Giovanni Berchet (23 December 1783 – 23 December 1851) was an Italian poet and

patriot A patriot is a person with the quality of patriotism. Patriot may also refer to: Political and military groups United States * Patriot (American Revolution), those who supported the cause of independence in the American Revolution * Patriot m ...

. He wrote an influential manifesto on Italian

Romanticism Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate ...

, ''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 writer ...

'', a reformist periodical. Berchet was born in

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...

. 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: * The United Kingdom, a sovereign state in Europe comprising the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands * Great Britain, the largest island in the United King ...

, 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 meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transla ...

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'', found an audience beyond readers of the German language in an English and Russian ad ...

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 folklore genre consisting of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or origin myths. Since "myth" is widely used to imply that a story is not objectively true, the identification of a narra ...

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.

External links

* * Italian poets Italian male poets 1783 births 1851 deaths 19th-century Italian translators 19th-century Italian male writers {{Italy-writer-stub

Further reading

External links