's minority languages by writing some of his poetry in Friulan , the regional language of his childhood. His opposition to the liberalization of abortion law made him unpopular on the left. After 1968, Pasolini engaged with
1100-404: A Valle Giulia avete fatto a botte coi poliziotti / io simpatizzavo coi poliziotti ('When you and the policemen were throwing punches yesterday at Valle Giulia / I was sympathising with the policemen'). He explained that this sympathy was because the policemen were figli di poveri ('children of the poor'). The poem highlights the aspect of generational struggle within the bourgeoisie represented by
1320-529: A criminal police force. He also blamed the Christian Democrats for assimilating the values of consumer capitalism, contributing to what he saw as the erosion of human values. The 1975 Italian regional elections saw the rise of the leftist parties, and dwelling on his blunt, ever more political approach and prophetic style during this period, he declared in Corriere della Sera that the time had come to put
1540-719: A critic writing in the Austin Chronicle , stated it "may be the grimmest movie" he has ever seen. The film aroused controversy and scandal, with conservatives demanded stricter censorship by the government. In 1963, the episode " La ricotta ", included in the anthology film Ro.Go.Pa.G. , was censored and Pasolini was tried for "offence to the Italian state and religion". During this period, Pasolini frequently travelled abroad: in 1961, with Elsa Morante and Alberto Moravia to India (where he went again seven years later); in 1962, to Sudan and Kenya ; in 1963, to Ghana , Nigeria , Guinea , Jordan and Palestine (where he shot
1760-421: A debate over artistic freedom, socialist realism and commitment. Pasolini's first film as director and screenwriter was Accattone in 1961, again set among Rome's marginal communities, a story of pimps, prostitutes, and thieves that contrasted with Italy's postwar economic recovery. Although Pasolini tried to distance himself from neorealism , it is considered to be a type of second neorealism. Nick Barbaro,
1980-530: A faint reflection of the very rich legendary literature of France . Some attention should be paid to the Lettere of Fra Guittone d'Arezzo, who wrote many poems and also some letters in prose, the subjects of which are moral and religious. Guittone's love of antiquity and the traditions of Rome and its language was so strong that he tried to write Italian in a Latin style. The letters are obscure, involved and altogether barbarous. Guittone took as his special model Seneca
2200-511: A final thesis about the work of Giovanni Pascoli (1855–1912), an Italian poet and classical scholar. In 1946, Pasolini published a small poetry collection, I Diarii ('The Diaries'), with the Academiuta. In October he traveled to Rome. The following May he began the so-called Quaderni Rossi , handwritten in old school exercise books with red covers. He completed a drama in Italian, Il Cappellano . His poetry collection, I Pianti ('The cries'),
2420-486: A great development in the history of Italian art, especially because of his close connection with Dante's lyric poetry . In the 13th century, there were several major allegorical poems . One of these is by Brunetto Latini : his Tesoretto is a short poem, in seven-syllable verses, rhyming in couplets, in which the author is lost in a wilderness and meets a lady, who represents Nature and gives him much instruction. Francesco da Barberino wrote two little allegorical poems,
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#17328513779192640-599: A guerrilla-style uprising against the police in the streets of Rome during the disorders of 1968. For their supporters, the disorders were a civil fight of the proletariat against the system. Pasolini made comments that have been interpreted that he was with the police or that he was a man of order, and that he was an anti-anti-fascist. According to the Centro Studi Pier Paolo Pasolini, the myth of an "anti-anti-fascist" Pasolini served to propose unlikely anti-globalist alliances by neo-fascists. Anti-antifascismo
2860-500: A huge number of civil servants and soldiers recruited from all over the country introduced many more words and idioms from their home languages— ciao is derived from the Venetian word s-cia[v]o ("slave", that is "your servant"), panettone comes from the Lombard word panetton , etc. Only 2.5% of Italy's population could speak the Italian standardized language properly when
3080-765: A job as a secondary school teacher in Ciampino , just outside the capital. He had a long commute involving two train changes and earned a meagre salary of 27,000 lire . In 1954, Pasolini, who now worked for the literary section of Cinecittà, left his teaching job and moved to the Monteverde quarter. At this point, his cousin Graziella moved in. They also accommodated Pasolini's ailing, cirrhotic father Carlo Alberto, who died in 1958. Pasolini published La meglio gioventù , his first important collection of Friulan poems. His first novel, Ragazzi di vita (English: Hustlers ), which dealt with
3300-466: A life of St Catherine; Jacopo Gradenigo called il Belletto put the Gospels into triplets. Renaissance humanism developed during the 14th and the beginning of the 15th centuries, and was a response to the challenge of Mediæval scholastic education, emphasizing practical, pre-professional and -scientific studies. Scholasticism focused on preparing men to be doctors, lawyers or professional theologians, and
3520-540: A literary manner. The Ritmo laurenziano is the first extant document of Italian literature. In 1230, the Sicilian School became notable for being the first style in standard Italian. Renaissance humanism developed during the 14th and the beginning of the 15th centuries. Lorenzo de' Medici is regarded as the standard bearer of the influence of Florence on the Renaissance in the Italian states . The development of
3740-464: A little over one million people in the United States speak Italian at home. Nevertheless, an Italian language media market does exist in the country. In Canada, Italian is the second most spoken non-official language when varieties of Chinese are not grouped together, with 375,645 claiming Italian as their mother tongue in 2016. Italian immigrants to South America have also brought a presence of
3960-474: A little." Pasolini was particularly concerned about the class of the subproletariat , which he portrayed in Accattone , and to which he felt both humanly and artistically drawn. He observed that the type of purity which he perceived in the pre-industrial popular culture was rapidly vanishing, a process that he named la scomparsa delle lucciole ('the disappearance of the fireflies'). The joie de vivre of boys
4180-657: A local vernacular. These dialects, as they are commonly referred to, evolved from Vulgar Latin over the course of centuries, unaffected by formal standards and teachings. They are not in any sense "dialects" of standard Italian, which itself started off as one of these local tongues, but sister languages of Italian. Mutual intelligibility with Italian varies widely, as it does with Romance languages in general. The Romance languages of Italy can differ greatly from Italian at all levels ( phonology , morphology , syntax , lexicon , pragmatics ) and are classified typologically as distinct languages. The standard Italian language has
4400-542: A magazine called Il Setaccio ('The Sieve'), but was fired after conflicts with the director, who was aligned with the Fascist regime. A trip to Germany helped him also to perceive the "provincial" status of Italian culture in that period. These experiences led Pasolini to revise his opinion about the cultural politics of Fascism and to switch gradually to a Communist position. Pasolini's family took shelter in Casarsa, considered
4620-455: A metal bar. An autopsy revealed that his body had been partially burned with gasoline after his death. The crime was long viewed as a Mafia -style revenge killing , one that was extremely unlikely to have been carried out by only one person. Pasolini was buried in Casarsa . Giuseppe "Pino" Pelosi (1958–2017), then 17 years old, was caught driving Pasolini's car and confessed to the murder. He
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#17328513779194840-569: A more tranquil place to wait for the conclusion of the Second World War , a decision common among Italian military families. Here he joined a group of other young enthusiasts of the Friulan language who wanted to give Casarsa Friulan a status equal to that of Udine , the official regional standard. From May 1944, they issued a magazine entitled Stroligùt di cà da l'aga . In the meantime, Casarsa suffered Allied bombardments and forced enlistments by
5060-564: A passive, anonymous entity: the human population." Pasolini saw some continuity between the Fascist era and the post-war political system which was led by the Christian Democrats, describing the latter as "clerico-fascism" due to its use of the state as a repressive instrument and its manipulation of power: he saw the conditions among the Roman sub proletariat in the borgate as an example of this, being marginalised and segregated socially and geographically as they were under Fascism, and in conflict with
5280-555: A paternal uncle. His family moved to Conegliano in 1923, then to Belluno in 1925, where their second son, Guidalberto, was born. In 1926, Pasolini's father was arrested for gambling debts. His mother moved with the children to her family's home in Casarsa della Delizia , in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region. In that same year, his father first detained, then identified Anteo Zamboni as the would-be assassin of Benito Mussolini following his assassination attempt. Carlo Alberto
5500-645: A poetic and literary origin in the works of Tuscan writers of the 12th century, and, although the grammar and core lexicon are basically unchanged from those used in Florence in the 13th century, the modern standard of the language was largely shaped by relatively recent events. However, Romance vernacular as language spoken in the Italian Peninsula has a longer history. In fact, the earliest surviving texts that can definitely be called vernacular (as distinct from its predecessor Vulgar Latin) are legal formulae known as
5720-634: A poetry magazine called Officina . The magazine closed in 1959 after fourteen issues. That year he also published his second novel, Una vita violenta , which unlike his first was embraced by the Communist cultural sphere: he subsequently wrote a column titled Dialoghi con Passolini (meaning Passolini in Dialogue ), for the PCI magazine Vie Nuove from May 1960 to September 1965, which were published in book form in 1977 as Le belle bandiere ( The Beautiful Flags ). In
5940-661: A preference for practice over theory combined to influence the development of Italian literature. The earliest vernacular literary tradition in Italy was in Occitan , spoken in parts of northwest Italy. A tradition of vernacular lyric poetry arose in Poitou in the early 12th century and spread south and east, eventually reaching Italy by the end of the 12th century. The first troubadours ( trovatori in Italian), as these Occitan lyric poets were called, to practise in Italy were from elsewhere, but
6160-411: A prendere un po' di botte / dentro una fabbrica occupata? / Ma, soprattutto, come potrebbe concedersi / un giovane operaio di occupare una fabbrica / senza morire di fame dopo tre giorni? ('Occupy the universities / but say that the same idea comes / to young workers / So: Corriere della Sera and Stampa , Newsweek and Le Monde / will have so much care / in trying to understand their problems? / Will
6380-452: A quel niodo Ch'ei detta dentro, vo significando : that is, in a power of expressing the feelings of the soul in the way in which love inspires them, in an appropriate and graceful manner, fitting form to matter, and by art fusing one with the other. This a neo-platonic approach widely endorsed by Dolce Stil Novo , and although in Cavalcanti's case, it can be upsetting and even destructive, it
6600-417: A renewed interest in linguistics in the 16th century, sparked a debate that raged throughout Italy concerning the criteria that should govern the establishment of a modern Italian literary and spoken language. This discussion, known as questione della lingua (i.e., the problem of the language ), ran through the Italian culture until the end of the 19th century, often linked to the political debate on achieving
6820-558: A result. Starting in late medieval times in much of Europe and the Mediterranean, Latin was replaced as the primary commercial language by languages of Italy, especially Tuscan and Venetian. These varieties were consolidated during the Renaissance with the strength of Italy and the rise of humanism and the arts . Italy came to enjoy increasing artistic prestige within Europe. A mark of
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7040-406: A robot." Pasolini's polemics were aimed at goading protesters into re-thinking their revolt, and did not stop him from contributing to the autonomist Lotta Continua movement, who he described as "extremists, yes, maybe fanatic and insolently boorish from a cultural point of view, but they push their luck and that is precisely why I think they deserve to be supported. We must want too much to obtain
7260-447: A seven-vowel system, consisting of /a, ɛ, e, i, ɔ, o, u/ , as well as 23 consonants. Compared with most other Romance languages, Italian phonology is conservative, preserving many words nearly unchanged from Vulgar Latin . Some examples: Pier Paolo Pasolini Pier Paolo Pasolini ( Italian: [ˈpjɛr ˈpaːolo pazoˈliːni] ; 5 March 1922 – 2 November 1975) was an Italian poet, film director, writer, actor and playwright. He
7480-474: A single language is that they have evolved so that they are no longer mutually intelligible ; this diagnostic is effective if mutual intelligibility is minimal or absent (e.g. in Romance, Romanian and Portuguese), but it fails in cases such as Spanish-Portuguese or Spanish-Italian, as educated native speakers of either pairing can understand each other well if they choose to do so; however, the level of intelligibility
7700-430: A social-political community. Therefore, old and new fascisms strive to accomplish democracy—which is the restless ambition of fascism—via opposite routes. In the former case, the result is the birth of political subjects such as the master race, supported by revelatory political grammar. In the latter case, the result is the birth of an altogether different subject, which is no longer a political actor, properly speaking, but
7920-715: A sort of mystic act of love, a kind of félibrisme , like the Provençal poets ." In 1943, he founded with fellow students the Academiuta della lenga furlana (Academy of the Friulan Language). As a young adult, Pasolini identified as an atheist . In the waning years of World War II , Pasolini was drafted into the Italian Army . After his regiment was captured by the Germans following Italy's surrender , he escaped and fled to
8140-421: A state of natural sexual innocence essential to the true nature of free humanity. Alternately playfully bawdy and poetically sensuous, wildly populous, subtly symbolic and visually exquisite, the films were popular in Italy and remain perhaps his most enduringly popular works. Yet despite the fact that the trilogy as a whole is considered by many as a masterpiece, Pasolini later reviled his own creation on account of
8360-465: A style of poetry that stood strongly against the medieval mystic and chivalrous style. The sonnets of Rustico di Filippo are half-fun and half-satire, as is the work of Cecco Angiolieri of Siena, the oldest known humorist. Another type of poetry also began in Tuscany. Guittone d'Arezzo made art quit chivalry and Provençal forms for national motives and Latin forms. He attempted political poetry and prepared
8580-555: A type of poetry that perished or was smothered by the ancient Sicilian literature. The poems of the Sicilian school were written in the first known standard Italian. This was elaborated by these poets under the direction of Frederick II and combines many traits typical of the Sicilian, and to a lesser extent, Apulian dialects and other southern dialects, with many words of Latin and French origin. Dante's styles illustre, cardinale, aulico, curiale were developed from his linguistic study of
8800-620: A type of verse marked by assonance , a poetic device more widespread in Northern Europe. Jacopone da Todi was a poet who represented the religious feeling that had made special progress in Umbria . Jacopone was possessed by St. Francis's mysticism, but was also a satirist who mocked the corruption and hypocrisy of the Church. The religious movement in Umbria was followed by another literary phenomenon,
9020-504: A united Italian state. Renaissance scholars divided into three main factions: A fourth faction claimed that the best Italian was the one that the papal court adopted, which was a mixture of the Tuscan and Roman dialects. Eventually, Bembo's ideas prevailed, and the foundation of the Accademia della Crusca in Florence (1582–1583), the official legislative body of the Italian language, led to
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9240-624: A vocal advocate for heritage language revival , cultural conservatism , and Christian values in his youth, Pasolini became an avowed Marxist shortly after the end of World War II . He began voicing extremely harsh criticism of Italian petty bourgeoisie and what he saw as the Americanization , cultural degeneration , and greed-driven consumerism taking over Italian culture . As a filmmaker, Pasolini often juxtaposed socio-political polemics with an extremely graphic and critical examination of taboo sexual matters. A prominent protagonist of
9460-432: Is Composizione del mondo , a scientific book by Ristoro d'Arezzo , who lived about the middle of the 13th century. Another short treatise exists: De regimine rectoris , by Fra Paolino , a Minorite friar of Venice, who was bishop of Pozzuoli , and who also wrote a Latin chronicle. His treatise stands in close relation to that of Egidio Colonna , De regimine principum . It is written in Venetian . The 13th century
9680-532: Is Io m'aggio posto in core , by Giacomo da Lentini, the head of the movement, but there is also poetry written by Frederick himself. Giacomo da Lentini is also credited with inventing the sonnet , a form later perfected by Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio . The censorship imposed by Frederick meant that no political matter entered literary debate. In this respect, the poetry of the north, still divided into communes or city-states with relatively democratic governments, provided new ideas. These new ideas are shown in
9900-427: Is 89% with French, 87% with Catalan , 85% with Sardinian , 82% with Spanish, 80% with Portuguese , 78% with Ladin , 77% with Romanian . Estimates may differ according to sources. One study, analyzing the degree of differentiation of Romance languages in comparison to Latin (comparing phonology , inflection , discourse , syntax , vocabulary , and intonation ), estimated that distance between Italian and Latin
10120-497: Is a mixture of prose and poetry, and is the first Italian pastoral romance. Boccaccio became famous principally for the Italian work, Decamerone , a collection of a hundred novels, related by a party of men and women who retired to a villa near Florence to escape the plague in 1348. Novel writing, so abundant in the preceding centuries, especially in France, now for the first time assumed an artistic shape. The style of Boccaccio tends to
10340-552: Is able to provide a new culture." It generated controversy, partly due to the fact he was still not a member of the PCI. Pasolini planned to extend the work of the Academiuta to the literature of other Romance languages , and met exiled Catalan poet Carles Cardó. He took part in several demonstrations after joining the PCI. In May 1949, he attended the Peace Congress in Paris. Observing the struggles of workers and peasants, and watching
10560-416: Is adapted to Italian phonotactics , creating new Italian vocabulary. These were adopted by Dante and his contemporaries, and handed on to future generations of Italian writers. To the Sicilian school belonged Enzio , king of Sardinia , Pietro della Vigna , Inghilfredi , Guido and Odo delle Colonne , Jacopo d'Aquino , Ruggieri Apugliese , Giacomo da Lentini , Arrigo Testa , and others. Most famous
10780-729: Is also spoken by a minority in Monaco and France, especially in the southeastern part of the country. Italian was the official language in Savoy and in Nice until 1860, when they were both annexed by France under the Treaty of Turin , a development that triggered the " Niçard exodus ", or the emigration of a quarter of the Niçard Italians to Italy, and the Niçard Vespers . Giuseppe Garibaldi complained about
11000-582: Is clearly felt, although the language is influenced by French forms. These writings, which Graziadio Isaia Ascoli has called miste (mixed), immediately preceded the appearance of purely Italian works. There is evidence that a type of literature already existed before the 13th century: the Ritmo cassinese , Ritmo di Sant'Alessio , Laudes creaturarum , Ritmo lucchese , Ritmo laurenziano , Ritmo bellunese are classified by Cesare Segre , et al. as "Archaic Works" ("Componimenti Arcaici"): "such are labelled
11220-440: Is considered one of the defining public intellectuals in 20th-century Italian history , influential both as an artist and a political figure. He is known for directing the films from Trilogy of Life ( The Decameron , The Canterbury Tales and Arabian Nights ) and Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom . A controversial personality due to his straightforward style, Pasolini's legacy remains contentious. Openly gay while also
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#173285137791911440-529: Is credited as a writer. Jesus, a barefoot peasant, is played by Enrique Irazoqui . In his 1966 film Uccellacci e uccellini (literally Bad Birds and Little Birds but translated in English as The Hawks and the Sparrows ), a picaresque—and at the same time mystic—fable, Pasolini hired great Italian comedian Totò to work with Ninetto Davoli , the director's lover at the time and one of his preferred "naif" actors. It
11660-528: Is higher than that between Sardinian and Latin. In particular, its vowels are the second-closest to Latin after Sardinian . As in most Romance languages, stress is distinctive. Italian is the official language of Italy and San Marino and is spoken fluently by the majority of the countries' populations. Italian is the third most spoken language in Switzerland (after German and French; see Swiss Italian ), although its use there has moderately declined since
11880-455: Is markedly lower between Italian-Spanish, and considerably higher between the Iberian sister languages of Portuguese-Spanish. Speakers of this latter pair can communicate with one another with remarkable ease, each speaking to the other in his own native language without slang/jargon. Nevertheless, on the basis of accumulated differences in morphology, syntax, phonology, and to some extent lexicon, it
12100-498: Is neither a co-official nor a protected language in these countries. Some speakers of Italian are native bilinguals of both Italian (either in its standard form or regional varieties ) and a local language of Italy , most frequently the language spoken at home in their place of origin. Italian is a major language in Europe, being one of the official languages of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and one of
12320-532: Is nonetheless a metaphysical experience able to lift man onto a higher, spiritual dimension. Gianni's new style was still influenced by the Siculo-Provençal school. Cavalcanti's poems fall into two classes: those that portray the philosopher ( il sottilissimo dialettico , as Lorenzo the Magnificent called him) and those more directly the product of his poetic nature imbued with mysticism and metaphysics . To
12540-410: Is not difficult to identify that for the Romance varieties of Italy, the first extant written evidence of languages that can no longer be considered Latin comes from the ninth and tenth centuries C.E. These written sources demonstrate certain vernacular characteristics and sometimes explicitly mention the use of the vernacular in Italy. Full literary manifestations of the vernacular began to surface around
12760-541: Is quite different, not only from that of the Provençal troubadours and the Italian poets before him, but also from the lyrics of Dante. Petrarch is a psychological poet, who examines all his feelings and renders them with an art of exquisite sweetness. The lyrics of Petrarch are no longer transcendental like Dante's, but keep entirely within human limits. The Canzoniere includes a few political poems, one supposed to be addressed to Cola di Rienzi and several sonnets against
12980-626: Is the main working language of the Holy See , serving as the lingua franca (common language) in the Roman Catholic hierarchy as well as the official language of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta . Italian has a significant use in musical terminology and opera with numerous Italian words referring to music that have become international terms taken into various languages worldwide. Almost all native Italian words end with vowels , and
13200-538: Is used, and the town of Chipilo near Puebla, Mexico; each continues to use a derived form of Venetian dating back to the 19th century. Other examples are Cocoliche , an Italian–Spanish pidgin once spoken in Argentina and especially in Buenos Aires , and Lunfardo . The Rioplatense Spanish dialect of Argentina and Uruguay today has thus been heavily influenced by both standard Italian and Italian regional languages as
13420-501: The Il Globo (Australia) and the La gazzetta del Sud Africa (South Africa). Italian is widely taught in many schools around the world, but rarely as the first foreign language. In the 21st century, technology also allows for the continual spread of the Italian language, as people have new ways to learn how to speak, read, and write languages at their own pace and at any given time. For example,
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#173285137791913640-886: The La Voce del Popolo ( Croatia ), the Corriere d'Italia (Germany), the L'italoeuropeo (United Kingdom), the Passaparola ( Luxembourg ), the America Oggi (United States), the Corriere Canadese and the Corriere Italiano (Canada), the Il punto d'incontro (Mexico), the L'Italia del Popolo ( Argentina ), the Fanfulla (Brazil), the Gente d'Italia ( Uruguay ), the La Voce d'Italia ( Venezuela ),
13860-615: The chansons de geste , Macaire , the Entrée d'Espagne written by Anonymous of Padua , the Prise de Pampelune , written by Niccolò of Verona , and others. All this preceded the appearance of purely Italian literature. The French and Occitan languages gradually gave way to the native Italian. Hybridism recurred, but it no longer predominated. In the Bovo d'Antona and the Rainaldo e Lesengrino , Venetian
14080-508: The Academy of Arcadia was instituted with the goal of "restoring" literature by imitating the simplicity of the ancient shepherds with sonnets , madrigals , canzonette , and blank verses . In the 18th century, the political condition of the Italian states began to improve, and philosophers disseminated their writings and ideas throughout Europe during the Age of Enlightenment . The leading figure of
14300-566: The Banda della Magliana , a criminal organisation with close links to far-right terrorism , as the most likely cause. Pier Paolo Pasolini was born in Bologna , Italy. He was the son of elementary-school teacher Susanna Colussi, named after her great-grandmother, and Carlo Alberto Pasolini, a lieutenant in the Royal Italian Army ; they had married in 1921. Pasolini was born in 1922 and named after
14520-454: The Documenti d'amore and Del reggimento e dei costumi delle donne . The poems today are generally studied not as literature, but for historical context. In the 15th century, humanist and publisher Aldus Manutius published Tuscan poets Petrarch and Dante Alighieri ( Divine Comedy ), creating the model for what became a standard for modern Italian. Italian prose of the 13th century was as abundant and varied as its poetry. Halfway through
14740-401: The Gallo-Italic linguistic panorama of Northern Italy , the Italo-Dalmatian , Neapolitan and its related dialects were largely unaffected by the Franco- Occitan influences introduced to Italy mainly by bards from France during the Middle Ages, but after the Norman conquest of southern Italy , Sicily became the first Italian land to adopt Occitan lyric moods (and words) in poetry. Even in
14960-465: The Grisons ), Corsica , and Vatican City . It has official minority status in Croatia , Slovenian Istria , and the municipalities of Santa Tereza and Encantado in Brazil . Italian is also spoken by large immigrant and expatriate communities in the Americas and Australia . Italian is included under the languages covered by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Romania , although Italian
15180-431: The Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire . Italian is the least divergent language from Latin , together with Sardinian (meaning that Italian and Sardinian are the most conservative Romance languages). Spoken by about 85 million people, including 67 million native speakers (2024), Italian is an official language in Italy , San Marino , Switzerland ( Ticino and
15400-472: The Italian Social Republic , as well as partisan activity. Pasolini tried to distance himself from these events. Starting in October 1943, Pasolini, his mother and other colleagues taught students unable to reach the schools in Pordenone or Udine. This educational workshop was considered illegal and broke up in February 1944. It was here that Pasolini had his first experience of homosexual attraction to one of his students. His brother Guido, aged 19, joined
15620-399: The Kingdom of Italy in the Dodecanese ). Italian is widely spoken in Malta , where nearly two-thirds of the population can speak it fluently (see Maltese Italian ). Italian served as Malta's official language until 1934, when it was abolished by the British colonial administration amid strong local opposition. Italian language in Slovenia is an officially recognized minority language in
15840-812: The Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia ), although the masses kept speaking primarily their local vernaculars. Italian was also one of the many recognised languages in the Austro-Hungarian Empire . Italy has always had a distinctive dialect for each city because the cities, until recently, were thought of as city-states . Those dialects now have considerable variety . As Tuscan-derived Italian came to be used throughout Italy, features of local speech were naturally adopted, producing various versions of Regional Italian . The most characteristic differences, for instance, between Roman Italian and Milanese Italian are syntactic gemination of initial consonants in some contexts and
16060-494: The Novellino , and Antonio Cornazzano whose Proverbii became extremely popular. Chronicles formerly believed to have been of the 13th century are now mainly regarded as forgeries. At the end of the 13th century there is a chronicle by Dino Compagni , probably authentic. Giovanni Villani , born in 1300, was more of a chronicler than a historian. He relates the events up to 1347. The journeys that he made in Italy and France, and
16280-843: The Party of Action and their Brigate Osoppo , taking to the bush near Slovenia. On 12 February 1945, Guido was killed in an ambush planted by the Brigate Garibaldi serving in the lines of Josip Broz Tito 's Yugoslavian guerrillas. This devastated Pasolini and his mother. Six days after his brother's death, Pasolini and others founded the Friulan Language Academy ( Academiuta di lenga furlana ). Meanwhile, on account of Guido's death, Pasolini's father returned to Italy from his detention period in November 1945, settling in Casarsa. That same month, Pasolini graduated from university after completing
16500-539: The Placiti Cassinesi from the province of Benevento that date from 960 to 963, although the Veronese Riddle , probably from the 8th or early 9th century, contains a late form of Vulgar Latin that can be seen as a very early sample of a vernacular dialect of Italy. The Commodilla catacomb inscription is also a similar case. The Italian language has progressed through a long and slow process, which started after
16720-504: The Roman intellectual scene during the post-war era, Pasolini became an established and major figure in European literature and cinema . Pasolini's unsolved and extremely brutal abduction, torture, and murder at Ostia in November 1975 prompted an outcry in Italy, where it continues to be a matter of heated debate. Recent leads by Italian cold case investigators suggest a contract killing by
16940-501: The Roman dialect sections. Fellini also asked him to work on dialogue for some episodes of La dolce vita . Pasolini made his debut as an actor in The Hunchback of Rome in 1960, and co-wrote Long Night in 1943 . Along with Ragazzi di vita , he had his celebrated poem Le ceneri di Gramsci published, where Pasolini voiced tormented tensions between reason and heart, as well as the existing ideological dialectics within communism,
17160-502: The Sirventese genre, and later, Dante's Commedia , full of invectives against contemporary political leaders and popes. Though the conventional love song prevailed at Frederick's (and later Manfred 's) court, more spontaneous poetry existed in the Contrasto attributed to Cielo d'Alcamo . The Contrasto is probably a scholarly re-elaboration of a lost popular rhyme and is the closest to
17380-559: The Trilogy of Life . While basing them on classics, Pasolini wrote the screenplays and took sole writing credit. This trilogy, prompted largely by Pasolini's attempt to show the secular sacredness of the body against man-made social controls and especially against the venal hypocrisy of the religious state (indeed, the religious characters in The Canterbury Tales are shown as pious but amorally grasping fools) were an effort at representing
17600-571: The Western Roman Empire declined, the Latin tradition was kept alive by writers such as Cassiodorus , Boethius , and Symmachus . The liberal arts flourished at Ravenna under Theodoric , and the Gothic kings surrounded themselves with masters of rhetoric and of grammar . Some lay schools remained in Italy, and noted scholars included Magnus Felix Ennodius , Arator , Venantius Fortunatus , Felix
17820-452: The Western Roman Empire's fall in the 5th century. The language that came to be thought of as Italian developed in central Tuscany and was first formalized in the early 14th century through the works of Tuscan writer Dante Alighieri , written in his native Florentine . Dante's epic poems, known collectively as the Commedia , to which another Tuscan poet Giovanni Boccaccio later affixed
18040-475: The ballata composed by Cavalcanti when he was banished from Florence with the party of the Bianchi in 1300, and took refuge at Sarzana . Dante Alighieri , one of the greatest of Italian poets, also shows these lyrical tendencies. In 1293 he wrote La Vita Nuova , in which he idealizes love. It is a collection of poems to which Dante added narration and explication. Everything is sensual, aerial, and heavenly, and
18260-409: The drama in the 15th century was very great. In the 16th century, the fundamental characteristic of the era following the end of the Renaissance was that it perfected the Italian character of its language. Niccolò Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini were the chief originators of the science of history. Pietro Bembo was an influential figure in the development of the Italian language . In 1690,
18480-404: The humanities : grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry and moral philosophy. Early humanists, such as Petrarch , Coluccio Salutati and Leonardo Bruni , were great collectors of antique manuscripts. Italian language Italian ( italiano , pronounced [itaˈljaːno] , or lingua italiana , pronounced [ˈliŋɡwa itaˈljaːna] ) is a Romance language of
18700-484: The left-libertarian , anti-clerical , and liberal Radical Party ( Partito Radicale ). He involved himself in polemics with party leader Marco Pannella , supported the Party's initiative calling for eight referendums on various liberalising reforms, and had accepted an invitation to speak at the Party's congress before he was killed. Despite supporting the holding of a referendum on the decriminalisation of abortion, he
18920-499: The liturgy , were the first example of drama in the vernacular tongue of Italy. They were written in the Umbrian dialect , in verses of eight syllables. As early as the end of the 13th century the Devozioni del Giovedi e Venerdi Santo appeared, mixing liturgy and drama. Later, di un Monaco che andò al servizio di Dio ('of a monk who entered the service of God') approached the definite form
19140-480: The octave stanza , but was the first to use it in a work of length and artistic merit, his Teseide , the oldest Italian romantic poem. The Filostrato relates the loves of Troiolo and Griseida ( Troilus and Cressida ). The Ninfale fiesolano tells the love story of the nymph Mesola and the shepherd Africo. The Amorosa Visione , a poem in triplets, doubtless owed its origin to the Divine Comedy . The Ameto
19360-715: The political revolutions of 1848 may be said to be represented by four writers: Giuseppe Giusti , Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi , Vincenzo Gioberti , and Cesare Balbo . After the Risorgimento , political literature became less important. The first part of this period is characterized by two divergent trends of literature that both opposed Romanticism: the Scapigliatura and Verismo . Important early 20th century Italian writers include Giovanni Pascoli , Italo Svevo , Gabriele D'Annunzio , Umberto Saba , Giuseppe Ungaretti , Eugenio Montale , and Luigi Pirandello . Neorealism
19580-707: The "Most Controversial Film" of all time. Salò was intended as the first film of his Trilogy of Death , followed by an aborted biopic film about Gilles de Rais . Won the Grand Prix Spécial Prize at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival . A small scandal broke out during a local festival in Ramuscello in September 1949. Someone informed Cordovado, the local sergeant of the Carabinieri , of sexual conduct ( masturbation ) by Pasolini with three youngsters aged sixteen and younger after dancing and drinking. Cordovado summoned
19800-445: The "new fascism" had thus expanded an alienation / homogenization and centralization that the former clerical fascism had not managed to achieve, so bringing about an anthropological change. That change is related to the loss of humanism and the expansion of productivity as central to the human condition, which he despised. He found that 'new culture' was degrading and vulgar. In one interview, he said: "I hate with particular vehemency
20020-519: The 111 Italian lecturer sections belonging to foreign schools where Italian is taught as a language of culture. As of 2022, Australia had the highest number of students learning Italian in the world. This occurred because of support by the Italian community in Australia and the Italian Government and also because of successful educational reform efforts led by local governments in Australia. From
20240-458: The 13th century in the form of various religious texts and poetry. Although these are the first written records of Italian varieties separate from Latin, the spoken language had probably diverged long before the first written records appeared since those who were literate generally wrote in Latin even if they spoke other Romance varieties in person. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the use of Standard Italian became increasingly widespread and
20460-516: The 18th century Italian literary revival was Giuseppe Parini . The philosophical, political, and socially progressive ideas behind the French Revolution of 1789 gave a special direction to Italian literature in the second half of the 18th century, inaugurated with the publication of Dei delitti e delle pene by Cesare Beccaria . Love of liberty and desire for equality created a literature aimed at national objects. Patriotism and classicism were
20680-549: The 1970s. It is official both on the national level and on regional level in two cantons : Ticino and Grisons . In the latter canton, however, it is only spoken by a small minority, in the Italian Grisons . Ticino, which includes Lugano , the largest Italian-speaking city outside Italy, is the only canton where Italian is predominant. Italian is also used in administration and official documents in Vatican City . Italian
20900-449: The Battle of Valle Giulia. Addressing the students, he tells them that, unlike the international news media which has been reporting on them, he will not flatter them. He points out that they are the children of the bourgeoisie ( Avete facce di figli di papà / Vi odio come odio i vostri papà – 'You have the faces of daddy's boys / I hate you like I hate your dads'), before stating Quando ieri
21120-555: The CIA and the Italian Armed Forces to prevent the rise of the left. Pasolini was angered by economic globalization and cultural domination of the north of Italy (around Milan ) over other regions, especially the south . He felt this was accomplished through the power of television. A debate TV programme recorded in 1971, where he denounced censorship, was not actually aired until the day following his murder in November 1975. In
21340-602: The Genoese troubadours were Lanfranc Cigala , Calega Panzan , Jacme Grils , and Bonifaci Calvo . Genoa was also the place of the genesis of the podestà -troubadour phenomenon: men who served in several cities as podestàs on behalf of either the Guelph or Ghibelline party and who wrote political poetry in Occitan. Rambertino Buvalelli was the first podestà -troubadour and in Genoa there were
21560-472: The Grammarian , Peter of Pisa , Paulinus of Aquileia , and many others. The later establishment of the medieval universities of Bologna , Padua , Vicenza , Naples , Salerno , Modena and Parma helped to spread culture and prepared the ground in which the new vernacular literature developed. Classical traditions did not disappear, and affection for the memory of Rome, a preoccupation with politics, and
21780-536: The Guelphs Luca Grimaldi and Luchetto Gattilusio and the Ghibellines Perceval and Simon Doria . Perhaps the most important aspect of the Italian troubadour phenomenon was the production of chansonniers and the composition of vidas and razos . Uc de Saint Circ undertook to author the entire razo corpus and a great many of the vidas . The most famous and influential Italian troubadour
22000-417: The Italian dialects has declined in the modern era , as Italy unified under Standard Italian and continues to do so aided by mass media from newspapers to radio to television, diglossia is still frequently encountered in Italy and triglossia is not uncommon in emigrant communities among older speakers. Both situations normally involve some degree of code-switching and code-mixing . Notes: Italian has
22220-485: The Italian language into a lingua franca used not only among clerks, nobility, and functionaries in the Italian courts but also by the bourgeoisie . Italian literature's first modern novel, I promessi sposi ( The Betrothed ) by Alessandro Manzoni , further defined the standard by "rinsing" his Milanese "in the waters of the Arno " ( Florence 's river), as he states in the preface to his 1840 edition. After unification,
22440-627: The Italian translation of Pound's Pisan Cantos . The late 1960s and early 1970s were the era of the student movement . Pasolini, although acknowledging the students' ideological motivations, and referring to himself as a "Catholic Marxist ", thought them "anthropologically middle-class" and therefore destined to fail in their attempts at revolutionary change. Regarding the Battle of Valle Giulia , which took place in Rome in March 1968, he said that he sympathized with
22660-585: The Latin the Vite de' Santi Padri . Rivalta left behind him many sermons, and Franco Sacchetti (the famous novelist) many discourses. On the whole, there is no doubt that one of the most important productions of the Italian spirit of the 14th century was religious literature. Humorous poetry, largely developed in the 13th century, was carried on in the 14th by Bindo Bonichi , Arrigo di Castruccio , Cecco Nuccoli , Andrea Orcagna , Lippo Pasci de' Bardi , Adriano de Rossi , Antonio Pucci and other lesser writers. Orcagna
22880-581: The Literature College of the University of Bologna , discovering new themes such as philology and aesthetics of figurative arts . He also frequented the local cinema club. Pasolini always showed his friends a virile and strong exterior, totally hiding his interior turmoil. In his poems of this period, Pasolini started to include fragments in Friulan , a minority language he did not speak but learned after he had begun to write poetry in it. "I learnt it as
23100-550: The Mediterranean. The increasing political and cultural relevance of Florence during the periods of the rise of the Medici Bank , humanism , and the Renaissance made its dialect, or rather a refined version of it, a standard in the arts. The Renaissance era, known as il Rinascimento in Italian, was seen as a time of rebirth, which is the literal meaning of both renaissance (from French) and rinascimento (Italian). During this time, long-existing beliefs stemming from
23320-584: The PCI because he felt it was "an island where critical consciousness is always desperately defended: and where human behaviour has been still able to preserve the old dignity", and in his final months he became close to the Rome section of the Italian Communist Youth Federation . A Federation activist, Vincenzo Cerami, delivered the speech he was due to give at the Radical Party congress: in it, Pasolini confirmed his Marxism and his support for
23540-446: The PCI by the party's Udine section, which he considered a betrayal. He addressed a critical letter to the head of the section, his friend Ferdinando Mautino, and claimed he was being subject to a "tacticism" of the PCI. In the party, the expulsion was opposed by Teresa Degan, Pasolini's colleague in education. He also wrote her a letter admitting his regret for being "such a naif, even indecently so". Pasolini's parents reacted angrily and
23760-459: The PCI from those parties of the constitutional arc that, as declared by Pasolini in June 1975, tried to "rebuild an anti-fascist virginity ... but, at the same time, maintaining the impunity of the fascist gangs that they, if they wanted, would liquidate in a day". The main source regarding Pasolini's views of the student movement is his poem "Il PCI ai giovani" ('The PCI to Young People'), written after
23980-491: The PCI. Outside of Italy, Pasolini took a particular interest in the developing world , seeing parallels between life among the Italian underclass and in the third world, going so far as to declare that Bandung was the capital of three-quarters of the world and half of Italy. He was also positive about the New Left in the United States, predicting that it would "lead to an original form of non-Marxist Socialism" and writing that
24200-495: The Roman lumpenproletariat , was published in 1955. The work had great success but was poorly received by the Italian Communist Party (PCI) establishment and, most importantly, by the Italian government. It initiated a lawsuit for "obscenity" against Pasolini and his editor, Garzanti. Although exonerated, Pasolini became a target of insinuations, especially in the tabloid press . In 1955, together with Francesco Leonetti , Roberto Roversi and others, Pasolini edited and published
24420-531: The Sicilian School, whose technical features had been imported by Guittone d'Arezzo in Tuscany . The standard changed slightly in Tuscany because Tuscan scriveners perceived the five-vowel system used by southern Italians as a seven-vowel one. As a consequence, the texts that Italian students read in their anthology contain lines that appear not to rhyme, a feature known as ″Sicilian rhyme" ( rima siciliana ) which
24640-502: The Sparrows ). Pasolini became the youth's mentor and friend. However, there were some important women in Pasolini's life, with whom Pasolini shared a feeling of profound and unique friendship, in particular Laura Betti and Maria Callas . Dacia Maraini , an Italian writer, said of Callas' behaviour towards Pasolini: "She used to follow him everywhere, even to Africa. She hoped to 'convert' him to heterosexuality and to marriage." Pasolini
24860-476: The Younger , Aristotle , Cicero , Boethius and Augustine of Hippo . Guittone viewed his style as very artistic, but later scholars view it as extravagant and grotesque. With the school of Lapo Gianni , Guido Cavalcanti , Cino da Pistoia and Dante Alighieri , lyric poetry became exclusively Tuscan. The whole novelty and poetic power of this school, consisted in, according to Dante, Quando Amore spira, noto, ed
25080-540: The antifascist French resistance , an event which serves as the modern analogue for the Pauline conversion . The screenplay follows Paul as he preaches resistance in Italy, Spain, Germany, and New York (where he is betrayed, arrested, and executed). As philosopher Alain Badiou writes, "The most surprising thing in all this is the way in which Paul's texts are transplanted unaltered, and with an almost unfathomable naturalness, into
25300-681: The area to flee to Italy, where an Italian tradition of papal criticism was begun. The Historia de excidio Trojae , attributed to Dares Phrygius , claimed to be an eyewitness account of the Trojan War. Guido delle Colonne of Messina , one of the vernacular poets of the Sicilian school, composed the Historia destructionis Troiae . In his poetry, Guido was an imitator of the Provençals , but in this book he converted Benoît de Sainte-Maure 's French romance into what sounded like serious Latin history. Much
25520-469: The boys' parents, who refused to file charges despite Cordovado's urging. Cordovado nevertheless drew up a report, and the informer elaborated publicly on his accusations, sparking a public uproar. A judge in San Vito al Tagliamento charged Pasolini with "corruption of minors and obscene acts in public places". He and the 16-year-old were both indicted. The next month, when questioned, Pasolini would not deny
25740-444: The case of Northern Italian languages, however, scholars are careful not to overstate the effects of outsiders on the natural indigenous developments of the languages. The economic might and relatively advanced development of Tuscany at the time ( Late Middle Ages ) gave its language weight, although Venetian remained widespread in medieval Italian commercial life, and Ligurian (or Genoese) remained in use in maritime trade alongside
25960-407: The centralism of consumer culture did." Philosopher Davide Tarizzo summarized Pasolini's position: "In his view, both old and new fascisms undermine the fundamentals of modern democracy. Yet new fascism does not do this by absolutizing popular sovereignty at the expense of individual rights. New fascism celebrates our freedoms and absolutizes human rights to the detriment of our sense of belonging to
26180-854: The century, a certain Aldobrando or Aldobrandino wrote a book for Beatrice of Savoy , called Le Régime du corps . In 1267 Martino da Canale wrote a history of Venice in the same Old French ( langue d'oïl ). Rustichello da Pisa composed many chivalrous romances, derived from the Arthurian cycle , and subsequently wrote the Travels of Marco Polo , which may have been dictated by Polo himself. And finally Brunetto Latini wrote his Tesoro in French. Latini also wrote some works in Italian prose such as La rettorica , an adaptation from Cicero 's De inventione , and translated three orations from Cicero. Another important writer
26400-425: The clashes of protesters with Italian police, he began to conceive his first novel. During this period, while holding a position as a teacher in a secondary school, he stood out in the local Italian Communist Party section as a skilful writer, while defying the official Party platform that Stalinism was anti-Christian . Along with the Party leadership, local Christian Democrats and Catholic clergy also took notice. In
26620-630: The colonial period. In the early 19th century, Eritrea was the country with the highest number of Italians abroad, and the Italian Eritreans grew from 4,000 during World War I to nearly 100,000 at the beginning of World War II. In Asmara there are two Italian schools, the Italian School of Asmara (Italian primary school with a Montessori department) and the Liceo Sperimentale "G. Marconi" (Italian international senior high school). Italian
26840-422: The context of Pasolini's self-confessed hatred of the bourgeoisie which had persecuted him for so long, as "Il PCI ai giovani" states that "We (i.e. Pasolini and the students) are obviously in agreement against the police institution", and that the poem portrays policemen as dehumanised by their work. Although the battles between students and the police were fights between the rich and the poor, Pasolini concedes that
27060-563: The country (some 0.42% of the total population). Their numbers dropped dramatically after World War II following the Istrian–Dalmatian exodus , which caused the emigration of between 230,000 and 350,000 Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians. Italian was the official language of the Republic of Ragusa from 1492 to 1807. It formerly had official status in Albania due to the annexation of
27280-508: The country to the Kingdom of Italy (1939–1943). Albania has a large population of non-native speakers, with over half of the population having some knowledge of the Italian language. The Albanian government has pushed to make Italian a compulsory second language in schools. The Italian language is well-known and studied in Albania, due to its historical ties and geographical proximity to Italy and to
27500-446: The country. A few hundred Italian settlers returned to Libya in the 2000s. Italian was the official language of Eritrea during Italian colonisation . Italian is today used in commerce, and it is still spoken especially among elders; besides that, Italian words are incorporated as loan words in the main language spoken in the country (Tigrinya). The capital city of Eritrea, Asmara , still has several Italian schools, established during
27720-564: The country. The official census, carried out in 2002, reported 2,258 ethnic Italians ( Istrian Italians ) in Slovenia (0.11% of the total population). Italian language in Croatia is an official minority language in the country, with many schools and public announcements published in both languages. The 2001 census in Croatia reported 19,636 ethnic Italians (Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians ) in
27940-524: The court of Avignon. These are remarkable for their vigour of feeling, and also for showing that, compared to Dante, Petrarch had a sense of a broader Italian consciousness. Giovanni Boccaccio had the same enthusiastic love of antiquity and the same worship for the new Italian literature as Petrarch. He was the first to put together a Latin translation of the Iliad and, in 1375, the Odyssey . His classical learning
28160-422: The current power, the power of 1975, which is a power that manipulates bodies in a horrible way; a manipulation that has nothing to envy to that performed by Himmler or Hitler ." According to Pasolini scholar Simona Bondavalli, Pasolini's definition of neo-capitalism as a "new fascism" enforced uniform conformity without resorting to coercive means. As Pasolini put it, "No Fascist centralism succeeded in doing what
28380-464: The design and fashion industries, in some sports such as football and especially in culinary terms. In Italy, almost all the other languages spoken as the vernacular —other than standard Italian and some languages spoken among immigrant communities—are often called " Italian dialects ", a label that can be very misleading if it is understood to mean "dialects of Italian". The Romance dialects of Italy are local evolutions of spoken Latin that pre-date
28600-523: The diffusion of Italian television in the country. Due to heavy Italian influence during the Italian colonial period , Italian is still understood by some in former colonies such as Libya. Although it was the primary language in Libya since colonial rule , Italian greatly declined under the rule of Muammar Gaddafi , who expelled the Italian Libyan population and made Arabic the sole official language of
28820-578: The documentary Sopralluoghi in Palestina ). In 1970 he travelled again to Africa to shoot another documentary, Appunti per un'Orestiade africana . Pasolini was a member of the jury at the 16th Berlin International Film Festival in 1966. In 1967, in Venice , he met and interviewed American poet Ezra Pound . They discussed the Italian movement neoavanguardia and Pasolini read some verses from
29040-418: The double object of temporal and eternal happiness. The forest where the poet loses himself lost symbolizes sin. The mountain illuminated by the sun is the universal monarchy. Envy is Florence, Pride is the house of France, and Avarice is the papal court. Virgil represents reason and the empire. Beatrice is the symbol of the supernatural aid mankind must have to attain the supreme end, which is God. The merit of
29260-522: The earliest Italian troubadours. Azzo VI's daughter, Beatrice , was an object of the early poets " courtly love ". Azzo's son, Azzo VII , hosted Elias Cairel and Arnaut Catalan . Rambertino was named podestà of Genoa in 1218 and it was probably during his three-year tenure there that he introduced Occitan lyric poetry to the city, which later developed a flourishing Occitan literary culture. The margraves of Montferrat — Boniface I , William VI , and Boniface II —were patrons of Occitan poetry. Among
29480-472: The educated gentlemen was to make the Grand Tour , visiting Italy to see its great historical monuments and works of art. It was expected that the visitor would learn at least some Italian, understood as language based on Florentine. In England, while the classical languages Latin and Greek were the first to be learned, Italian became the second most common modern language after French, a position it held until
29700-589: The end of each story. From this point of view, Sacchetti's work comes near to the Monalisaliones of the Middle Ages. A third novelist was Giovanni Sercambi of Lucca, who after 1374 wrote a book, in imitation of Boccaccio, about a party of people who were supposed to fly from a plague and to go travelling about in different Italian cities, stopping here and there telling stories. Later, but important, names are those of Masuccio Salernitano (Tommaso Guardato), who wrote
29920-513: The establishment in Italy, since the protesters were part of the petite bourgeoisie. The poem also implied a class hypocrisy on the part of the establishment towards the protesters, asking whether young workers would be treated similarly if they behaved in the same way: Occupate le università / ma dite che la stessa idea venga / a dei giovani operai / E allora: Corriere della Sera e Stampa, Newsweek e Monde / avranno tanta sollecitudine / nel cercar di comprendere i loro problemi? / La polizia si limiterà
30140-458: The establishment of Italian, and as such are sister languages to the Tuscan that was the historical source of Italian. They can be quite different from Italian and from each other, with some belonging to different linguistic branches of Romance. The only exceptions to this are twelve groups considered " historical language minorities ", which are officially recognized as distinct minority languages by
30360-642: The example of Petrarch many writers devoted themselves to patriotic poetry. From this period also dates that literary phenomenon known under the name of Petrarchism. The Petrarchists, or those who sang of love, imitating Petrarch's manner, were found already in the 14th century. But others treated the same subject with more originality, in a manner that might be called semi-popular. Such were the Ballate of Ser Giovanni Fiorentino , of Franco Sacchetti, of Niccolò Soldanieri , and of Guido and Bindo Donati . Ballate were poems sung to dancing, and we have very many songs for
30580-433: The fact that it was linguistically an intermediate between the northern and the southern Italian dialects. Thus the dialect of Florence became the basis for what would become the official language of Italy. Italian was progressively made an official language of most of the Italian states predating unification, slowly replacing Latin, even when ruled by foreign powers (such as Spain in the Kingdom of Naples , or Austria in
30800-453: The facts, but talked of a "literary and erotic drive" and cited André Gide , the 1947 Nobel Prize for Literature laureate . Cordovado informed his superiors and the regional press stepped in. According to Pasolini, the Christian Democrats instigated the entire affair to smear his name ("the Christian Democrats pulled the strings"). He was fired from his job in Valvasone and was expelled from
31020-425: The finest works of world literature . Petrarch was the first humanist , and he was at the same time the first modern lyric poet. His career was long and tempestuous. He lived for many years at Avignon , cursing the corruption of the papal court; he travelled through nearly the whole of Europe; he corresponded with emperors and popes, and he was considered the most important writer of his time. Petrarch's lyric verse
31240-399: The first literary works in the Italian vernacular, their dates ranging from the last decades of the 12th century to the early decades of the 13th". However, as he points out, such early literature does not yet present any uniform stylistic or linguistic traits. This early development, however, was simultaneous in the whole peninsula, varying only in the subject matter of the art. In the north,
31460-401: The first set belongs the famous poem Sulla natura d'amore , which in fact is a treatise on amorous metaphysics , and was annotated later in a learned way by renowned Platonic philosophers of the 15th century, such as Marsilius Ficinus and others. On the other hand, in his Ballate , he pours himself out ingenuously, but with a consciousness of his art. The greatest of these is considered to be
31680-522: The first standard Italian) than its subject, a love song partly modelled on the Provençal poetry imported to the south by the Normans and the Svevs under Frederick II . This poetry differs from the French equivalent in its treatment of the woman, less erotic and more platonic , a vein further developed by Dolce Stil Novo in later 13th century Bologna and Florence . The customary repertoire of chivalry terms
31900-502: The free vitality of the figures in the Trilogy of Life. His final work, Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma ( Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom , 1975), exceeded what most viewers could accept at the time in its explicit scenes of sexual perversity and intensely sadistic violence. Based on the novel 120 Days of Sodom by Marquis de Sade , it is considered Pasolini's most controversial film. In May 2006, Time Out ' s Film Guide named it
32120-468: The free website and application Duolingo has 4.94 million English speakers learning the Italian language. According to the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs , every year there are more than 200,000 foreign students who study the Italian language; they are distributed among the 90 Institutes of Italian Culture that are located around the world, in the 179 Italian schools located abroad, or in
32340-664: The high aristocracy of the northern Italy was ready to patronise them. It was not long before native Italians adopted Occitan as a vehicle for poetic expression. Among the early patrons of foreign troubadours were especially the House of Este , the Da Romano , House of Savoy , and the Malaspina . Azzo VI of Este entertained the troubadours Aimeric de Belenoi , Aimeric de Peguilhan , Albertet de Sestaro , and Peire Raimon de Tolosa from Occitania and Rambertino Buvalelli from Bologna , one of
32560-480: The imitation of Latin, but in him, prose first took the form of elaborated art. Over and above this, in the Decamerone , Boccaccio is a delineator of character and an observer of passions. Much has been written about the sources of the novels of the Decamerone . Probably Boccaccio made use both of written and of oral sources. Fazio degli Uberti and Federico Frezzi were imitators of the Divine Comedy , but only in its external form. Giovanni Fiorentino wrote, under
32780-416: The infamous borgate where poor proletarian immigrants lived, often in horrendous sanitary and social conditions. Instead of asking for help from other writers, Pasolini preferred to go his own way. Pasolini found a job working in the Cinecittà film studios and sold his books in the bancarelle ('sidewalk shops') of Rome. In 1951, with the help of the Abruzzese -language poet Vittorio Clemente, he found
33000-495: The information thus acquired, mean that his chronicle, the Historie Fiorentine , covers events all over Europe. Matteo was the brother of Giovanni Villani, and continued the chronicle up to 1363. It was again continued by Filippo Villani. St Catherine of Siena 's mysticism was political. She aspired to bring back the Church of Rome to evangelical virtue, and left a collection of letters written to all types of people, including popes. Another Sienese, Giovanni Colombini , founder of
33220-431: The island of Corsica (but not in the neighbouring Sardinia , which on the contrary underwent Italianization well into the late 18th century, under Savoyard sway: the island's linguistic composition, roofed by the prestige of Spanish among the Sardinians , would therein make for a rather slow process of assimilation to the Italian cultural sphere ). The rediscovery of Dante's De vulgari eloquentia , as well as
33440-451: The language has a 7-vowel sound system ('e' and 'o' have mid-low and mid-high sounds). Italian has contrast between short and long consonants and gemination (doubling) of consonants. During the Middle Ages , the established written language in Europe was Latin, although the great majority of people were illiterate, and only few were well versed in the language. In the Italian Peninsula , as in most of Europe, most would instead speak
33660-531: The language to that continent. According to some sources, Italian is the second most spoken language in Argentina after the official language of Spanish, although its number of speakers, mainly of the older generation, is decreasing. Italian bilingual speakers can be found scattered across the Southeast of Brazil as well as in the South. In Venezuela , Italian is the most spoken language after Spanish and Portuguese, with around 200,000 speakers. In Uruguay , people who speak Italian as their home language are 1.1% of
33880-434: The late 18th century when it tended to be replaced by German. John Milton , for instance, wrote some of his early poetry in Italian. Within the Catholic Church , Italian is known by a large part of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and is used in substitution for Latin in some official documents. Italian loanwords continue to be used in most languages in matters of art and music (especially classical music including opera), in
34100-470: The late 1960s Pasolini edited an advice column in the weekly news magazine Tempo . In 1966, Pasolini wrote a screenplay for a never-produced film about the apostle Saint Paul which he subsequently revised. Pasolini's screenplay was intended to depict Paul as a modern contemporary without modifying any of Paul's statements. In Pasolini's story, Paul is a fascist Vichy France collaborator who becomes illuminated while traveling to Franco's Spain and joins
34320-424: The late 19th to the mid-20th century, millions of Italians settled in Argentina, Uruguay, Southern Brazil and Venezuela, as well as in Canada and the United States, where they formed a physical and cultural presence. In some cases, colonies were established where variants of regional languages of Italy were used, and some continue to use this regional language. Examples are Rio Grande do Sul , Brazil, where Talian
34540-514: The law. On the other hand, Corsican (a language spoken on the French island of Corsica ) is closely related to medieval Tuscan , from which Standard Italian derives and evolved. The differences in the evolution of Latin in the different regions of Italy can be attributed to the natural changes that all languages in regular use are subject to, and to some extent to the presence of three other types of languages: substrata, superstrata, and adstrata . The most prevalent were substrata (the language of
34760-563: The many soft-core imitations of these three films in Italy that happened afterwards on account of the very same popularity he wound up deeply uncomfortable with. He believed that a bastardisation of his vision had taken place that amounted to a commoditisation of the body he had tried to deny in his trilogy in the first place. The disconsolation this provided is seen as one of the primary reasons for his final film, Salò , in which humans are not only seen as commodities under authoritarian control but are viewed merely as cyphers for its whims, without
34980-406: The most prominent Christian Democrat figures on trial, where they would need to be shown walking in handcuffs and led by the Carabinieri ; he felt that this was the only way they could be removed from power. Pasolini charged the Christian Democratic leadership with being "riddled with Mafia influence", covering up a number of bombings by neo-fascists , collaborating with the CIA , and working with
35200-486: The movement reminded him of the Italian Resistance. Pasolini saw these two areas of struggle as inter-linked: after visiting Harlem he stated that "the core of the struggle for the Third World revolution is really America". Pasolini was murdered on 2 November 1975 at a beach in Ostia . Almost unrecognizable, Pasolini was savagely beaten and also run over several times with his own car. Multiple bones were broken and his testicles were crushed by what appeared to have been
35420-428: The music of the 14th century. We have already stated that Antonio Pucci versified Villani's Chronicle . It is enough to notice a chronicle of Arezzo in terza rima by Bartolomeo Sinigardi , and the history, also in terza rima , of the journey of Pope Alexander III to Venice, by Pier de Natali . Besides this, every type of subject, whether history, tragedy or husbandry, was treated in verse. Neri di Landocio wrote
35640-412: The nation was unified in 1861. Italian is a Romance language , a descendant of Vulgar Latin (colloquial spoken Latin). Standard Italian is based on Tuscan , especially its Florentine dialect , and is, therefore, an Italo-Dalmatian language , a classification that includes most other central and southern Italian languages and the extinct Dalmatian . According to Ethnologue , lexical similarity
35860-408: The number of printing presses in Italy grew rapidly and by the year 1500 reached a total of 56, the biggest number of printing presses in all of Europe. This enabled the production of more pieces of literature at a lower cost and Italian, as the dominant language, spread. Italian became the language used in the courts of every state in the Italian Peninsula , as well as the prestige variety used on
36080-630: The openness of vowels, the length of the consonants, and influence of the local language (for example, in informal situations andà , annà and nare replace the standard Italian andare in the area of Tuscany, Rome and Venice respectively for the infinitive "to go"). There is no definitive date when the various Italian variants of Latin—including varieties that contributed to modern Standard Italian—began to be distinct enough from Latin to be considered separate languages. One criterion for determining that two language variants are to be considered separate languages rather than variants of
36300-454: The order of Jesuati , preached poverty by precept and example, going back to the religious idea of St Francis of Assisi. His letters are among the most remarkable in the category of ascetic works in the 14th century. Bianco da Siena wrote several religiously-inspired poems (lauda) that were popular in the Middle Ages. Jacopo Passavanti , in his Specchio della vera penitenza , attached instruction to narrative. Domenico Cavalca translated from
36520-473: The original compositions in the langue d'oïl came translations or adaptations from the same. There are some moral narratives taken from religious legends, a romance of Julius Caesar , some short histories of ancient knights, the Tavola rotonda , translations of the Viaggi of Marco Polo , and of Latini's Tesoro . At the same time, translations from Latin of moral and ascetic works, histories, and treatises on rhetoric and oratory appeared. Also noteworthy
36740-584: The original inhabitants), as the Italian dialects were most probably simply Latin as spoken by native cultural groups. Superstrata and adstrata were both less important. Foreign conquerors of Italy that dominated different regions at different times left behind little to no influence on the dialects. Foreign cultures with which Italy engaged in peaceful relations with, such as trade, had no significant influence either. Throughout Italy, regional varieties of Standard Italian, called Regional Italian , are spoken. Regional differences can be recognized by various factors:
36960-403: The other hand, almost everyone still speaks the Corsican idiom , which, due to its linguistic proximity to the Italian standard language, appears both linguistically as an Italian dialect and therefore as a carrier of Italian culture, despite the French government's decades-long efforts to cut Corsica off from the Italian motherland. Italian was the official language in Monaco until 1860, when it
37180-470: The party Movimento Popolare Friulano, but resigned upon realizing that it was being covertly manipulated by Italy's ruling Christian Democratic Party to counter local Titoists , who were attempting to annex large swaths of the Friuli region to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia . On 26 January 1947, Pasolini wrote a declaration that was published on the front page of the newspaper Libertà : "In our opinion, we think that currently only Communism
37400-450: The poem lies is the individual art of the poet, the classic art transfused for the first time into a Romance form. Whether he describes nature, analyses passions, curses the vices or sings hymns to the virtues, Dante is notable for the grandeur and delicacy of his art. He took the materials for his poem from theology , philosophy, history, and mythology, but especially from his own passions, from hatred and love. The Divine Comedy ranks among
37620-418: The poems of Giacomino da Verona and Bonvesin da la Riva were written in a dialect of Lombard and Venetian . This sort of composition may have been encouraged by the old custom in the north of Italy of listening to the songs of the jongleurs . The year 1230 marked the beginning of the Sicilian School and of literature showing more uniform traits. Its importance lies more in the language (the creation of
37840-635: The police just get a bit of a fight / inside an occupied factory? / But above all, how could / a young worker be allowed to occupy a factory / without dying of hunger after three days?' Pasolini suggested that the police were the true proletariat, sent to fight for a poor salary and for reasons which they could not understand, against pampered boys of their same age, because they had not had the fortune of being able to study, referring to poliziotti figli di proletari meridionali picchiati da figli di papà in vena di bravate ('policemen, sons of proletarian southerners, beaten up by arrogant daddy's boys'). He found that
38060-452: The police, as they were "children of the poor", while the young militants were exponents of what he called "left-wing fascism". His film that year, Teorema , was shown at the Venice Film Festival in a hot political climate. Pasolini had proclaimed that the festival would be managed by the directors. He wrote and directed the black-and-white The Gospel According to Matthew (1964). It is based on scripture, but adapted by Pasolini, and he
38280-587: The policemen were but the outer layer of the real power, e.g. the judiciary. Pasolini was not alien to courts and trials. During all his life, Pasolini was frequently entangled in up to 33 lawsuits filed against him, variously charged with "public disgrace", "foul language", "obscenity", "pornography", "contempt of religion", and "contempt of the state", for which he was always eventually acquitted. The conventional interpretation of Pasolini's position has been challenged. In an article published in 2015, Wu Ming argued that Pasolini's statements need to be understood in
38500-406: The population of Italy could speak Standard Italian. He reports that in 1951 that percentage had risen to 87%. The ability to speak Italian did not necessarily mean it was in everyday use, and most people (63.5%) still usually spoke their native dialects. In addition, other factors such as mass emigration, industrialization, and urbanization, and internal migrations after World War II , contributed to
38720-418: The precepts of the school of Salerno , and the travels of Marco Polo , linking the classics and the Renaissance. At the same time, epic poetry was written in a mixed language, a dialect of Italian based on French: hybrid words exhibited a treatment of sounds according to the rules of both languages, had French roots with Italian endings, and were pronounced according to Italian or Latin rules. Examples include
38940-469: The proliferation of Standard Italian. The Italians who emigrated during the Italian diaspora beginning in 1861 were often of the uneducated lower class, and thus the emigration had the effect of increasing the percentage of literates, who often knew and understood the importance of Standard Italian, back home in Italy. A large percentage of those who had emigrated also eventually returned to Italy, often more educated than when they had left. Although use of
39160-465: The pronunciation of stressed "e", and of "s" between vowels in many words: e.g. va bene "all right" is pronounced [vabˈbɛːne] by a Roman (and by any standard Italian speaker), [vaˈbeːne] by a Milanese (and by any speaker whose native dialect lies to the north of the La Spezia–Rimini Line ); a casa "at home" is [akˈkaːsa] for Roman, [akˈkaːsa] or [akˈkaːza] for standard, [aˈkaːza] for Milanese and generally northern. In contrast to
39380-415: The publication of Agnolo Monosini 's Latin tome Floris italicae linguae libri novem in 1604 followed by the first Italian dictionary in 1612. An important event that helped the diffusion of Italian was the conquest and occupation of Italy by Napoleon in the early 19th century (who was himself of Italian-Corsican descent). This conquest propelled the unification of Italy some decades after and pushed
39600-451: The real Beatrice is supplanted by an idealized vision of her, losing her human nature and becoming a representation of the divine. The Divine Comedy tells of the poet's travels through the three realms of the dead— Hell , Purgatory , and Paradise —accompanied by the Latin poet Virgil . An allegorical meaning hides under the literal one of this great epic. Dante, travelling through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, symbolizes mankind aiming at
39820-420: The referendum that allowed France to annex Savoy and Nice, and a group of his followers (among the Italian Savoyards ) took refuge in Italy in the following years. Corsica passed from the Republic of Genoa to France in 1769 after the Treaty of Versailles . Italian was the official language of Corsica until 1859. Giuseppe Garibaldi called for the inclusion of the " Corsican Italians " within Italy when Rome
40040-543: The religious drama would assume in the following centuries. 13th century Tuscans spoke a dialect that closely resembled Latin and afterwards became, almost exclusively, the language of literature, and which was already regarded at the end of the 13th century as surpassing other dialects. In Tuscany, too, popular love poetry existed. A school of imitators of the Sicilians was led by Dante da Majano , but its literary originality took another line—that of humorous and satirical poetry. The entirely democratic form of government created
40260-420: The religious drama. In 1258 a hermit, Raniero Fasani , represented himself as sent by God to disclose mysterious visions, and to announce to the world terrible visitations. Fasani's pronouncements stimulated the formation of the Compagnie di Disciplinanti , who, for a penance, scourged themselves until they drew blood, and sang Laudi in dialogue in their confraternities . These laudi , closely connected with
40480-428: The religious fervour of his early years. In the Reggio Emilia high school, he met his first true friend, Luciano Serra. The two met again in Bologna, where Pasolini spent seven years completing high school. Here he cultivated new passions, including football . With other friends, including Ermes Parini, Franco Farolfi, Elio Meli, he formed a group dedicated to literary discussions. In 1939, Pasolini graduated and entered
40700-422: The same thing occurred with other great legends. Quilichino of Spoleto wrote couplets about the legend of Alexander the Great . Europe was full of the legend of King Arthur , but the Italians contented themselves with translating and abridging French romances. Jacobus de Voragine , while collecting his Golden Legend (1260), remained a historian. Farfa, Marsicano , and other scholars translated Aristotle ,
40920-432: The situation in the family also became untenable. In late 1949, he decided to move to Rome along with his mother seeking to start a new life, settling down in the outskirts of Rome. In 1963, at the age of 41, Pasolini met "the great love of his life", 15-year-old Ninetto Davoli , whom he later cast in his 1966 film Uccellacci e uccellini (literally Bad Birds and Little Birds but translated in English as The Hawks and
41140-427: The situations in which Pasolini deploys them: war, fascism, American capitalism, the petty debates of Italian intelligentsia[.]" In 1970, Pasolini bought an old castle near Viterbo , several miles north of Rome, where he began to write his last novel, Il Petrolio , in which he denounced obscure dealing in the highest levels of government and the corporate world ( Eni , CIA , the Mafia , etc.). The novel-documentary
41360-414: The small town of Casarsa where he remained for several years. In 1942, Pasolini published at his own expense a collection of poems in Friulan, Poesie a Casarsa , which he had written at the age of eighteen. The work was noted and appreciated by such intellectuals and critics as Gianfranco Contini , Alfonso Gatto and Antonio Russi. Pasolini's pictures had also been well received. He was chief editor of
41580-420: The student movement, along with the wartime resistance, as "the Italian people's only two democratic-revolutionary experiences". That year, he also wrote in support of the PCI's proposals for disarming the police, arguing that this would create a break in the psychology of policemen. He said: "It would lead to the sudden collapse of that 'false idea of himself' ascribed to him by Power, which has programmed him like
41800-448: The student movement: Stampa e Corriere della Sera, News- week e Monde / vi leccano il culo. Siete i loro figli / la loro speranza, il loro futuro... Se mai / si tratta di una lotta intestina (' Stampa and Corriere della Sera , Newsweek and Le Monde / they kiss your arse. You are their children / their hope, their future... If anything / it's in-fighting'). The 1968 revolt was seen by Pasolini as an internal, benign reform of
42020-439: The students were "on the side of reason" whilst the police were "in the wrong". Wu Ming suggested that Pasolini intended to express scepticism regarding the idea of students being a revolutionary force, contending that only the working class could make a revolution and that revolutionary students should join the PCI. Furthermore, he cites a column by Pasolini which was published in the magazine Tempo later that year, which described
42240-514: The summer of 1949, Pasolini was warned by a Roman Catholic priest to renounce Marxist-Leninism or lose his teaching position. Similarly, after some posters were put up in Udine, Giambattista Caron, a Christian Democrat deputy, warned Pasolini's cousin Nico Naldini that "[Pasolini] should abandon communist propaganda" to prevent "pernicious reactions". Pasolini generated heated public discussion with controversial analyses of public affairs. For instance, autonomist university students were carrying on
42460-401: The teachings of the Roman Catholic Church began to be understood from new perspectives as humanists —individuals who placed emphasis on the human body and its full potential—began to shift focus from the church to human beings themselves. The continual advancements in technology play a crucial role in the diffusion of languages. After the invention of the printing press in the 15th century,
42680-410: The title Divina , were read throughout the peninsula and his written dialect became the "canonical standard" that all educated Italians could understand. Dante is still credited with standardizing the Italian language. In addition to the widespread exposure gained through literature, the Florentine dialect also gained prestige due to the political and cultural significance of Florence at the time and
42900-524: The title of Pecorone , a collection of tales, which are supposed to have been related by a monk and a nun in the parlour of the monastery Novelists of Forli. He closely imitated Boccaccio, and drew on Villani's chronicle for his historical stories. Franco Sacchetti wrote tales too, for the most part on subjects taken from Florentine history. The subjects are almost always improper, but it is evident that Sacchetti collected these anecdotes so he could draw his own conclusions and moral reflections, which he puts at
43120-421: The total population of the country. In Australia, Italian is the second most spoken foreign language after Chinese, with 1.4% of the population speaking it as their home language. The main Italian-language newspapers published outside Italy are the L'Osservatore Romano ( Vatican City ), the L'Informazione di San Marino ( San Marino ), the Corriere del Ticino and the laRegione Ticino ( Switzerland ),
43340-415: The two principles that inspired the literature that began with the Italian dramatist and poet Vittorio Alfieri . The Romantic movement had as its organ the Conciliatore , established in 1818 at Milan. The main instigator of the reform was the Italian poet and novelist Alessandro Manzoni . The great Italian poet of the age was Giacomo Leopardi . The literary movement that preceded and was contemporary with
43560-487: The way for the Bolognese school. Bologna was the city of science, and philosophical poetry appeared there. Guido Guinizelli was the poet after the new fashion of the art. In his work, the ideas of chivalry are changed and enlarged. Guinizelli's Canzoni make up the bible of Dolce Stil Novo, and one in particular, "Al cor gentil" ('To a Kind Heart'), is considered the manifesto of the new movement that bloomed in Florence under Cavalcanti, Dante, and their followers. He marks
43780-430: The working languages of the Council of Europe . It is the third-most-widely spoken native language in the European Union (13% of the EU population) and it is spoken as a second language by 13.4 million EU citizens (3%). Including Italian speakers in non-EU European countries (such as Switzerland, Albania and the United Kingdom ) and on other continents, the total number of speakers is approximately 85 million. Italian
44000-419: Was Sordello . The troubadours had a connection with the rise of a school of poetry in the Kingdom of Sicily . In 1220 Obs de Biguli was present as a "singer" at the coronation of the Emperor Frederick II . Guillem Augier Novella before 1230 and Guilhem Figueira thereafter were important Occitan poets at Frederick's court. The Albigensian Crusade had devastated Languedoc and forced many troubadours of
44220-688: Was a unique opportunity for Totò to demonstrate that he was a great dramatic actor as well. In Teorema ( Theorem , 1968), starring Terence Stamp as a mysterious stranger, Pasolini depicted the sexual coming-apart of a bourgeois family. (Variations of this theme were later done by François Ozon in Sitcom , Joe Swanberg in The Zone and Takashi Miike in Visitor Q . ) Later films centred on sex-laden folklore, such as Boccaccio 's Decameron (1971), Chaucer 's The Canterbury Tales (1972), and Il fiore delle mille e una notte (literally The Flower of 1001 Nights , released in English as Arabian Nights , 1974). These films are usually grouped as
44440-439: Was also introduced to Somalia through colonialism and was the sole official language of administration and education during the colonial period but fell out of use after government, educational and economic infrastructure were destroyed in the Somali Civil War . Italian is also spoken by large immigrant and expatriate communities in the Americas and Australia. Although over 17 million Americans are of Italian descent , only
44660-472: Was also published by the Academiuta. In January 1950, Pasolini moved to Rome with his mother Susanna to start a new life. He was acquitted of two indecency charges in 1950 and 1952. After one year sheltered in a maternal uncle's flat next to Piazza Mattei , Pasolini and his 59-year-old mother moved to a run-down suburb called Rebibbia , next to a prison, living there for three years; he transferred his Friulan countryside inspiration to this Roman suburb, one of
44880-485: Was also sensible to the problematics related to the "new" role ascribed to women through the Italian media, stating in a 1972 interview that "women are not slot machines". He was a supporter of his hometown football club Bologna . By October 1945, the political status of the Friuli region became a matter of contention between different political factions. On 30 October, Pasolini joined the pro-devolution association Patrie tal Friul , founded in Udine . Pasolini wanted
45100-419: Was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy , but King Victor Emmanuel II did not agree to it. Italian is generally understood in Corsica by the population resident therein who speak Corsican , which is an Italo-Romance idiom similar to Tuscan. Francization occurred in Nice case, and caused a near-disappearance of the Italian language as many of the Italian speakers in these areas migrated to Italy. In Corsica, on
45320-400: Was being rapidly replaced with more bourgeois ambitions such as a house and a family. He was critical of those leftists who held a "traditional and never admitted hatred against lumpenproletariats and poor populations". In 1958, he called on the PCI to become "'the party of the poor people': the party, we may say, of the lumpenproletarians". Pasolini's stance finds its roots in the belief that
45540-409: Was convicted and sentenced to 9 years in prison in 1976, initially with "unknown others", but this phrase was later removed from the verdict. Twenty-nine years later, on 7 May 2005, Pelosi retracted his confession, which he said had been made under the threat of violence to his family. He claimed that three people "with a southern accent" had committed the murder, while further insulting Pasolini as
45760-499: Was developed by Alberto Moravia . Pier Paolo Pasolini became notable for being one of the most controversial authors in the history of Italy. Umberto Eco became internationally successful with the Medieval detective story Il nome della rosa (1980). The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to Italian language authors six times (as of 2019) with winners including Giosuè Carducci , Grazia Deledda , Luigi Pirandello , Salvatore Quasimodo , Eugenio Montale , and Dario Fo . As
45980-514: Was especially comic; Bonichi was comic with a satirical and moral purpose. Pucci was superior to all of them for the variety of his production. Many poets of the 14th century produced political works. Fazio degli Uberti , the author of Dittamondo , who wrote a Serventese to the lords and people of Italy, a poem on Rome, and a fierce invective against Charles IV, deserves notice, as do Francesco di Vannozzo , Frate Stoppa de' Bostichi and Matteo Frescobaldi . It may be said in general that following
46200-571: Was left incomplete at his death. In 1972, Pasolini started to collaborate with the far-left association Lotta Continua , producing a documentary, 12 dicembre , concerning the Piazza Fontana bombing . The following year he began a collaboration for Italy's most renowned newspaper, Il Corriere della Sera . At the beginning of 1975 Garzanti published a collection of his critical essays, Scritti corsari ('Corsair Writings'). In 1957, together with Sergio Citti , Pasolini collaborated on Federico Fellini 's film Nights of Cabiria , writing dialogue for
46420-443: Was mirrored by a decline in the use of the dialects. An increase in literacy was one of the main driving factors (one can assume that only literates were capable of learning Standard Italian, whereas those who were illiterate had access only to their native dialect). The percentage of literates rose from 25% in 1861 to 60% in 1911, and then on to 78.1% in 1951. Tullio De Mauro , an Italian linguist, has asserted that in 1861 only 2.5% of
46640-448: Was never used by Pasolini and was only added in later years as the title of the Scritti corsari collection. Pasolini used the concept to attack various institutional subjects, such as Christian Democracy , the Italian president Giuseppe Saragat , RAI , and the Health Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, which were all guilty of ignoring some requests from Marco Pannella , who had been on hunger strike for over two months. He excluded
46860-440: Was opposed to actually decriminalising it, and he also criticised the Party's understanding of democratic activism as being a matter of equalising access to capitalist markets for the working class and other subaltern groups. In an interview he gave shortly before his death, Pasolini stated he frequently disagreed with the Party. He continued to give qualified support to the PCI. in June 1975, he said that he would still vote for
47080-588: Was persuaded of the virtues of Italian fascism . Pasolini began writing poems at age seven, inspired by the natural beauty of Casarsa. One of his early influences was the work of Arthur Rimbaud . His father was transferred to Idria in the Julian March (now in Slovenia) in 1931; in 1933 they moved again to Cremona in Lombardy, and later to Scandiano and Reggio Emilia . Pasolini found it difficult to adapt to all these dislocations, although he enlarged his poetry and literature readings ( Dostoyevsky , Tolstoy , Shakespeare , Coleridge , Novalis ) and left behind
47300-406: Was replaced by the French. This was due to the annexation of the surrounding County of Nice to France following the Treaty of Turin (1860) . It formerly had official status in Montenegro (because of the Venetian Albania ), parts of Slovenia and Croatia (because of the Venetian Istria and Venetian Dalmatia ), parts of Greece (because of the Venetian rule in the Ionian Islands and by
47520-608: Was shown in the work De genealogia deorum ; as A. H. Heeren said, it is an encyclopaedia of mythological knowledge; and it was the precursor of the humanist movement of the 15th century. Boccaccio was also the first historian of women in his De mulieribus claris , and the first to tell the story of the great unfortunates in his De casibus virorum illustrium . He continued and perfected former geographical investigations in his De montibus, silvis, fontibus, lacubus, fluminibus, stagnis, et paludibus, et de nominibus maris , for which he made use of Vibius Sequester . He did not invent
47740-429: Was taught from approved textbooks in logic, natural philosophy, medicine, law and theology. The main centers of humanism were Florence and Naples . Rather than train professionals in jargon and strict practice, humanists sought to create a citizenry (including, sometimes, women) able to speak and write with eloquence and clarity. This was to be accomplished through the study of the studia humanitatis , today known as
47960-513: Was the Florentine judge Bono Giamboni , who translated Orosius 's Historiae adversus paganos , Vegetius 's Epitoma rei militaris , made a translation/adaptation of Cicero's De inventione mixed with the Rethorica ad Erennium , and a translation/adaptation of Innocent III 's De miseria humane conditionis . He also wrote an allegorical novel called Libro de' Vizi e delle Virtudi . Andrea of Grosseto , in 1268, translated three Treaties of Albertanus of Brescia , from Latin to Tuscan . After
48180-410: Was very rich in tales. A collection called the Cento Novelle antiche contains stories drawn from many sources, including Asian, Greek and Trojan traditions, ancient and medieval history, the legends of Brittany , Provence and Italy, the Bible , local Italian traditions, and histories of animals and old mythology . On the whole the Italian novels of the 13th century have little originality, and are
48400-402: Was widely used later by poets such as Dante or Petrarch. The earliest preserved sermons in the Italian language are from Jordan of Pisa , a Dominican. Francis of Assisi , the founder of the Franciscans, also wrote poetry. According to legend, Francis dictated the hymn Cantico del Sole in the eighteenth year of his penance. It was the first great poetical work of northern Italy, written in
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