Literature

In the 16th century, interest in the history of Sardinia and its antiquities aroused curiosity among Sardinian scholars, as demonstrated by the works of Sigismondo Arquer and Giovanni Francesco Fara who, first, proposed a reflection on Sardinia and its past, providing, at the same time, an important testimony on the society of their time.
Antonio Lo Frasso, on the other hand, represents all the complexity of Sardinian multilingualism of the time, using Castilian, Catalan and Sardinian, while Pietro Delitala deviates from the authors of the same period because he chose the Italian language, or rather, Tuscany, at a time when this idiom was almost completely abandoned in Sardinia.

In the 17th century, Sardinia, now completely Hispanized, saw the incisive affirmation of the Castilian language and culture. An exception is the work of Francesco Vidal, who shows with his interest in the Sardinian language, that there were cultural currents on the island that in some way counteracted the total Hispanization of the ruling classes. The Baroque poet Giuseppe Delitala y Castelvì, on the other hand, is perfectly integrated into Spanish culture and with his works he proves to be a remarkable Sardinian poet in the Castilian language.

The nineteenth century represents a fundamental moment for Sardinian culture. It is, in fact, the period in which many travelers visit Sardinia and publish the accounts of these trips, the best known of which is the one published in 1826 by Alberto Ferrero della Marmora.
During the century, Francesco d'Austria-Este, Alphonse de Lamartine, Antonio Bresciani, Emanuel Domenech, Carlo Corbetta, Charles Edwardes, Francesco Aventi, Gaston Vuillier, Gustave Jourdan visited Sardinia.

The new century begins with a trend towards the transformation of the structures of Sardinian society. The poet Sebastiano Satta and the writer Enrico Costa win a leading position, who achieved Italian and European successes, joining the great debate of international culture.
The award of the Nobel Prize to the Nuoro writer Grazia Deledda, in 1926, definitively consecrates the value and originality of Sardinian literature.

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, there have been numerous trips by scholars, journalists and writers, who traveled to Sardinia and then published reports of their travels. Among these, Annibale Grasselli Barni, Gino Bottiglioni, Giulio Bechi, J.E. Crawford Flitch, Max Leopold Wagner.
In this century, alongside literary culture, we must remember political culture with characters of great value such as Emilio Lussu and Antonio Gramsci.

The post-war period represents a turning point, in which Sardinian intellectuals are aware that they are facing an epochal turning point represented by the end of isolation and the entry of Sardinia into the so-called “global village”. These transformations are felt by men of culture and writers such as Salvatore Cambosu, Giuseppe Dessy, Salvatore Satta and, in more recent years, Sergio Atzeni