SOURCE: Nelson, Lowry, Jr. “Leopardi First and Last.” In Italian Literature: Roots and Branches, edited by Giose Rimanelli and Kenneth John Atchity, pp. 333-62. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1976.

In the following essay, Lowry examines Leopardi's poetic development within the historical context of Italian versification, paying special attention to the works “All'Italia” and “La ginestra.”

Since the great efflorescence of Italian literature in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, when the incumbency of tradition from classical antiquity and Provencal was established, Italian poets have felt the pressure of the past at increasingly complex levels. Perhaps one of the reasons for the neglect of Dante until the later eighteenth century was that the example of the Divine Comedy was too momentous to cope with: a cosmic poem in intricate verse whose language was as much a creation as any of the other aspects of the poem; a...