Giuseppe Gioachino Belli

Stefan Pedatella (Barnard College)

Ed. by Jo Ann Cavallo, Columbia University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.6.1: Italian Writing and Culture, 453-present.
Vol. editors: Carla Bregman (Independent Scholar - North America), Jo Ann Cavallo (Columbia University)

Dates

Born 7 Sep 1791
Died 21 Dec 1863
Activity 1811-1863

Places

Born in Italy
Active in Italy

Activities

Primary

Poet

Resources

Belli's Works

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When Italian novelist Alberto Moravia wrote that there were few examples of nineteenth-century Italian fiction that could measure up to the achievement of Giuseppe Gioachino Belli's lyric poetry, he consciously decided to illustrate the importance of Belli's verse in

narrative

terms. Belli's immense corpus of 2279 sonnets (approximately 85% of which were written in an astonishingly fruitful period between 1830 and 1837) offers us perhaps the single most comprehensive picture of daily life in the working- and lower-class neighborhoods of pre-

Risorgimento

Rome. With their bitterly humorous depictions of street life--from the arrogance and corruption of all those with any kind of authority (priests, police, pimps etc.), to the crassness, cynicism, and despair of the Roman plebeians--Belli's…

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1372 words

Citation: Pedatella, Stefan. "Giuseppe Gioachino Belli". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 06 December 2011 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=346, accessed 21 November 2024.]