Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873) was an Italian poet and writer who contributed significantly to the development of the modern, unified Italian language. After his education in church boarding schools, Manzoni moved to Paris in 1805 and found many friends there, especially among the followers of Voltaire, including the philologist Claude Fauriel, who introduced him to the works of William Shakespeare and German Romanticism. In 1819 Manzoni published his first tragedy ''Il Conte di Carmagnola'' (The Count of Carmagnola), which broke all classical conventions of the unity of place and time and was sharply criticised by representatives of linguistic purism, whereupon Goethe defended it. The death of Napoleon Bonaparte on 5 May 1821 inspired Manzoni to write his ode ''Il cinque Maggio'' (The Fifth of May), which is one of the best-known poems in Italian and was first translated into German by Goethe. His main work, the historical novel ''I Promessi Sposi'' (The Bride and Groom), is set in the years 1628-1630 in the Duchy of Milan, which was then ruled by Spain, and in neighbouring Bergamo, which belonged to the Republic of Venice. With its patriotic message, the work is also a symbol of the Italian Risorgimento (Resurgence), the striving for a nation-state of Italy. First published in 1827, Manzoni revised the novel in the 1830s to purge it of remnants of Lombard dialect and present it in Tuscan script so that it could be read by all Italians throughout the country. It is one of the few works of Italian Romanticism. |
