The Role of Domenico De Vivo in Developing Russian and Italian Language Studies in the Second Half of 19th Century

Very little is known about Domenico De Vivo (1839-1897). He was a disciple of the Italian linguist Giacomo Lignana and worked as a professor of Russian and English language at the Asiatic College in Naples from 1868 to 1870, and then as an Italian language lecturer at the universities of Dorpat and Odessa in the Russian Empire from 1879 until his death in 1897. De Vivo championed his ideas on language teaching and learning in his books Grammatica della lingua russa [Russian Grammar for Italians] (Dorpat, 1882) and Prakticheskoe rukovodstvo dlya izucheniya ital’yanskogo yazyka [A Practical Guide to Learning Italian] (Odessa, 1886; Odessa, 1890), and in his Dizionario Italiano-Russo. Slovar’ ital’yansko-russkiy [Italian-Russian Dictionary] (Odessa 1894). The purpose of this article is to examine De Vivo’s life and works, which represent the first recorded attempt – in De Vivo’s own words – “to promote Russian language learning in Italy and Italian language learning in Russia.”