Denina, Carlo

DENINA, CARLO. - Scholar and historian, priest and teacher of literature, b. at Revello on 27 February 1731, d. at Paris on 5 December 1813.

In 1760 he published the Discorso sopra le vicende della letteratura (2 vols., Turin; 2nd enlarged ed., 1784) together with a 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 Quinet's Révolutions d'Italie (1848-52). In 1782, appointed a member of the Prussian Academy, he settled in Berlin, where he printed the Viaggio germanico, or Lettere brandemburghesi, and writings on linguistics and Germanic philology. In 1786 he defended Spanish culture against the French with the discourse "Que doit-on à l'Espagne?", which belongs to the context of eighteenth-century polemics over the primacy of peoples. Although he followed the cosmopolitan abstractness of his time, D., guided by a natural historical sense that the Encyclopedists generally lacked, was able to understand and present ideas, men and things with balance and respect for Catholic tradition.