Romanticism

In our Italian class, we are studying the Italian Romantic Age. Romanticism started in Germany with the "Sturm und Drang" (Impeto e Assalto) movement, and it spread in Europe with the magazine called "Atheneaum". In Italy it was introduced by the writer Giovanni Berchet, which complained against the "poems of the dead", that he said were surpassed and still referred to the old Roman style. He encouraged people to inspire themselves to the contemporary German and English poets, that used "poetry of the living". In 1818, Italian romantics founded a magazine, "Il Conciliatore", that explained the difference between these two types of poetry. The two major Italian exponents of this cultural movement are Giacomo Leopardi and Alessandro Manzoni. Giacomo Leopardi is the major exponent of poetry, while Alessandro Manzoni is the major exponent of novels and stories. The most famous of Alessandro Manzoni's creations is "I Promessi Sposi", a novel that tells the story of two peasants, Lucia Mondella e Renzo Tramaglino, that can't marry because a rich noble has fallen in love with Lucia.