CHIARI, PIETRO. — Priest, dramatist, novelist, b. at Brescia in 1711, d. there in 1785. He was first a Jesuit and teacher of eloquence at Modena for two years (1736–38), then left the Order and became a secular priest. In Venice he lived by writing verse, novels, dialogues, comedies, and translations in far too many volumes. He was an honored adventurer of the pen, an facile popularizer of Enlightenment thought, often an improviser and imitator. His theatre, too, has the character of improvisation and translation, although C. wished to be the second reformer of comedy, competing with Goldoni (1753).
The dispute between the “chiarists” and the “Goldonians” continued for many years, during which C. was appointed by the Medebac company at the S. Angelo theatre. The alleged reform sought to reconcile improvised comedy and masks with premeditated or scripted comedy. His comedies nevertheless met with favor in Venice, and Goldoni himself felt his influence in his final manner, which indulged in oratorical and melodramatic forms.
C. is reputed to have revived the novel, attempting to compete with the French. But his novels, rich in adventures and morbidly imbued with the new philosophy (Montesquieu, Rousseau), with some lively folkloric depiction, are invariably cumbersome and prolix (v. L'uomo di un altro mondo and La donna che non si trova). Even the best of them, such as La giocatrice del lotto, La ballerina onorata, La Francese in Italia, and La bella Pellegrina, do not possess the characteristics of the novel of the period that followed. C. edited the Gazzetta veneta, treating local city news with wit.
Eighteenth century, Bergamo 1903 (v. index); A. Neri, Passatemi goldoniani, in Ateneo veneto, 30 (1907, 1); R. Simoni, Editori alla ribalta, in I libri del giorno, 1 (1918), p. 6 ff.; A. Zardo, Un pralogo del C. e la Gazzetta veneta, in Rivista d'Italia, 25 (1922), p. 8 ff.; C. Musatti, La Veneziana o Parigi, in Il Marzocco, 31 (1926), p. 44 ff.; M. Apollonio, L'opera di C. Goldoni, Milan 1932 (v. index); D. Lucchesi, Kulturgeschichtl. Betrachtung von P. C. Commedia, Munich 1938. Emilio Santini