Luigi Settembrini

Luigi Settembrini ( born April 17, 1813 in Naples, † November 3, 1877 ) was an Italian writer and politician.

Life

Settembrini grew up in a liberal family in Caserta, where he also attended school. From 1828 on he studied in Naples law. In 1835 he became a teacher of rhetoric in a humanistic Lyceum in Catanzaro. Around the same time he joined the liberal movement Giuseppe Mazzini. In 1839 he had to because of his actions against the ruling Bourbons three years in jail. Since he had been deprived of his teaching position, he remained with private lessons on water and worked underground to continue against the backward absolutism of the Bourbons, and for the unification of Italy. After he had published an anonymous treatise protest against the royal family, he had to flee to Malta in 1847. A year later an imposed constitution came into force, he returned to Naples, and worked briefly in the Ministry of Education. After the removal of the new democracy, he and some other liberals was convicted in a manifestly unfair trial to death. After walking the judgment into a life sentence. Settembrini remained eight years in prison on the island of Nisida near Naples.

After his release, he went briefly into exile in England. In 1860 he returned to Italy and lived with his family in Florence. After the unification of Italy, he became professor of Italian literature at the University of Naples and worked as a writer. In his major work Lezioni di letteratura italiana he told the Italian literature on the soul of the new nation.

1873 appointed the king Luigi Settembrini senator for life, and he also was a member of the Equestrian Order of the Holy. Mauritius and Lazarus.

Settembrini was Worshipful Master of a Masonic Lodge. In Thomas Mann's novel " The Magic Mountain" a central, identified as a Freemason figure named " Lodovico Settembrini ".

Works

• Lezioni di letteratura italiana ( 3 volumes)