Bartoli, Adolfo

BARTOLI, ADOLFO. - Critic and scholar, b. at Fivizzano (Massa) in 1833, d. at Genoa in 1894. He collaborated with Vieneseux on the Archivio storico italiano, was a teacher from '60 to '68 in secondary schools and from '69 at the Scuola superiore di commercio in Venice. In 1874 he was called to the Istituto fiorentino di studi superiori to teach Italian literature. At first a devotee of philosophy, history and politics, B. then devoted himself to establishing the approach of literary criticism "bringing it back from De Sanctis's aesthetic conception to the historical tradition," integrated by the most rigorously scientific method.

Besides publishing the Lettere del Beato Colombini (Lucca 1850), the Vite di uomini illustri of Vesp. da Bisticci (Florence 1859) and the Viaggi di Marco Polo (ibid. 1863), B. wrote a Storia della letteratura italiana of great proportions, which he carried as far as the seventh volume and no further than Petrarch. It is still read with pleasure today for its clear and lively style, for the abundance of information and the soul that B. puts into the narrative, but the criterion he used in his judgments is found to be simplistic, consisting as it does in the "exaltation of pagan humanism against Christian asceticism" (B. Croce).

Silvio Pasquali