Gozzi, Gasparo

Gozzi, Gasparo (gäs`pärō gôt`tsē), 1713–86, Italian critic and poet; brother of Carlo Gozzi. Struggling to support a large family, he wrote plays, stories, articles, and poems. He founded the literary journals Gazzetta veneta (1760) and Osservatore veneto (1761), which were urbane, satirical, and moralizing in the manner of the Spectator. His Difesa di Dante (1758) contributed to the 19th-century revival of interest in Dante.

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Gozzi, Gasparo 

Born Dec. 4, 1713. in Venice; died Dec. 26, 1786, in Padua. Italian poet, critic, and journalist.

Gozzi defended the theatrical reform of C. Goldoni and argued against his own brother, the playwright C. Gozzi. One of the pioneers in Italian journalism. Gozzi published the Gazetta Veneta (1760–62; reprinted in Florence in 1915), where he wrote the entire satirical chronicle himself, and also the Osservatore (1761; reprinted in 1897 in Florence). Goz-zi’s letters eloquently represent the Venetian mores of his time (Family Letters, 1755; new edition, 1808). He is the author of satires in verse (Sermons), parodies (the collection Pleasant Poems by a Contemporary Author, 1751), and a polemical essay in defense of Dante (The Judgment of Ancient Poets on the Present-day Criticism of Dante, 1758). Gozzi’s short stories influenced romantic German prose.

WORKS

Scritti scelti. Turin, 1960.

REFERENCE

Reizov, B. G. Ital’ianskaia literatura XVIII veka. Leningrad, 1966.

I. N. GOLENISHCHEV-KUTUZOV