biography
| name: |
de Sanctis, Francesco
|
pronunciation:
[day sangktees]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1817–83)
|
| biography:
| Literary critic and historian, born in Morra Irpina, Campania, SW Italy. He was jailed (1850–3) for taking part in the anti-Bourbon revolution and went into exile. He then lectured at Turin and Zurich University on Dante and Petrarca (published later in Saggi critici (1866) and Saggio critico sul Petrarca (1869)), briefly became Italian education minister (1861–2) and went into opposition. In 1872 he obtained the chair of comparative literature at Naples University where he gave seminal lectures on Manzoni and Leopardi which later appeared in Letteratura italiana del XIX secolo (1897). In his most important work, Storia della letteratura italiana (1872), by analyzing individual writers he charts Italian cultural life from its beginnings to the 19th-c. |
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