De Sanctis, Francesco

(1817–1883)

   As a young man, De Sanctis took part in the 1848 uprising against absolutist rule in his native Naples. He was imprisoned for two years; after his release he was exiled first to Turin and then to Zurich, where he taught Italian literature at the university. He became a member of the Italian Parliament and the first minister for education of the new kingdom in 1861. He returned to Naples to teach at the university between 1871 and 1877, and became minister for education again in 1878 and 1881, although it cannot be said that he introduced any great curricular or organizational innovations in this post. De Sanctis’s importance, however, lies not in the list of public posts that he held but in the quality of his work as a literary historian, which aroused educated Italians to a greater sense of their common literary and cultural heritage—an important step for a new nation. De Sanctis’s Storia della letteratura italiana (History of Italian Literature, 1870–1872) is essentially a history of the culture and civilization of the Italian-speaking peoples from medieval times to the 19th century and is widely regarded as one of the finest pieces of scholarship of its age.