Giovita Scalvini

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Giovita Scalvini (born March 16, 1791 in Botticino ; died January 1, 1843 in Brescia ) was an Italian poet and literary critic.

life and work

Scalvini studied law in Bologna and Pavia, but then decided to pursue a literary career. From 1818 he lived in Milan and contributed literary critical articles to the Biblioteca italiana , which he left again in 1820 after political differences of opinion. In 1821 he was arrested like many other people on charges of being involved in a conspiracy against the Austrian rulers in his Lombard homeland. After his release the following year, he fled into exile and spent the next 16 years in Switzerland, England, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. In London in particular, he associated with other Italian exiles such as Ugo Foscolo and Giovanni Berchet (1783-1851). After an amnesty he was able to return to Italy in 1838, but died barely five years later. It was not until 1860 that Niccolò Tommaseo published his collected writings and thus became known to a wider readership. His writings experienced a certain renaissance since the 1960s, when the Belgian Romanist Robert van Nuffel obtained a new edition of Scalvini's poems and also published his letters.

Scalvini's small work comprises only a handful of literary critical works and a few patriotic poems ( Il fuoruscito , L'ultimo carme ); he also published a prose translation of Goethe's Faust I in 1835 . Scalvinis literary critical works show him as a late romantic; For example, he turned against his mentor Foscolo, because his style seemed too strictly classic to him, his worldview all too skeptical. His essay on Alessandro Manzoni's I promessi sposi , written in Lugano in 1831, deserves special attention . In it he protects Manzoni against attacks, who only imitate Walter Scott , and justifies the form of the historical novel as a thoroughly political form of expression, since Manzoni's moral image of the 17th century, which was characterized by foreign rule, decadence and epidemics, can also be read as a commentary on today's Italy .

Work editions

  • N. Tommaseo (ed.): Scritti di Giovita Scalvini . Felice Le Monnier, Florence 1860.
  • Gina Martegiani (ed.): Scritti varii . R. Carraba, Lanciano 1913.
  • Robert OJ van Nuffel (ed.): Il fuoruscito . Commissione per i testi di lingua, Bologna 1961.

Secondary literature

Encyclopedia Articles

Articles, monographs, edited volumes

personal data
SURNAME Scalvini, Giovita
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian poet and literary critic
DATE OF BIRTH March 16, 1791
PLACE OF BIRTH Botticino
DATE OF DEATH January 1, 1843
Place of death Brescia