De Sanctis, Francesco

De Sanctis, Francesco (1817-1883), Italian literary critic and nationalist politician. De Sanctis was born in Morra Irpina, near Naples. He abandoned plans to become a priest when he lost his faith in 1834 and became a teacher and head of a private academy instead. After becoming a leading supporter of the liberal revolutionary movement which took control of the Kingdom of Naples in 1848, but was defeated in 1849, he was tried on a (probably false) charge of conspiring to assassinate the king, and jailed in 1850. After his release in 1852 he lectured on Dante Alighieri and other Italian writers at the universities of Turin, then the capital of the Kingdom of Piedmont, and at Zurich, Switzerland.

De Sanctis returned to Naples after the establishment of the Kingdom of Italy in 1860, to become a professor at its university and a member of parliament. He was briefly minister for education but withdrew from active politics in 1865 to write his Storia della letteratura italiana (1871; History of Italian Literature) and to continue teaching at the University of Naples, up to his retirement in 1878. He died in Naples on December 19, 1883. His critical opinions, in particular his view of great literature as the product of great men and his emphasis on the independence of art, influenced many later critics and thinkers, including Benedetto Croce, who edited the writings which De Sanctis had left unpublished.