Le parole di Orfeo: Dante, Petrarca, Leopardi, e gli archetipi di un genere

Abstract

Starting from the idea of 'canzonieri di morte', collections of poems written by poets for their dead lovers, which is a genre or subgenre at the very origin of the Western poetical tradition, and taking Orpheus' role and specific poetical position within the genre as a key to understanding it, the article focuses on collections or single works by three authors who are fundamental to this tradition: Dante's Vita nova, Petrarch's anzoniere, and Leopardi's 'Il sogno'. The article considers the treatment of loss, absence, desire, and love (both as private events and cultural ideas) in these works of lyric poetry, taking into account historical and cultural differences between the three poets. The main aim is to trace an outline of the tradition, with all its internal changes, in Dante and Petrarch and to identify strands which lead to its modern recurrence and reformulation in a poet such as Leopardi.