SOURCE: Castronuovo, David. “Metamorphosis of the Occasion in ‘Nelle Nozze Della Sorella Paolina.’” Rivista di Studi Italiani 16, no. 1 (December 1998): 160-84.

In the following essay, Castronuovo explains Leopardi's poem “Nelle Nozze Della Sorella Paolina,” which purports to be a brother's remarks on his sister's marriage, but which is actually a pessimistic assessment of his sister's transition from childhood to adulthood.

All literary works are occasioned in some sense; occasional verse differs in having not a private but a public or social occasion.

(Miner et al., 851)

What is poetry's relationship to its occasion? Does poetry imitate it? Merely complement or report it? Recreate it? Create a parallel occasion? Supplant it? Does poetry compensate for it, create the occasion where history neglected or failed to? Or is poetry rather constitutive of the occasion it appears to describe?

(Sugano, 13)

Premise

Among the titles of the Canti, surely none suggests the idea of...