DENÍNA, CARLO. — Man of letters and historian, priest and teacher of literature, born at Revello on 27 Feb. 1731, died in Paris on 5 Dec. 1813.
In 1760 he published the *Discorso sopra le vicende della letteratura* (2 vols., Turin; 2nd enlarged ed., 1784) together with an *Saggio su la letteratura italiana* (ibid. 1762), anticipating the concept of comparative literature; later came *Le rivoluzioni d'Italia* (ibid. 1768–72), a general history of Italy which was to influence Edgar Quinet’s *Révolutions d’Italie* (1848–52). In 1782, having been appointed a member of the Prussian Academy, he settled in Berlin, where he printed the *Viaggio germanico o Lettere brandenburghesi* and writings on Germanic linguistics and philology. In 1786 he defended Spanish culture against the French in the discourse *Que doit-on à l'Espagne?*, which falls within the eighteenth-century controversies over the primacy of peoples. While adhering to the cosmopolitan abstraction of his age, Denina, guided by a natural historical sense that was generally lacking in the Encyclopedists, succeeded in understanding and presenting ideas, men and things with balance and respect for Catholic tradition.