Alessandro Manzoni

This month’s essay deals with one of the most important Italian writers in Italian history. His oeuvre covers many literary genres, but he is most famous for an important novel that he wrote during the 19th century, I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed). This novel is generally ranked among the masterpieces of world literature. In this work, he influenced the development and acceptance of a single Italian language from the many dialects that existed at his time. His contribution was as important as that of Dante to the development of the Italian language. In addition to the unification of the language of Italy, he was also instrumental in generating and developing the ideas that helped contribute to the rising Risorgimento movement that successfully created a politically unified Italian nation.