Giornale storico della letteratura italiana

The publication of the latest volume of the Edizione Nazionale of Machiavelli’s complete works together with some recent findings provides a new perspective on the Florentine Secretary’s poetry. In addition to many confirmations, such as the key role played by comic verse and in particular the influence of Burchiello and Pulci on his work, there also emerge some new developments. With regard to his obscene poems and those dedicated to malicious gossip, while further evidence is presented to support the attribution to Machiavelli of a work discovered by Antonio Corsaro in 2009, an obscene madrigal actually written by Aretino is shown to have been erroneously attributed to Machiavelli early on in a 16^th-century manuscript. As for humanistic poetry, this article aims to demonstrate that Machiavelli actually penned one of a number of unpublished epitaphs written by Florentine writers in memory of a dog.

F. De Roberto’s unfinished novel Imperio mixes orthodox Zolaesque naturalism with psychological probing and other features that are almost expressionistic in nature. It follows the story of two characters, the member of Parliament Consalvo Uzeda and the journalist Federico Ranaldi. Given its political setting, one might be tempted to classify Imperio as a parliamentary novel, but the absence of an idealistic hero sets it apart from such a genre; rather, Imperio presents an anti-hero whose only achievement turns out to be self-effacement, thus sharing the condition of an entire class who, in aspiring to hide its tragic passivity, was to become the fertile ground in which Fascism could proliferate.

Two letters published in Italy by the Irish priest Thomas Berry between 1768 and 1770 present an interesting literary reflection on the theme of cicisbeism. The two texts are in fact small epistolary treatises which distinguish between two forms of cicisbeism, ‘larga’ (platonic) and ‘stretta’ (intimate). Berry tackles the question in an original way, interlacing his own thoughts with different outside texts, including an anonymous decalogue regulating male and female relationships, some chapters from St Francis de Sales’ Filotea, a letter discussing the views presented by Costantino Roncaglia in Moderne conversazioni volgarmente dette de’ cicisbei [Modern conversations commonly held on cicisbeism] and the Italian translation of an extract from Giuseppe Baretti’s Account of the Manners and Customs of Italy.

This work presents an autograph of Giuseppe Parini’s ode entitled In morte del Sacchini. It was published in 1789 in Venice in Andrea Rubbi’s Giornale Poetico, and an autograph is preserved at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan. Reference was made to another autograph in 1925, but all traces of it seemed lost. Only now has it been retrieved and transcribed by Edoardo Esposito, together with variants and information on the history of this manuscript.

This article presents a detailed analysis of the different reactions expressed by Ugo Foscolo and Andrea Mustoxidi with regard to the Ionian crisis and the dramatic effects it had on the small town of Parga following the end of Napoleonic supremacy on the European continent. Foscolo’s article On Parga and his subsequently abandoned work on the vicissitudes of the residents of Parga are both examined, together with Mustoxidi’s unsigned Exposé, which too was written as the events were unfolding and as Mustoxidi became closer and closer to Giovanni Capodistria, the future first president of Greece. Despite the differences articulated in their works, the positions held by Foscolo and Mustoxidi actually converge on one key element, the concept of ius gentium; in fact, in On Parga Foscolo offers a broader reflection on this theme than he did ten years earlier in the oration he gave at Pavia entitled Sull’origine e i limiti della giustizia [On the origins and limits of justice]. Its historical perspective is here more clearly defined, taking into account the international balance of power and the elusive aim for the happiness of populations.

Dante Alighieri, Inferno, a cura di Saverio Bellomo (Stefano Carrai), p. 135. - Giovanni Pontano, La fortuna, a cura di Francesco Tateo (Sebastiano Valerio), p. 137. - Alessandra Di Ricco, Scorci di Settecento (Costanza Ghirardini), p. 139. - Giuseppe Maria Galanti, Scritti giovanili inediti, edizione critica a cura di Domenica Falardo, con un saggio di Sebastiano Martelli (Giuseppe Nicoletti), p. 142. - “Che solo amore e luce ha per confine”. Per Claudio Sensi (1951-2011), a cura di Silvio Fabrizio-Costa, Paolo Grossi e Laura Sannia Nowé (Paola Trivero), p. 146.

a cura di Lorenzo Bocca, Arnaldo Di Benedetto, Maria Luisa Doglio, Renato Gendre, Enrico Mattioda

Si parla di: M. Motolese. - M. Paoli. - G. Pedullà. - P. Petterutti Pellegrino. - G. Della Casa. - A. Nacinovich. - «Studi Neoclassici». - G. D’Annunzio. - L. Sciascia. - Recabim. - D. Rhodes. - Micrologus. - A. D’Agostino.