Italian Poetry - Important Italian Poets

Important Italian Poets

  • Giacomo da Lentini a 13th Century poet who is believed to have invented the sonnet.
  • Guido Cavalcanti (c.1255 - 1300) Tuscan poet, and a key figure in the Dolce Stil Novo movement.
  • Dante Alighieri (1265 - 1321) wrote Divina Commedia, one of the pinnacles of Middle Ages literature.
  • Francesco Petrarca (1304 - 1374) famous for developing the Petrarchan sonnet in a collection of 366 poems called Canzoniere.
  • Matteo Maria Boiardo (1441 – 1494) wrote the epic poem Orlando innamorato
  • Ludovico Ariosto (1474 – 1533) wrote the epic poem Orlando furioso (1516).
  • Torquato Tasso (1544 – 1595) wrote La Gerusalemme liberata (1580) in which he describes the imaginary combats between Christians and Muslims at the end of the First Crusade.
  • Ugo Foscolo (1778 - 1827): best known for his poem "Dei Sepolcri"
  • Giacomo Leopardi (1798 – 1837): highly valued for his Canti and Operette morali, author of L'infinito, one of the most famous poems of Italian literary history.
  • Giosuè Carducci (1835 - 1907) won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1906
  • Giovanni Pascoli (1855 - 1912)
  • Gabriele D'Annunzio (1863 - 1938) poet and novelist of the Decadent Movement
  • Guido Gozzano (1883-1916) poet of the Decadent Movement, best known for his collection "I colloqui" (1911)
  • Umberto Saba (1883 - 1957)
  • Giuseppe Ungaretti (1888 - 1970)
  • Eugenio Montale (1896 – 1981) won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1975
  • Salvatore Quasimodo (1901 – 1968) won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1959
  • Cesare Pavese (1908 – 1950)
  • Leonardo Sinisgalli (1908 – 1981)
  • Alfonso Gatto (1909 – 1976)
  • Antonia Pozzi (1912 - 1938)
  • Mario Luzi (1914 – 2005)

Read more about this topic:  Italian Poetry

Famous quotes containing the words important, italian and/or poets:

    “We use important words too frequently and they lose value; for instance, charm and great. An actor or musician often is proclaimed great when we really mean he is outstanding.”
    —Eleanor Robson Belmont (1878–1979)

    “If the study of his images
    Is the study of man, this image of Saturday,
    This Italian symbol, this Southern landscape, is like
    A waking, as in images we awake,
    Within the very object that we seek,
    Participants of its being.”
    —Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)

    “There beneath the Roman ruin where the purple flowers grow,
    Came that “Ave atque Vale” of the poet’s hopeless woe,
    Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen hundred years ago,”
    —Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)