TRISSINO, t T&S-SefOO, Ca0VANNI GIORGIO (1478-1550). An Italian author, born at Vicenza.
Excluded from his native territory by the Signoria of Venice, he spent some time in Germany, at Ferrara, and at Florence, and in 1514 went to Rome, where he was received with favor by Pope Leo X.. who sent him on missions to the Em peror Maximilian and to the Signoria of Venice. At the instance of Leo X., the ban of proscrip tion was taken off. He enjoyed the esteem of Popes Clement VII. and Paul IIT., and passed some time at Venice as nuncio of the former pontiff. He died in Rome December S. 1550. Trissino sought to revive the epic in his mother tongue; he gave to the Italian its regular tragedy, and he made the large use of the hendecasyllable in blank verse. 11 is at tempt to produce an epic poem resulted in the liberota_dai Goti, a work of twenty-seven cantos in eleven-syllabled blank verse, completed in 1548. Blank verse and the hendecasyllable are used also in Trissino's Sofonisto (1515), which, although it has not the conventional division into acts, is regarded as the first regular tragedy in the modern languages of Europe. In a comedy, I
Sim/Mini, which is a free imitation of the Memechmi of Plautus, Trissino adopted his fa vorite eleven-syllabled blank verse and introduced certain lyrical strophes like those employed in the Greek comedy. Some Latin poems, a Canzone a Clemente FM., and various Rime make up the rest of his compositions in verse. Trissino gave new life to the already mooted question of the proper Italian tongue with his edition of the Dc l'ulgari Eloguio of Dante in 1529; and his treatise, 11 Castellano, advocated the doctrine of a general Italian tongue as opposed to a merely Tuscan standard. Of his remaining works there may be mentioned the Portico. Consult: Norsolin, Giangiorgio Trissino, ino-nografia di letterato del sccolo XV/. (2d ed., Florence. IS94) ; Clam polini, La prima tragedia regolare nella let italiaťa (Lucca, 1884).