Giovanni Fiorentino was a 14th-century Florentine writer, to whom is attributed the work Il Pecorone. This was a collection of short stories, purportedly published in 1378. However, this date is disputed.
Giovanni Francesco "Gianfrancesco" Straparola, also known as Zoan or Zuan Francesco Straparola da Caravaggio, was an Italian writer of poetry, and collector and writer of short stories. Some time during his life, he migrated from Caravaggio to Venice where he published a collection of stories in two volumes called The Facetious Nights or The Pleasant Nights. This collection includes some of the first known printed versions of fairy tales in Europe, as they are known today.
Giovanni Gentile was an Italian philosopher, educator, and politician. Described by himself and by Benito Mussolini as the "philosopher of Fascism", he was influential in providing an intellectual foundation for Italian Fascism, and ghostwrote part of "The Doctrine of Fascism" (1932) with Mussolini. He was involved in the resurgence of Hegelian idealism in Italian philosophy and also devised his own system of thought, which he called "actual idealism" or "actualism", which has been described as "the subjective extreme of the idealist tradition".
Count Giovanni Giraud (1776–1834), Italian dramatist, of French origin, was born at Rome, and showed a precocious passion for the theatre. His first play, L'Honestà non si vince, was successfully produced in 1798. He took part in politics as an active supporter of Pope Pius VI, but was mainly occupied with the production of his plays. In 1809 he became director-general of the Italian theatres.
Giovanni Maria Cecchi (1518–1587) was an Italian poet, playwright, writer and notary, devoted to the Medici family. His plays were often classically inspired, although some were derived from current events. “Cecchi left in his comedies a treasure of spoken language, which nowadays enables us in a wonderful way to make ourselves acquainted with that age.”
