Giosuè Carducci (July 27, 1835 – February 16, 1907) was an Italian poet and teacher. He was very influential and was regarded as the unofficial national poet of modern Italy.

He was born in Val di Castello , a small town in the northwest corner of Tuscany near Pisa. His father, a doctor, was an advocate of the unification of Italy. Because of his politics, the family was forced to move several times during Giosuè's childhood, eventually settling for a few years in Florence.

From the time he was in college, he was fascinated with the restrained style of Greek and Roman antiquity, and his mature work reflects a restrained classical style. He translated Book 9 of Homer's Iliad into Italian.

He received his Ph.D. in 1856 from the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa and began teaching school. The following year, he published his first collection of pems, Rime. These were difficult years for Carducci; his father died, and his brother committed suicide.

In 1859, he married Elvira Menicucci, and they had four children. He briefly taught Greek at a high school in Pistoia, and then was appointed Italian professor at the university in Bologna. He was a popular lecturer and a fierce critic. His political views were mercurial and alternated between pro- and anti-republicanism.

He was the first Italian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1906. Although his reputation rests primarily on his poetry, he also produced a large body of prose works.

He died near Lucca.

External Links

Nobel Prize Biography page