Born Feb. 19, 1754, in Alfonsine, near Ravenna; died Oct. 13, 1828, in Milan. Italian neoclassical poet.
Monti received a classical education. Often changing his political allegiance, his verses, narrative poems, and dramas extolled first the Catholic Church (The Penance of Hugon: A Vision of the French Revolution, 1794), then the French Revolution and the patriotic ideals of the Italian “Jacobins “(Fanaticism, 1797; For the Liberation of Italy, 1801; the tragedy Cains Gracchus 1804, Russian translation, 1882), Napoleon (Prometheus, 1797; The Bard of the Black Forest), and, finally, the Hapsburgs (Mystic Homage, The Return of Astraea).
Monti’s translation of Homer’s Iliad in 1810 is of great artistic value. Among his contemporaries his works enjoyed great popularity, which waned, however, by the mid-19th century.