Chapter II
ITALIAN LITERATURE
442
Age of Leo X.
Ariosto "very nearly if not quite supreme" (Saintsbury).
Orlando Furioso.
Ariosto's similes, sonnet.
Italian Mystery and Miracle plays.
Ballads.
Carnival songs.
Lorenzo de' Medici as a poet.
Italian prose.
Machiavelli,
history,
plays,
poems,
fiction,
"a universal genius" (Garnett).
Guicciardini, history, reminiscences.
Vasari--Lives of the Painters.
Italian fiction,
Ariente,
Luigi da Porto,
Illicini,
Machiavelli's "Belphagor."
Cinthio.
Bandello.
Licentious stories intended to lessen license.
Autobiography of Benevenuto Cellini, Castiglione's
"Cortigiano" not the "Autobiography," the symbol
of the century's thought and philosophy of life
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