Southern Europe

Overview

Greek has been written without interruption for three thousand years, and Latin gave four of this zone's languages. The Italian Renaissance invented in the fourteenth century the idea that a living language could carry great literature, with Dante and then Petrarch, and the rest of Europe followed. The Spanish Golden Age produced Don Quixote in 1605, the first modern novel, and Portugal The Lusiads in 1572. Italian neorealism reinvented cinema after 1945 by filming in the street. Boccaccio's Decameron fixed the short story as a form around 1350.

What circulates

Spanish links this zone to all of Latin America, and Portuguese to Brazil and Lusophone Africa: two languages of this region have more speakers outside Europe than within it. Greek and Maltese, for their part, do not cross their borders and depend entirely on translation. Madrid and Barcelona print for the whole Spanish language.

Limits of this grouping

The division separates Italy and Spain from France, with which they shared the Renaissance and Latin, and it places Cyprus here although its recent history is that of the Levant. Malta, whose language is Semitic and alphabet Latin, belongs fully to no zone. Greece shares five Ottoman centuries with the Balkans.

Works cited

• PoetryMetamorphosesOvidFrom chaos to Rome, a series of tales in which bodies change shape.Literature
• TheatrePeribáñez and the Comendador of OcañaPeribáñez y el comendador de OcañaLope de Vega · 1614A Castilian town, where a lord covets the wife of a well-off peasant who has just married.LiteraturePublic domain
• EpicThe LusiadsOs LusíadasLuís de Camões · 1572An epic in the classical manner for a real voyage: the discovery of the route to the Indies, under the eyes of rival gods.Literature
• CinemaLa terra tremaLuchino Visconti · 1948A family of Sicilian fishermen tries to escape the wholesalers who take their catch from them.Cinema