DOCSLIB.ORG

Beyond the Suffering of Being: Desire in Giacomo Leopardi and Samuel Beckett

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Beyond the Suffering of Being: Desire in Giacomo Leopardi and Samuel Beckett Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 4-22-2013 12:00 AM Beyond the Suffering of Being: Desire in Giacomo Leopardi and Samuel Beckett Roberta Cauchi-Santoro The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Jonathan Boulter The University of Western Ontario Joint Supervisor Luca Pocci The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in Comparative Literature A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Doctor of Philosophy © Roberta Cauchi-Santoro 2013 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, Italian Literature Commons, and the Modern Languages Commons Recommended Citation Cauchi-Santoro, Roberta, "Beyond the Suffering of Being: Desire in Giacomo Leopardi and Samuel Beckett" (2013). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 1247. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/1247 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. BEYOND THE SUFFERING OF BEING: DESIRE IN GIACOMO LEOPARDI AND SAMUEL BECKETT (Thesis format: monograph) by Roberta Cauchi-Santoro Graduate Program in Comparative Literature A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature The School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, Canada © Roberta Cauchi-Santoro 2013 Abstract In this dissertation, I question critical approaches that argue for Giacomo Leopardi’s and Samuel Beckett’s pessimism and nihilism. Beckett quotes Leopardi when discussing the removal of desire in his monograph Proust, a context that has spurred pessimist and nihilist readings, whether the focus has been on one writer, the other, or both. I argue that the inappropriateness of the pessimist and nihilist label is, on the contrary, specifically exposed through the role of desire in the two thinkers. After tracing the notion of desire as it developed from Leopardi to key twentieth-century thinkers, I illustrate how, in contrast to the Greek concept of ataraxia as a form of ablation of desire, the desire of and for the Other is central in the two authors’ oeuvres. That is, while the two writers’ attempt to reach the respective existential cores of Beckettian “suffering of being” and Leopardian “souffrance” might seem to point towards the celebrated nothingness of their existential quest, closer examination reveals that the attempt to still desire common to both authors is frustrated and outdone by a combative desire that pervades their later work. Hence, while the desire to cease desiring is at the philosophical kernel of both authors’ oeuvre, it also draws attention to and exacerbates the inextinguishable quality of desire. Looking at Leopardi’s later poetry in the ciclo d’Aspasia, including the last poem “La Ginestra, o il fiore del deserto,” and examining Beckett’s plays Endgame, Happy Days, Krapp’s Last Tape and Not I, I argue that desire in Leopardi and Beckett could be read as lying at the cusp between Jacques Lacan’s and Emmanuel Levinas’ theories, a desire that both splits the subject (and is thus based on lack) as much as it moulds the subject when called to address the Other (inspiring what Levinas terms ‘infinity’ as opposed to ‘totality,’ an infinity pitted against the nothingness crucial to pessimist and nihilist readings). The centrality of desire in Leopardi and Beckett also comes close to the Lacanian desire-as-paradox, a desire that is lodged at the heart of Leopardi’s and Beckett’s dianoetic laugh and held to be expressive of their particularly dark, but elevating, humour. Keywords Suffering of Being, Desire, Pessimism, Nihilism, Laughter, Humour, Leopardi, Beckett ii Acknowledgments I am immensely grateful to a number of incredibly capable and professional people for their help and support. First of all, I must thank Prof. Jonathan Boulter and Prof. Luca Pocci for their judicious guidance throughout, from the thesis proposal to the researching and writing of the dissertation. In addition, I would like to thank both Professors for helping with the proofreading of research papers presented in a number of international conferences and which subsequently appeared in peer-reviewed scholarly journals. I am also indebted to Professors David Darby and Laurence de Looze who have also offered substantial help with the proofreading of scholarly articles. Furthermore, I would like to acknowledge the kind permission to publish given by editors Prof. Gianni Cicali of Quaderni d’Italianistica and Prof. Mario Mignone of Forum Italicum. Material published in these two peer-reviewed journals is appearing in the fourth chapter of this dissertation (see references) with their kind permission. Of course, the support of my wonderful family and friends was more than crucial in keeping this project moving forward. A heartfelt thankyou goes to my husband Domenico for his unflagging support and practical help, my parents, Frieda and Charles Cauchi, my sister Claudia and my brother Christopher. Above all, I would like to thank my daughter Federica, who teaches me the sheer joy of pursuing interests and discovering something new everyday. Thank you Federica! In you we see the future and it looks bright. iii Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments.............................................................................................................. iii Introduction ........................................................................................................................ vi Chapter 1 ............................................................................................................................. 1 1 On Desire ....................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 What Desire? ........................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Desire as Lack ......................................................................................................... 6 1.2.1 Leopardian Desire: “l’isperanza di esser quieto” ........................................ 7 1.2.2 From Leopardian Desire to Schopenhauerian Will .................................. 23 1.3 Freudian Desire ..................................................................................................... 26 1.4 Lacanian Desire .................................................................................................... 29 1.4.1 The Freudian Model in Lacan ................................................................... 30 1.4.2 Lacanian Demand and Desire: Anti-Desire and Desire ............................ 32 1.5 Levinas and the Desire of the Other ..................................................................... 34 1.5.1 Metaphysical Desire versus Need ............................................................. 35 1.5.2 Metaphysical Desire, Transcendence, Infinity and Height ....................... 36 1.5.3 Totality ...................................................................................................... 38 1.5.4 The Ethics of the face-to-face and The Rupture of Subjectivity: Alterity 38 1.5.5 The Ethicality of Discourse: The ‘Saying’ over the ‘Said’ ....................... 40 1.5.6 Time as the Postponement of Death and the Good beyond Being ........... 42 1.5.7 On Being Accused, Suffering and Substitution ........................................ 43 Chapter 2 ........................................................................................................................... 46 2 A Perennially Dull and Indistinct Pain: “Vain Longing that Vain Longing Go” ........ 46 2.1 “Souffrance” and “Suffering of being” ................................................................. 47 2.2 “My imagination provided equations for the unknown in this algebra of desire”: the Desire to cease desiring................................................................................... 51 2.2.1 The Stoic Ascendancy: “Souffrance” and “Suffering of being” .............. 52 2.3 “Souffrance” and “Suffering of being” in the pessimistic tradition ...................... 53 2.3.1 “Souffrance” and “Suffering of being” in the Quietist Tradition ............. 55 iv 2.3.2 Immediate heir of “Souffrance” and source of inspiration for the “Suffering of being”: Schopenhauer’s Negation of the Will .................... 58 2.4 Leopardi and Beckett within the nihilist tradition ................................................ 60 2.4.1 Leopardi the nihilist .................................................................................. 63 2.4.2 Beckett the nihilist: Ubi nihil vales, Ibi nihil velis.................................... 67 2.5 “Souffrance” and “Suffering of being” within the Heideggerian existential tradition and the Levinasian “Il y a”..................................................................... 70 Chapter 3 ........................................................................................................................... 74 3 Making Suffering Sufferable: Desire for the Other in Leopardi and Beckett .............. 74 3.1 Lacanian versus Levinasian
Load more

Recommended publications
  • “Drammaticità Di Leopardi” (1938): a Stage on Alberto Savinio's Route To
    ITALIAN MODERN ART | ISSUE 2: “Drammaticità di Leopardi” ISSN 2640-8511 A Stage on Alberto Savinio’s Route to a More “Romantic” Italy "DRAMMATICITÀ DI LEOPARDI" (1938): A STAGE ON ALBERTO SAVINIO'S ROUTE TO A MORE "ROMANTIC" ITALY italianmodernart.org/journal/articles/drammaticita-di-leopardi-1938-a-stage-on-alberto- 0 savinios-route-to-a-more-romantic-italy Martin Weidlich Alberto Savinio, Issue 2, July 2019 ----------https://www.italianmodernart.org/journal/issues/alberto-savinio/· -- Abstract This paper deals with Alberto Savinio’s 1938 conference “Drammaticità di Leopardi,” presupposing the nineteenth-century poet as one of his most important sources. Tracking a hidden self-portrait in Savinio’s homage to Giacomo Leopardi, we encounter the problem of identity and the question of cultural belonging. This key issue seems to unite Savinio with Leopardi: both can be considered as outsiders within their culture, and this status appears to be globally connected with their modernity. Thus, dealing with Savinio and Leopardi promises to provide further understanding of “anti-modern” Italian culture from its margins. Introduction 1 Romantic feeling was once characterized by Alberto Savinio as an “invito a morire,” an “invitation to die.” Perhaps nowhere in Italian literature would Giorgio de Chirico’s younger brother have encountered as near perfect an example of this phenomenon as in Giacomo Leopardi’s “Cantico del Gallo Silvestre” (Song of the great wild rooster ).2 In this work of prose – which formed a part of the nineteenth-century poet’s collection Operette morali (The moral essays; the first group of texts was published in 1827) – a large rooster tells of how everything that exists more or less consciously desires not to be.
    [Show full text]
  • Network Map of Knowledge And
    Humphry Davy George Grosz Patrick Galvin August Wilhelm von Hofmann Mervyn Gotsman Peter Blake Willa Cather Norman Vincent Peale Hans Holbein the Elder David Bomberg Hans Lewy Mark Ryden Juan Gris Ian Stevenson Charles Coleman (English painter) Mauritz de Haas David Drake Donald E. Westlake John Morton Blum Yehuda Amichai Stephen Smale Bernd and Hilla Becher Vitsentzos Kornaros Maxfield Parrish L. Sprague de Camp Derek Jarman Baron Carl von Rokitansky John LaFarge Richard Francis Burton Jamie Hewlett George Sterling Sergei Winogradsky Federico Halbherr Jean-Léon Gérôme William M. Bass Roy Lichtenstein Jacob Isaakszoon van Ruisdael Tony Cliff Julia Margaret Cameron Arnold Sommerfeld Adrian Willaert Olga Arsenievna Oleinik LeMoine Fitzgerald Christian Krohg Wilfred Thesiger Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant Eva Hesse `Abd Allah ibn `Abbas Him Mark Lai Clark Ashton Smith Clint Eastwood Therkel Mathiassen Bettie Page Frank DuMond Peter Whittle Salvador Espriu Gaetano Fichera William Cubley Jean Tinguely Amado Nervo Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay Ferdinand Hodler Françoise Sagan Dave Meltzer Anton Julius Carlson Bela Cikoš Sesija John Cleese Kan Nyunt Charlotte Lamb Benjamin Silliman Howard Hendricks Jim Russell (cartoonist) Kate Chopin Gary Becker Harvey Kurtzman Michel Tapié John C. Maxwell Stan Pitt Henry Lawson Gustave Boulanger Wayne Shorter Irshad Kamil Joseph Greenberg Dungeons & Dragons Serbian epic poetry Adrian Ludwig Richter Eliseu Visconti Albert Maignan Syed Nazeer Husain Hakushu Kitahara Lim Cheng Hoe David Brin Bernard Ogilvie Dodge Star Wars Karel Capek Hudson River School Alfred Hitchcock Vladimir Colin Robert Kroetsch Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai Stephen Sondheim Robert Ludlum Frank Frazetta Walter Tevis Sax Rohmer Rafael Sabatini Ralph Nader Manon Gropius Aristide Maillol Ed Roth Jonathan Dordick Abdur Razzaq (Professor) John W.
    [Show full text]
  • Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837) Is Better Known As a Remarkable Poet and Writer Than a Philosophical Thinker
    Vol. 5, no. 1 (2010) Category: Article Written by Geir Sigurðsson Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837) is better known as a remarkable poet and writer than a philosophical thinker. However, he followed closely the philosophical developments of his time, was profoundly critical of it, and even formulated a rather complex, albeit unsystematic, philosophical response, mainly in his chronological diaries, the Zibaldone di pensieri, but also in many of his novels, dialogues and essays. The aim of this paper is to elucidate the core of Leopardi‘s existential critique of the philosophical views dominating the late eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, in particular those found in German Idealism and Romanticism, and provide an introduction to the Leopardian ‘ultraphilosophy’, as he chose to call it himself, a kind of philosophy meant to overcome the ills of the ‘progressive’ philosophy of his day. I. Romanticism was largely a reaction to the rational and materialist pursuit of modern science and the secularism of the Enlightenment philosophy. In Germany, a number of Romantic poets rejected Immanuel Kant‘s vision of art as being governed by reason, and rather saw art as juxtaposed with nature as a second language communicated by God to the human being. In this way, however, they also joined forces with science and philosophy by attempting to comprehend being, albeit through different means. The ‘productive imagination’, a notion originally coined by Kant in his Kritik der Urteilskraft, was conceived as a basic power of all creative potencies. It was held to simultaneously beget and behold, and that its beheld ideas were no arbitrary occurrences within the subjective mind, but revelations of nature, of the first cause of existence, of the world-spirit, of God.
    [Show full text]
  • Metaphor and Metaphysics: on E. Grassi
    Differentia: Review of Italian Thought Number 8 Combined Issue 8-9 Spring/Autumn Article 22 1999 Metaphor and Metaphysics: on E. Grassi Barbara Godorecci Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.library.stonybrook.edu/differentia Recommended Citation Godorecci, Barbara (1999) "Metaphor and Metaphysics: on E. Grassi," Differentia: Review of Italian Thought: Vol. 8 , Article 22. Available at: https://commons.library.stonybrook.edu/differentia/vol8/iss1/22 This document is brought to you for free and open access by Academic Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Differentia: Review of Italian Thought by an authorized editor of Academic Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. REVIEW ARTICLES I Metaphor and Metaphysics Barbara Godorecci Review-essay of Ernesto Grassi, La metafora inaudita (Palermo: Aesthetica edizione 1990); La preminenza della parola metaforica. Heidegger, Meister Eckhart, Novalis (Modena: Mucchi Editore, 1987); Umanesimoe retorica.Il problemadella follia . (Modena: Mucchi Editore, 1988). What relationship exists between metaphor-the poetic word­ and truth? Wherein lies the significance of the metaphorical word [la parolametaforica] in philosophical discourse? These questions are of central concern in three recently published books by Ernesto Grassi: La preminenzadella parola metaforica. Heidegger, Meister Eckhart, Novalis, a collection of four lectures delivered by Grassi in Italy in 1985 and 1986; Umanesimoe retorica.Il problemadella follia, an Italian translation of the original English text written in col­ laboration with Maristella Lorch, entitled Folly and Insanity in RenaissanceLiterature (Binghamton, NY: Center for Medieval & Early Renaissance Studies, 1986); and La metafora inaudita, nine essays accompanied by an extensive bibliography of Grassi's work prepared by Emilio Hidalgo-Serna.
    [Show full text]
  • The View from Vesuvius: Italian Culture and the Southern Question. by Nel- Son Moe (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2002) 349 Pp
    134 | LUCY RIALL The View from Vesuvius: Italian Culture and the Southern Question. By Nel- son Moe (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2002) 349 pp. $50.00 “How and when did southern Italy become ‘the south,’ a place and peo- ple imagined to be different from and inferior to the rest of the coun- try?” (1). This question lies at the heart of Moe’s captivating study of vi- sual and textual representations of southern Italy in the nineteenth century. He traces the origins of southern “difference” to the representa- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/35/1/134/1704569/002219504323091397.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 tions of foreign writers who traveled to Italy from the mid-eighteenth century onward. “For many,” Moe comments, “Italy was the Southern country par excellence” (13). The writings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Madame Anne-Louise- Germaine de Staël embody what Moe calls a “contrastive structure,” in which the glory of Italy’s past was compared to its decadent present, its natural beauty compared to its human failings, and its “backwardness” contrasted to the modern societies of northern Europe. Yet at the same time, this spectacle of backwardness and human failure could “delight, entertain, regenerate” (16). Foreign denunciations of Italy’s decadence could become a celebration of the “picturesque” (17). Over time, as Moe shows, this same contrastive structure, and this same mixture of de- light and disgust, began to inªltrate Italy’s own representations of its “lower,” southern half. For Risorgimento writers like Carlo Cattaneo and Vincenzo Gioberti, “the south [was] clearly ‘other’” (109).
    [Show full text]
  • Litteratura Romanic E Interlingua
    Litteratura romanic e interlingua Vicente Costalago Redaction e lay-out final: Thomas Breinstrup Imagines: Annie Spratt, Pixabay (copertura) | Mappa, Wikimedia Commons (pagina 9) Publicate in le Bibliotheca electronic in interlingua per le Union Mundial pro Interlingua www.interlingua.com © 2020 Vicente Costalago Tote derectos reservate. Iste texto es facite disponibile pro uso non-commercial solmente. Tote formas de re-vendita o re-distribution electronic o imprimite es prohibite sin permission in scripto. Nulle parte de iste publication pote esser reproducite, copiate, conservate in un systema de cercar o transmittite in ulle forma o per ulle methodo: graphic, electronic, mechanic, photographic, registrate sur disco o cassetta, transferite a bases de datos o in altere maniera sin permission in scripto. Es permittite citar in recensiones con indication del fonte. Contentos Introduction 4 1. Lingua latin 5 Characteristicas del latino 6 Litteratura latin 7 Latino vulgar 8 2. Linguas romanic: origine e evolution 9 Evolution del latino vulgar al linguas 9 romanic Evolution in le Peninsula Iberic 9 Evolution in Francia 11 Evolution in Italia 12 Evolution in le est 13 3. Litteratura medieval 16 Themas commun 16 Litteratura medieval in le Peninsula 17 Iberic Litteratura medieval in Francia 23 Litteratura medieval in Italia 27 Litteratura medieval in Romania 32 4. Le Renascentia 35 Humanismo 35 Litteratura del Renascentia 35 5. Del Baroco al Romanticismo 39 Baroco 39 Illuminismo e neoclassicismo 40 Preromanticismo 42 Romanticismo 44 6. Realismo e naturalismo 48 7. Interlingua 51 Historia 51 8. Conclusion 54 Introduction In iste libro on presenta le historia del litteratura romanic e de interlingua.
    [Show full text]
  • Thinking the Future in Giacomo Leopardi's Zibaldone
    Thinking the Future in Giacomo Leopardi’s Zibaldone Sabrina Ferri In revealing its utopian vocation, modernity undertook to redefine temporal categories and, in the process, endowed the future with new meaning and significance. In his biography of Charles Baudelaire (1821–67), Jean-Paul Sartre declared that the Romantic poet “lived in a period which had just invented the future […]. After the seventeenth century which rediscovered the past and the eighteenth century which made an inventory of the present, the nineteenth century believed that it had discovered a fresh dimension of time and the world.”1 This was the immeasurable dimension of progress. The tale is well known. As Michel Foucault tells it, the last decades of the eighteenth century were marked by a discontinuity that inaugurated a new epistemic era.2 While empirical forms of knowledge such as philology, biology, and economics defined their disciplinary boundaries, the ways of understanding, organizing, and representing the objects themselves of knowledge changed radically. Principles of succession and analogy replaced the interpretive and descriptive tools of nominalization and contiguity which had been at the basis of the post- Renaissance episteme. Once static or topological, the new order of things became dynamic; it was temporalized.3 Critics such as Reinhart Koselleck and, more recently, François Hartog have drawn attention precisely to the temporal dimension of this reordering of conceptual categories.4 Modernity coincided with a temporalization of human experience. Time became the defining element in the way in which people in the modern world perceived, understood, and conceptualized social and technological transformations. This shift was accompanied by a recalibration of the values and reciprocal relations of past, present, and future.
    [Show full text]
  • Count Giacomo Leopardi - Poems
    Classic Poetry Series Count Giacomo Leopardi - poems - Publication Date: 2012 Publisher: Poemhunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive Count Giacomo Leopardi(29 June 1798 – 14 June 1837) Giacomo Taldegardo Francesco di Sales Saverio Pietro Leopardi was an Italian poet, essayist, philosopher, and philologist. Although he lived in a secluded town in the ultra-conservative Papal States, he came in touch with the main thoughts of the Enlightenment, and, by his own literary evolution, created a remarkable and renowned poetic work, related to the Romantic era. <b>Biography</b> Giacomo Leopardi was born of a local noble family in Recanati, in the Marche, at the time ruled by the papacy. His father, the count Monaldo Leopardi, was a good-hearted man, fond of literature but weak and reactionary, who remained bound to antiquated ideas and prejudices; his mother, the marquise Adelaide Antici Mattei, was a cold and authoritarian woman, obsessed over rebuilding the family's financial fortunes, which had been destroyed by Monaldo's gambling addiction. At home, a rigorous discipline of religion and savings reigned. However, Giacomo's happy childhood, which he spent with his younger brother Carlo Orazio and his sister Paolina, left its mark on the poet, who recorded his experiences in the poem Le Ricordanze. Leopardi, following a family tradition, began his studies under the tutelage of two priests, but his innate thirst for knowledge found its satisfaction primarily in his father's rich library. Initially guided by Father Sebastiano Sanchini, Leopardi quickly liberated himself by vast and profound readings. He committed himself so deeply to his "mad and most desperate" studies that, within a short time, he acquired an extraordinary knowledge of classical and philological culture—he could fluently read and write Latin, Greek and even Hebrew— but he suffered from the lack of an open and stimulating formal education.
    [Show full text]
  • Organ (1965) Find a Recap of Recent Classical SCHOTT Based on a Poem in Italian by Giacomo Leopardi
    HAL LEONARD Winter 2006 UPDATE VOCAL WILLIAM BOLCOM: SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND OF EXPERIENCE E.B. MARKS A Wonderland William Bolcom’s oratorio, premiered in 1984, is based on writings of William Blake. The piece is enormous in its scale, requiring hundreds of performers, and was recorded for a Naxos of Music release, conducted by Leonard Slatkin. 00220148 Vocal Score.................................................................................................$50.00 (ISBN 1-4234-0289-8) this Winter... JEAN GUILLOU: L’INFINITO, OP. 13 Within this newsletter you will For Bass Voice and Organ (1965) find a recap of recent classical SCHOTT Based on a poem in Italian by Giacomo Leopardi. releases from Hal Leonard, 49013105 (ED 9793).........................................................................................................$16.95 including publications from the HEINZ HOLLIGER: SECHS LIEDER (SIX SONGS) many catalogs we distribute: For Soprano and Piano (1956-57, revised 2003) G. Schirmer SCHOTT Comparable to Alban Berg whose Seven Early Songs show through in the music, Heinz Holliger (b. 1939) has Associated Music picked out some truly rapturous youth songs, set them up in easy arrangements and scored them for orchestra. 49013035 (ED 9461)...........................................................................................................$16.95 Publishers ITALIAN MUSICAL TREASURES OF THE 17TH AND 18TH CENTURIES Favorite Songs and Arias from the Famous Parisotti Collection Ricordi with 2 companion CDs of accompaniments RICORDI Durand 37 well-known songs from the Italian Baroque, arranged by Alessandro Parisotti for landmark Ricordi publications done in the 1880s, the first modern edition of most of this music. These songs Salabert are a perennial favorite of classical voice teachers. This new collection presents the original editions in medium voice keys, with brief composer biographies and English translations of the song texts.
    [Show full text]
  • Pastoral and Leopardi's Search for the Natural
    東京外国語大学海外事情研究所, Quadrante, No.21, (2019) 231 Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Institute for Global Studies, Quadrante, No.21, (2019) Rewilding Arcadia: Pastoral and Leopardi’s Search for the Natural ZANE D. R. MACKIN Temple University Japan Campus, Adjunct Professor 著者抄録 田園詩におけるロマンティシズムが再生する中で、ジャーコモ・レオパルディは自らの詩を書くにあたって田園詩の様式 を認め、使用し、しかしながら同時に破壊もしている。それは、『アッラ・プリマヴェーラ』、『ウルティモ・カント・ディ・ サッフォー』や『カント・ノットゥルノ・ディ・ウン・パストーレ・エッランテ・デッラジア』などの詩に最も顕著であ る。これらの作品では、主人公は自然が完全に自らに馴染みのない、また冷淡なものと認識している。このような方法で自 然というものにフォーカスを当てることで、レオパルディは自然の枠組みから人間という存在を脱中心化させ、自然を「再 野生化」させている。このことは、人間の考える自らと自然の関係に修正を迫ることを示唆しているが、人間にとってそれ が究極的に失われることは明らかに恐ろしいことなのだ。 Summary In the wake of Romanticism's resuscitation of pastoral poetry, Giacomo Leopardi acknowledges, uses and subverts the modalities of pastoral in his own lyric output, most notably in poems like "To Spring," "Sappho's Last Song," and "Night Song of a Wandering Shepherd in Asia." In these works, the poetic subject discovers that nature is completely alien and indifferent to him. By focusing on nature in this way, Leopardi de-centers the human from the frame of nature, thus allowing nature to "rewild." Although this signals a rectification of the human's understanding of his relationship to nature, the ultimate loss for humans is palpably terrible. キーワード ジャーコモ・レオパルディ イタリア文学 詩 自然 エコクリティシズム ロマンティシズム Keywords Giacomo Leopardi; Italian Literature; Poetry; Nature; Ecocriticism; Romanticism 原稿受理：2019.01.14 Quadrante, No.21 (2019), pp.231-247. Contents 1. A Brief History of Pastoral 2. The Reassessment of Pastoral in the Romantic Period 3. Leopardi’s Personal History with Pastoral 4. Citing the Classics in “Alla primavera” 5. The Interrogation of Pastoral Space and Pastoral Relations in “Ultimo canto di Saffo” 6. Salvaging Modern Pastoral Imitations to Construct an Antipastoral World 7.
    [Show full text]
  • Romantic Poetry 1 Romantic Poetry
    Romantic poetry 1 Romantic poetry Romanticism, a philosophical, literary, artistic and cultural era[1] which began in the mid/late-18th century[2] as a reaction against the prevailing Enlightenment ideals of the day (Romantics favored more natural, emotional and personal artistic themes),[3][4] also influenced poetry. Inevitably, the characterization of a broad range of contemporaneous poets and poetry under the single unifying name can be viewed more as an exercise in historical The Funeral of Shelley by Louis Edouard Fournier (1889); the group members, from left compartmentalization than an attempt to right, are Trelawny, Hunt and Byron to capture the essence of the actual ‘movement’.[citation needed] Poets such as William Wordsworth were actively engaged in trying to create a new kind of poetry that emphasized intuition over reason and the pastoral over the urban, often eschewing consciously poetic language in an effort to use more colloquial language. Wordsworth himself in the Preface to his and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads defined good poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” though in the same sentence he goes on to clarify this statement by In Western cultural context romanticism substantially contibuted to the idea asserting that nonetheless any poem of of "how a real poet should look like". An idealized statue of a Czech poet value must still be composed by a man Karel Hynek Mácha (in Petřín Park, Prague) repesents him as a slim, tender “possessed of more than usual organic and perhaps unhealthy boy. However, anthropological examination proved sensibility [who has] also thought long that he was a man of a strong, robust and muscular body constitution.
    [Show full text]
  • Diction, Dialect, and Speech in Nineteenth-Century Lyric A
    THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO WHAT IS THE LANGUAGE OF POETRY? DICTION, DIALECT, AND SPEECH IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY LYRIC A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF HUMANITIES IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE BY JOEL CALAHAN CHICAGO, ILLINOIS AUGUST 2016 Copyright © 2016 by Joel Calahan All rights reserved. To the memory of my father, Scott Calahan, whose folksy Nebraska idioms still resound in my ears and who always used to read the copyright date of books to me as a child Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................................. vi Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................................... viii Introduction: How We Hear Speech When We Read Poetry ................................................... 1 Dialectology: The Forgotten Study of Speech ..................................................................... 8 Critical Approaches to Speech in Lyric ................................................................................ 13 Method and Chapter Descriptions ....................................................................................... 20 Chapter 1: Vulgar Philology: Speech, History, and Lyric ........................................................... 30 Locke’s Legacy: Condillac, Cesarotti, and the Questione della lingua ............................. 39 Glottologia: The New
    [Show full text]