Ciao a tutti! Good afternoon!

Fun Facts about Italy

1. Italy is home to the largest number of UNESCO World heritage Sites- More than
40!
2. Italy is the 4
th
most visited country in the world with almost 40 million visitors a
year.
3. The average Italian consumes 26 gallons of wine a year. Italy has been making
wines for over 2800 years.
4. Italy has over 3000 museums. Sixty percent of the worlds art treasures are in
Italy.
5. Every day, 3000 gets tossed into the famous Trevi Fountain.
6. Italy has more famous fashion designers than any other country.
7. Italian pizza originated in Naples during the 18
th
century.
8. The oldest film festival in the world, beginning at 1930 is the Venice Film
Festival.
9. The national sport of Italy is soccer (known as football outside of America). Italy
also won the world cup for 4 times.
10. The automobile is one of Italys greatest products. In addition to the Fiat brand,
Fiat owns Lamborghini, Ferrari, Masserati, Alfa Romeo and Chrysler brands.
Italy, officially the Italian republic or Repubblica Italiana is a unitary parliamentary
republic in Southern Europe. Its famous by its boot-shaped peninsula. Its bordered by
France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia along the Alps on the North. To the south, it
consists entirely of the Italian Peninsula, Sicily and Sardinia- two largest islands in the
Mediterranean Sea- and many other smaller islands. The Italian Peninsula is surrounded
by five seas: the Adriatic, Ionian, Tyrrhenean, Ligurian, and Mediterranean. The capital
of Italy is Rome and is also the largest city in Italy; Milan is the second- largest city.
The Renaissance or rebirth began in Italy during the 1300 and lasted till about the 1600.
It ushered in cultural and intellectual transformation.
Italian Literature
The first Italian vernacular literature began to take shape in the 13th century with the
imitation of Provenal lyric poetry at the court of Frederick II in Sicily. The Sicilians are
credited with inventing the sonnet, which became the most widely used form of Italian
poetry and later flourished throughout Europe. The Sicilian style was dominant in the
north until c.1260, when Guido Guinizelli, a Bolognese poet and jurist, moved from the
Provenal conception of courtly love to a more mystical and philosophical spirituality.
The basis of the modern Italian Language was established by the Florentine poet Dante
Alighieri whos greatest work, the Divine Comedy, is considered amongst the foremost
literary statements produced in Europe during the Middle Ages. The lyrics of Petrarch
especially his sonnets and the short tales and long narratives in verse of Boccaccio set the
style for all of Europe during the Renaissance. Both Petrarch and Boccaccio were
proponents of ancient classics, of humanism and individualism in general. Other notable
works were in prose and in the epic including drama like works of Machiavelli.
Prominent Italian Writers and their famous works
1. Dante Alighieri- Divine Comedy
In Italy he is known as il Sommo Poeta ("the Supreme Poet") or just il Poeta.
He, Petrarch and Boccaccio are also known as "the three fountains" or "the three
crowns". Dante is also called the "Father of the Italian language".
La Commedia is an epic poem written between 1308 and 1321. On the surface, the
poem describes Dante's travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven; but at a
deeper level, it represents allegorically the soul's journey towards God. At this
deeper level, Dante draws on medieval Christian theology and philosophy,
especially Thomistic philosophy and the Summa Theologica of Thomas
Aquinas.Consequently, the Divine Comedy has been called "the Summa in verse".
The Divine Comedy is composed of 14,233 lines that are divided into three
canticas Inferno- Hell, Purgatorio- Purgatory, and Paradiso- Paradise- each
consisting of 33cantos.
2. Giovanni Boccaccio- The Decameron
was an Italian author and poet, a friend, student, and correspondent of Petrarch, an
important Renaissance humanist and the author of a number of notable works
including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the
Italian vernacular.
With the subtitle of Prince Galehaut is a 14th-century medieval allegory. Told as
a frame story encompassing 100 tales by ten young people. Boccaccio probably
began composing the work in 1350, and finished it in 1351 or 1353. The various
tales of love in The Decameron range from the erotic to the tragic. Tales of wit,
practical jokes, and life lessons contribute to the mosaic. In addition to its literary
import, it documents life in 14th-century Italy.
3. Francesco Petrarch- Sonnets
Petrarch is best known for his Italian poetry, notably the Canzoniere ("Songbook")
and the Trionfi ("Triumphs"). However, Petrarch was an enthusiastic Latin scholar
and did most of his writing in this language. His Latin writings include scholarly
works, introspective essays, letters, and more poetry. Among them
are Secretum ("My Secret Book"), an intensely personal, guilt-ridden imaginary
dialogue with Augustine of Hippo; De Viris Illustribus ("On Famous Men"), a
series of moral biographies; Rerum Memorandarum Libri, an incomplete treatise
on the cardinal virtues; De Otio Religiosorum ("On Religious Leisure") and De
Vita Solitaria ("On the Solitary Life"), which praise the contemplative life; De
Remediis Utriusque Fortunae ("Remedies for Fortune Fair and Foul"), a self-help
book which remained popular for hundreds of years; Itinerarium ("Petrarch's
Guide to the Holy Land"); a number of invectives against opponents such as
doctors, scholastics, and the French; the Carmen Bucolicum, a collection of 12
pastoral poems; and the unfinished epic Africa.
4. Desiderius Erasmus- the Praise of Folly
Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (28 October 1466 12 July 1536), known
as Erasmus of Rotterdam, was a Dutch Renaissance
humanist, Catholic priest, social critic, teacher, and theologian.
I n Praise of Folly (Greek title: Morias Enkomion (
), Latin: Stultitiae Laus, sometimes translated as I n Praise of
More, Dutch title: Lof der Zotheid) is an essay written in Latin in 1509 and first
printed in 1511. The essay was inspired by De Triumpho Stultitiae, written by the
Italian humanist Faustino Perisauli, born at Tredozio, near Forl.
5. Niccolo Machiavelli- The Prince
was an Italian historian, politician, diplomat, philosopher, humanist and writer
based in Florence during the Renaissance. He was for many years an official in
the Florentine Republic, with responsibilities in diplomatic and military affairs. He
was a founder of modern political science, and more specifically political ethics.
He also wrote comedies, carnival songs, and poetry.
The Prince (Italian: Il Principe) is a political treatise. The Prince is sometimes
claimed to be one of the first works of modern philosophy, especially
modern political philosophy, in which the effective truth is taken to be more
important than any abstract ideal. It was also in direct conflict with the dominant
Catholic and scholastic doctrines of the time concerning how to consider politics
and ethics.

6. Giacomo Leopardi- To Itally
generally considered, along with such figures as Dante, Ariosto and Tasso, to be
among Italy's greatest poets and also one of its greatest thinkers in general.
7. Gabriele DAnnuncio- lyric poetry Truly the First (1879); New Songs (1884)
D'Annunzio was associated with the Decadent movement in his literary works,
which interplayed closely with French Symbolism and British Aestheticism. Such
works represented a turn against the naturalism of the preceding romantics and
was both sensuous and mystical.
8. Giosue Carducci- poetry (1906) (Nobel Prize)
was an Italian poet and teacher. He was very influential and was regarded as the
official national poet of modern Italy. In 1906 he became the first Italian to win
the Nobel Prize in Literature.
9. Luigi Pirandello- Six Characters in Sarch of an Author (play) short stories (1934
Nobel Prize)
was an Italian dramatist, novelist, and short story writer awarded the Nobel Prize
in Literature in 1934, for his "bold and brilliant renovation of the drama and the
stage". Pirandello's works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and about 40
plays, some of which are written in Sicilian.

is a 1921 Italian play by Luigi Pirandello, first performed in that same year.
An absurdist metatheatrical play about the relationship between authors,
their characters, and theatre practitioners, it premiered at the Teatro
Valle in Rome to a mixed reception, with shouts from the audience of
"Manicomio!" ("Madhouse!"), though the reception improved at subsequent
performances helped when Pirandello provided for the play's third edition,
published in 1925, a foreword clarifying its structure and ideas.
10. Grazia Deledda- novels (1926) (Nobel Prize)
Deledda's whole work is based on strong facts of love, pain and death upon which
rests the feeling of sin and of an inevitable fatality.
In Deledda's novels there is always a strong connection between places and
people, feelings and environment. The environment depicted is that one harsh of
native Sardinia, but it is not depicted according to regional veristic schemes
neither according to the otherworldly vision by D'Annunzio, but relived through
the myth.
Grazie per lascolto, thank you for listening!