Gozzi was born and died inVenice;[4] he came from a family of minor Venetian aristocracy,[5] the Tiepolos.[6] At a young age, his parents were no longer able to support him financially, so he joined the army inDalmatia.[7] Three years later, he had returned to Venice and joined the Granelleschi Society.[8] This society was dedicated to preservingTuscan literature from the influence of foreign culture; it was particularly interested in handing down traditional Italian comedic performance: theCommedia dell'arte.[9][10]
Pietro Chiari andCarlo Goldoni, two Venetian writers, were moving away from the old style of Italian theatre, which threatened the work of the Granelleschi Society.[6] In 1757 Gozzi defendedCommedia dell'arte by publishing a satirical poem,La tartana degli influssi per l'anno 1756; and in 1761, in his comedy based on a fairy tale,The Love for Three Oranges orAnalisi riflessiva della fiaba L'amore delle tre melarance, he parodied Chiari and Goldoni.[11] He engaged the Sacchi company of players, a Commedia dell'arte troupe who had had dwindling engagements because of Chiari and Goldoni's efforts.[9] Their acting was informed by personal vendetta, making the play an extraordinary success.[10] Gozzi donated his play and the rest of his fairy tales to Sacchi's troupe, in effect saving the company.[1] Gozzi's efforts on behalf of the genre were anachronistic, since Gozzi wrote out all his scripts. whereas traditional Commedia dell'arte was always improvised.[3]
Struck by the effect produced on the audience by the introduction of the supernatural or mythical element,[5] which he had merely used as a convenient medium for his satirical purposes, Gozzi produced a series of dramatic pieces based onfairy tales.[10] These were hugely popular, but after Sacchi's company disbanded, they were unjustly neglected. Gozzi's fairy tales drew influence fromCommedia dell'arte, and the popularity of them caused a revival of Commedia dell'arte in Italy.[5] These fairy tales were much praised byGoethe,Schlegel brothers,Hoffmann,Madame de Staël,Sismondi andOstrovsky. One of them,Turandot orLa Turandotte, was translated byFriedrich Schiller and staged by Goethe in Weimar in 1802 with great success. Gozzi was acclaimed throughout most of Europe, but was less esteemed in his own homeland.[11]
In the last years of Gozzi's life he had begun to experiment by producing tragedies with largely comical influences, but these endeavors were met with harsh critical response. He then began to work in Spanish drama, and found minor success before his death.[9] He was buried in the church of San Cassiano in Venice.[6]
He was the titular protector of the actressTeodora Ricci.[6] When Pier Antonio Gratarol, a member of Venetian society whom Gozzi'sDraghe d'Amore was partially based on, had an affair with her, Gozzi was instrument in Gratrol's exile.[6]
Ragionamento ingenuo, e storia sincera dell'origine delle mie dieci Fiabe teatrali — "Ingenuous Disquisition and Sincere History of My Ten Tales for the Theatre" (1772)
Memorie Inutili — "Useless Memoirs" (1777, published 1797)
^Though the modern Republic ofItaly had yet to be established, the Latin equivalent of theterm Italian had been in use for natives ofthe region since antiquity.[2]
^abcdeGozzi, Carlo (1890).The memoirs of Count Carlo Gozzi. J.C. Nimmo. p. 187.
^Carlo Gozzi.Memoirs. 2 Vol., trans. John Addington Symonds (London: John C. Nimmo, 1890). 1:249.
^Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature. Merriam-Webster, Inc. 1995. p. 483.
^abcHarrison De Puy, William (1908).The World-wide Encyclopedia and Gazetteer: Compiled and Revised to Date from the Leading Encyclopedias of the World. A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences and Literature, to which is Added Biographies of Living Subjects, One Hundred Colored Maps and Numerous Illustrations, Volume 4. Christian Herald. p. 2877.
^abGozzi, Carlo (1989).Five Tales for the Theatre. The Chicago University Press. p. 1.
^Gozzi, Carlo (1885).Le Fiable di Carlo Gozzi. Bologna: Nicola Zanichelli.
^Katherine Rae Syer - 2014Wagner's Visions: Poetry, Politics, and the Psyche in the Operas 1580464823 "... Il corvo was precisely the play that E. T. A. Hoffmann singled out for special praise in his 1813 dialogue on Romantic aesthetics, "Der Dichter und der Komponist" (The poet and the composer), in which he praised Gozzi's legends as the ideal ...
Carmelo Alberti (ed.),Carlo Gozzi, scrittore di teatro (=La fenice dei teatri. 1). Bulzoni, Rom 1996,ISBN88-7119-880-8.
Alfredo Beniscelli,La finzione del fiabesco. Studi sul teatro di Carlo Gozzi,(=Collana di saggistica, vol. 19). Marietti, Casale Monferrato 1986,ISBN88-211-6571-X.
Michele Bordin, Anna Scannapieco (eds.):Antologia della critica goldoniana e gozziana. Marsilio, Venezia 2009,ISBN978-88-317-9822-8.
Paolo Bosisio,Carlo Gozzi e Goldoni. Una polemica letteraria, Olschki, Firenze 1979.
Françoise Decroisette, "Carlo Gozzi", inIl contributo italiano alla storia del pensiero. La Letteratura, Giulio Ferroni (ed.), Roma, Enciclopedia Treccani, 2017.
Helmut Feldmann,Die Fiabe Carlo Gozzis. Die Entstehung einer Gattung und ihre Transposition in das System der deutschen Romantik (=Studi italiani. Bd. 11). Böhlau, Köln u. a. 1971,ISBN3-412-31171-5.
Siro Ferrone,Attori mercanti corsari. La Commedia dell'arte in Europa tra Cinque e Seicento, Einaudi, Torino 1993.
Bodo Guthmüller/Wolfgang Osthoff (eds.),Carlo Gozzi. Letteratura e musica (=La fenice dei teatri. 4). Bulzoni, Rom 1997,ISBN88-8319-135-8.
Thomas F. Heck,Commedia dell'Arte: A Guide to the Primary and Secondary Literature, Garland, New York 1988.
Kii-Ming Lo,Turandot auf der Opernbühne, Peter Lang, Frankfurt/Bern/New York 1996.
Gérard Luciani,L’œuvre de Carlo Gozzi et les polémiques théâtrales contre les Lumières, dans:Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 89/1972, pp. 939–974.
Gérard Luciani,Carlo Gozzi : 1720-1806, l’homme et l’œuvre…, Paris, H. Champion, 1977.
Arnaldo Momo,La carriera delle maschere nel teatro di Goldoni, Chiari, Gozzi, Marsilio, Venezia 1992.
Allardyce Nicoll,The World of Harlequin, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1963.
Robert Perroud,La défense et l'utilisation des ‚masques’ de la commedia dell'arte dans l'oeuvre de Carlo Gozzi. In: Roger Bauer, Jürgen Wertheimer (eds.),Das Ende des Stegreifspiels – Die Geburt des Nationaltheaters. Ein Wendepunkt in der Geschichte des europäischen Dramas. Fink, München 1983,ISBN3-7705-2008-4, pp. 9–16.
Jean Starobinski,Ironie et mélancholie (I): Le théâtre de Carlo Gozzi, dans: Critiques 22 (1966), pp. 438–457.
Jörn Steigerwald,Serendipità oder Selbstaufklärung im Medium des Theaters: Carlo Gozzis „Il re cervo". In:Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert. Nr. 35.1, 2011,ISSN0722-740X, pp. 73–89.
Frederik D. Tunnat,Karl Vollmoeller. Dichter und Kulturmanager. Eine Biographie. tredition, Hamburg 2008,ISBN978-3-86850-000-4 (gives information on Vollmoeller's productions of Gozzi's plays).
Olga Visentini,Movenze dell'esotismo: »il caso Gozzi«, in:Jürgen Maehder (ed.),Esotismo e colore locale nell'opera di Puccini. Atti del I° Convegno Internazionale sull'opera di Giacomo Puccini, Giardini, Pisa 1985, pp. 37–51.
Susanne Winter,Von illusionärer Wirklichkeit und wahrer Illusion. Zu Carlo Gozzis Fiabe teatrali, Frankfurt/Main 2007,ISBN978-3-465-03509-1.
Friedrich Wolfzettel,Märchen, Aufklärung und ‚Antiaufklärung’: zu den ‚fiabe teatrali’ Carlo Gozzis dans:Aufklärung, éd. Roland Galle, Helmut Pfeiffer, Fink, Paderborn/München 2007,ISBN978-3-7705-4298-7, pp. 117–145.
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Gozzi, Carlo, Count".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 12 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 305.