Giuseppe Parini (1729–1799)

Born in Milan, and committed to the priesthood, though without a real vocation, Parini served for many years as a tutor to young aristocrats in several noble Milanese families. Out of that experience, Parini wrote his most famous poem, The Day (1763-1804). In that masterful satire, which respects show more the ideals of the class of people satirized, Parini presented himself as a tutor guiding a young aristocrat through the rituals of living through an entire day. The result is a mirror held up to the servile Italian upper class that had accommodated itself to living almost mindlessly, or hypocritically, under foreign rule, and paying for the comforts of that accommodation with its moral character. The unrhymed lines of 11 syllables are as close as Italian prosody can come to English blank verse. (Bowker Author Biography) show less