DENINA, CARLO. - Man of letters and historian, priest and teacher of literature, b. at Revello on 27 Feb. 1731, d. at Paris on 5 Dec. 1813.
In 1760 he published the Discorso sopra le vicende della letteratura (2 vols., Turin; enlarged 2nd ed., 1784), with a Saggio su la letteratura italiana (ibid., 1762), anticipating the concept of comparative literature; subsequently, Le rivoluzioni d'Italia (ibid., 1768–72), a general history of Italy, which was to influence 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 or Lettere brandemburghesi, as well as writings on linguistics and Germanic philology. In 1786 he defended Spanish culture against the French in the discourse: « Que doit-on à l'Espagne? », which forms part of the eighteenth-century controversies concerning the primacy of nations. Although following the cosmopolitan abstractionism of the period, D., guided by an innate historical sense generally lacking in the Encyclopedists, was able to understand and present ideas, men, and things with balance and respect for Catholic tradition.