Giovanni Berchet (; 23 December 1783 – 23 December 1851) was an Italian poet and patriot. He wrote an influential manifesto on Italian

Romanticism Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. The purpose of the movement was to advocate for the importance of subjec ...

, ''Lettera semiseria di Grisostomo'', which appeared in 1816, and contributed to ''

Il Conciliatore ''Il Conciliatore'' was a progressive bi-weekly scientific and literary journal, influential in the early Risorgimento. The journal was published in Milan from September 1818 until October 1819 when it was closed by the Austrian censors. Its writ ...

'', a reformist periodical. Berchet was born in

Milan Milan ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nea ...

. He participated in various nationalist activities, including the revolutions that shook the Italian peninsula in 1821. Thereafter, he lived in exile, primarily in

Britain Britain most often refers to: * Great Britain, a large island comprising the countries of England, Scotland and Wales * The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, a sovereign state in Europe comprising Great Britain and the north-eas ...

, until returning to Italy to take part in the revolutions of 1848. His works include ''Il trovatore'', ''Il romito del Cenisio'', and, most famously, ''I profughi di Parga'' (1821). ''Lettera semiseria'' (Half-serious letter) presents the

translation Translation is the communication of the semantics, meaning of a #Source and target languages, source-language text by means of an Dynamic and formal equivalence, equivalent #Source and target languages, target-language text. The English la ...

s (written by Berchet) of two poems by

Gottfried August Bürger Gottfried August Bürger (31 December 1747 – 8 June 1794) was a German poet. His ballads were very popular in Germany. His most noted ballad, ''Lenore (ballad), Lenore'', found an audience beyond readers of the German language in an English l ...

as an example of a new kind of poetry, and expresses the author's thought about contents and language that can reach a new public: that is, no longer a public of academic readers, but the so-called "third class", i.e. the bourgeoisie, which is waiting for books that are interesting, full of real feelings, simple in language, without

mythology Myth is a genre of folklore consisting primarily of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society. For scholars, this is very different from the vernacular usage of the term "myth" that refers to a belief that is not true. Instead, the ...

and classic models. This text took an important part in the debate over Romanticism that developed in Italy (specially in

) in the second decade of the 19th century. Giovanni was the grandfather of the historian Guglielmo Berchet.

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* * Italian poets Italian male poets 1783 births 1851 deaths 19th-century Italian translators 19th-century Italian male writers Immigrants to the United Kingdom Duchy of Milan people 18th-century poets from the Holy Roman Empire {{Italy-writer-stub

Further reading

External links