Il libro di poesia (1750-1835). Indagini macrotestuali nei dintorni dei Canti di Leopardi

Leopardi’s Canti have been described by critics as the work that changed the history of Italian poetry, thanks to its new approach to lyric poetry, and as the progenitor of modern “canzoniere d’autore”. The innovations of Canti, however, have rarely been contextualised within their historical and literary milieu. Furthermore, research to date lacks substantial contributions on the “macrotex” of poetry books between the 18th and 19th centuries. The aim of this study is therefore to fill these gaps by investigating the history and forms of poetry books between the late 18th and the first half of the 19th century in Italy. This period, in fact, represents a delicate transition from the Enlightenment to Romanticism, leading poetry into a new phase, at the beginning of the Modern era. Leopardi’s Canti, published in 1835, will be the final part of the research, so that it will be possible to compare it with other poetry books and achieve a deeper understanding of the innovations introduced or, on the contrary, the similarities with its own time. To avoid the canon’s limits, the study begins with first-hand investigation on a large sample of texts. The appendix of the work contains a “catalogue raisonné” of poetry books, which comes from a preliminary census of poetic publications between 1750 and 1835 compiled for this study. The catalogue’s structure provides a helpful tool for further research. The thesis is organised into three parts. The First Part explores the book as a publishing object: a typological description of the book, in terms of its textual and paratextual elements, is combined with a reflection on the cultural and editorial dynamics of the time, which often influenced the decisions about the structure of the book. The Second Part describes the main criteria for organising the book, emerging from a systematic study of the census. In addition, this section includes an in-depth analysis of works that become “structural models”, and a chapter on the genesis of the book, which evolves from the texts’ compositions into the idea of the collection. Finally, the Third Part focuses on a specific book’s structure, defined as “progression of meaning”, which is particularly characteristic of the “canzoniere” genre. The relationship between this type of organisation and its archetype, Petrarch’s Canzoniere, is therefore investigated to understand how much Petrarch’s model is still alive in this chronological period. This final section articulates a historical itinerary in several stages, marked by significant works and authors who take their distance from Petrarch’s model and move towards new forms of the “canzoniere” genre. The innovations no longer focus on a stereotypical love story, but rather on autobiographical events or episodes linked to the author’s private and intellectual life. The present thesis thus demonstrates how the innovations found in the Canti, from a macrotextual point of view, are the result of previous achievements, and that the history of the modern “canzoniere”, which began with Leopardi’s Canti, also had its own prehistory.