CHIARI, PIETRO. - Priest, playwright, novelist, b. in Brescia in 1711, d. there in 1785. He was first a Jesuit and taught rhetoric in 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 countless volumes. He was hailed as a literary adventurer, a facile popularizer of Enlightenment thought, often an improviser and imitator. Even his theater is marked by improvisation and translation, though CHIARI sought to be the second reformer of comedy in rivalry with Goldoni (1753).
The contention between the “Chiarists” and the “Goldonians” dragged on for many years, during which CHIARI had been engaged by the Medebac company for the S. Angelo theater. The supposed reform aimed to reconcile improvised comedy with masks and premeditated or written comedy. His comedies, however, met with favor in Venice; and Goldoni himself felt CHIARI’s influence in his later manner, which indulged in oratorical and melodramatic forms.
CHIARI is credited with having revived the novel, striving to rival the French. But his novels, rich in adventure and steeped in the new philosophy (Montesquieu, Rousseau), with some vivid folkloric touches, are always 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 latte, La ballerina onorata, La Francese in Italia, and La bella Pellegrina, lack the qualities of the later novel. CHIARI also edited the Gazzetta veneta, treating urban news with wit.