Testo | 2018 | N. 75

In Par. VII, 24-120, Beatrice rationally confronts the mystery of salvation, explaining it through the argumentative method of reason. From the second half of the Nineteenth century onward, Dante scholars, albeit with a few exceptions, have indicated among the closest sources St. Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo. However, in light of the most recent philological and theological inquiries, this text does not always appear consistent with Scriptures. The author not only points to several other concurrent sources but also argues that on one hand, Dante draws from Anselm the systematic structure of thought, on the other, he distances himself from the interpretation of Christ’s sacrifice as reparation for offending God’s honor.

At the core of this paper stands out the desire to propose a path through the dialogues Tasso composed between 1584 and 1585 (from Il Malpiglio overo de la corte to Il Cataneo overo de gli idoli). The aim is to higlight a progression since the first season of the author ‘s dialogic production, underline the deep connection within these later texts and point out their contribution to the poet’s reflections and theorizations of the mid-Eighties, concerning literature’s search for truth and the social responsibility of the artist.

The paper examines the Argomenti of the Gerusalemme Liberata composed by Guido Casoni from Serravalle and compares them to those by Orazio Ariosto and Gian Vincenzo Imperiale. In the light of the theoretical considerations about the ‘argomento’ genre, and in the light of the broader relationship between Tasso and Casoni, the essay offers a significant contribution to the reconstruction of Tasso’s fortune. In this regard, it also helps shed light on the aspects of Casoni’s style and lyrical language, who is now recognized as essential proof of the passage of poetry from the Renaissance to the Baroque.

The essay focuses on the recovery and the reprocessing of some famous literary topoi proposed by Giovan Vincenzo Imperiale in Part IX of his Rustic State (the third edition of the poem dates back to 1613). Dedicated to the Moon replacing the Sun, this part allows to the poet (who plays the protagonist, Clytius) not just the praise – in an agonistic perspective – of the lunar star compared to her divine day-time brother, the Sun, but, above all, an unusual reformulation of the theme of the night, whose origin dates back to Greek poet Alcman (7th century BC). The Muse Euterpe, the reworking of another Agon, of the Amoebaean exchanges, peculiar of the bucolic tradition, comes after this first ‘metamorphosis’ of a topos made by Imperiale in Part IX, thanks to the dream – in which shepherds and poets follow one another – reported by Clytius to his guide; the comparison with an entire lyrical tradition, written in vernacular and concerning an amorous topic, is then imbued with such varied recovery: the voices of the shepherds dreamt by Clytius, in fact, are the voices of the lovers who sing the praises of the talents of the woman they love.

The essay examines one of the few italian epistolary novels in the early 19th century written by a woman. It aims to note his main stylistic features and his structural and narrative specifities in the tradition of sentimental epistolary novel.

This study of the composition of Pascoli’s Gelsomino notturno outlines that the ambiguities of the text reflect a willing attempt at expanding connotations, in a nearly experimental way. Confronted to the wide range of his sources – which include botanical and entomological handbooks, late romantic poets as Guido Mazzoni or Olindo Guerrini and, on a higher level, Virgil and Manzoni (especially the episode of Cecilia’s death, in chapter 34 of Promessi sposi) – Pascoli’s choice “exceeds” any customary practice of poetic communication, in a way that represents also a different intention to “signify”. The mechanisms at work in the «Gelsomino notturno» are already those of a psychological inquiry, and as such they collect suggestions from the area of the “unspoken”, in analogy with other art forms that in the same period were beginning to explore the topics of the imaginary and the unknown.

This paper make an annotated list of studies and new editions about the Ossian and epistolary in last ten years. The last section of the list is dedicated to the reception of Cesarotti’s works in Italy.

The short and unpublished correspondence between Eugenio Montale and Piero Nardi (1952-1966) refers to the pubblication of Prisma (in 1952), an anthology for the secondary school, including four Montale’s poems. The poet offers to Nardi sharp notes on his poems, in particular about Verso Vienna and about the role of literary tradition in Ossi di seppia. Furthermore, the letters show the relationship that linked both intellectuals to the Corriere della Sera, on which Nardi wrote for a few years.

The intertextual relationships between Quarantotti Gambini’s and the European Literature consists in an interesting model of pre-model novel. Important insights emerge regarding in particular the genesis and composition of «La rosa rossa», with notable suggestions being made by critical tradition of the twentieth century, in this essay, shooting and reinterpreted.