Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Origins and Duecento
- The Trecento
- The Quattrocento
- The Cinquecento
- The Seicento: Poetry, Philosophy and Science
- Narrative prose and theatre
- The Settecento
- 22 The first half of the Settecento
- 23 The theatre from Metastasio to Goldoni
- 24 Opera
- 25 The Enlightenment and Parini
- 26 Alfieri and pre-Romanticism
- The Age of Romanticism (1800–1870)
- The Literature of United Italy (1870–1910)
- The Rise and Fall of Fascism (1910–45)
- The Aftermath of the Second World War (1945–56)
- Contemporary Italy (since 1956)
- Bibliography
- References
22 - The first half of the Settecento
from The Settecento
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
- Frontmatter
- Origins and Duecento
- The Trecento
- The Quattrocento
- The Cinquecento
- The Seicento: Poetry, Philosophy and Science
- Narrative prose and theatre
- The Settecento
- 22 The first half of the Settecento
- 23 The theatre from Metastasio to Goldoni
- 24 Opera
- 25 The Enlightenment and Parini
- 26 Alfieri and pre-Romanticism
- The Age of Romanticism (1800–1870)
- The Literature of United Italy (1870–1910)
- The Rise and Fall of Fascism (1910–45)
- The Aftermath of the Second World War (1945–56)
- Contemporary Italy (since 1956)
- Bibliography
- References
Summary
The Settecento in Italy was characterised by certain trends apparent in varying degrees throughout the peninsula and influenced by events beyond the Alps. There was, for example, a slow but steady increase in population (from thirteen to nearly eighteen million in the course of the century); an upturn in the economy both industrial and commercial; and a further development of the principal urban centres, Naples and Palermo, Rome and Turin, Milan and Florence. These demographic and economic advances are linked to the new political situation brought about in Italy by the so-called Wars of Succession – the Spanish after the extinction of the Habsburg dynasty in Madrid (1700–14), the Polish, and the Austrian caused by Maria Teresa's succession to the Imperial throne following the death of her father Charles VI (1740–8).
After 1715 Spanish hegemony in Italy was replaced by that of Austria, which gained absolute control of Lombardy, now enlarged by the Duchy of Mantua, and then, following the death of the last of the Medici family, Gian Gastone, in 1737, indirectly acquired control of Tuscany via Maria Teresa's husband, Francesco Stefano of Lorraine. Of the earlier states the Venetian republic, the Papal States and the Duchy of Modena under the Estensi remained more or less unchanged, while the House of Savoy, which briefly gained possession of Sicily from 1714 to 1718, was strengthened by the accession of Victor Amedeus II as King of Sardinia in 1720. The Kingdom of Naples, initially annexed to Austria (1707–34) was then given along with Sicily to Philip of Spain's son, Charles VII, and later, when Charles became King of Spain in 1759, to his son Ferdinand.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of Italian Literature , pp. 341 - 352Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1997