Giovanni Battista Casti
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
Giovanni Battista Casti (29 August 1724 – 5 February 1803) was an Italian poet, satirist, and author of comic opera librettos.
Casti is best known as the author of the Novelle galanti, and of Gli Animali parlanti, a poetical allegory, over which he spent eight years (1794–1802), which excited so much interest that it was translated into French, German and Spanish, and (very freely and with additions) into English, in William Stewart Rose's Court and Parliament of Beasts (London, 1819). Written during the time of the Revolution in France, it was intended to exhibit the feelings and hopes of the people and the defects and absurdities of various political systems. Some of Goya's print series The Disasters of War drew from the Spanish translation of 1813. The Novelle Galanti is a series of poetical tales, in the ottava rima metre largely used by Italian poets for that class of compositions. One merit of these poems is in the harmony and purity of the style, and the liveliness and sarcastic power of many passages.
