Italian literature course
Study abroad programs in Italy, Sicily
The contribution of the Sicilian writers to Italian literature has been huge since the beginning of the history of the Italian language.
It is in Sicily that the national theater has its origins, with the tragedies written here by Aeschylus, Euripedes, Aristophane.
Already at the time of Dante Alighieri there was a discussion among academics about which should be the national Italian language: the one of the Sicilian Poetic School of the royal court of Frederick II in Palermo (Cielo d’Alcamo, Jacopo da Lentini, etc.) or the one of the royal court of the Medici in Florence. Then the Divine Comedy by Dante arrived and put an end to the discussion.
As Dante himself pointed out in his De Vulgari Eloquentia ” “The Sicilian language is attributed superior reputation to all others for these reasons: that all the Italians produce in the matter of poetry is called Sicilian, and that we find that many native masters of the island have sung with solemnity”.
In Modern Ages, two of the Nobel Prizes for literature were Sicilians: Pirandello and Quasimodo. But many others are the Sicilian writers who are fundamental in the history of the Italian literature: Giovanni Verga, Luigi Capuana, Rosso di San Secondo and Tomasi di Lampedusa. Likewise, today, the contributions of Sicily and the contemporary Sicillian writers in Italian literature are immense: Elio Vittorini, Leonardo Sciascia, Gesualdo Bufalino, Vincenzo Consolo, Giuseppe Fava and Andra Camilleri. Or contemporary writers such as Sergio Claudio Perroni, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, Santo Piazzese, Elvira Seminara, Giuseppina Torregrossa.
