Leopardi

Federico De RobertoProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.6

Word count: 391K words
Chapters: 40

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Leopardi by Federico De RobertoAuthor: De Roberto, Federico, 1861-1927,Language: Italian, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Oct 6, 2016

Editor's review

This is a monograph by the Italian writer Federico De Roberto on the poet Leopardi. The original is in Italian and is distributed free of charge by Project Gutenberg. De Roberto was himself an important author of late nineteenth-century Italian verismo fiction. He examines Leopardi's life and work with a novelist's eye, and his discussion has the character of literary criticism interwoven with biography. For Chinese readers, the value of this book lies not in offering an introductory guide but in showing how an Italian writer understood his country's greatest Romantic poet. It can serve as primary material for studying the reception history of Leopardi and the history of Italian literary criticism. The book is short, and its language is nineteenth-century Italian, whose syntax and vocabulary differ from contemporary Italian and require some grounding in the language. It is suitable as extended reading after one has read Leopardi's representative poems, to help understand how the native Italian critical tradition has positioned this poet.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers with intermediate to advanced Italian who want to read literary criticism in the original
Literature students studying Leopardi or Italian Romanticism
Researchers interested in the history of nineteenth-century Italian literary criticism
Self-learners who want to deepen their understanding of Leopardi's poetry through criticism

Not a good fit for

General readers with no Italian who can only read Chinese
Beginners expecting an easy introduction to Leopardi's life
Rigorous researchers who prefer contemporary academic conventions and annotation systems

Reading tips

Read a few of Leopardi's representative poems first, then approach this book's criticism; understanding will be more concrete.
When encountering old-fashioned nineteenth-century Italian syntax, read the whole paragraph first to grasp the general meaning rather than stopping at every word.
Read alongside a Chinese translation of selected Leopardi poems, noting as you go where the criticism echoes the texts.
Treat the book as material for the history of criticism and pay attention to the evaluating perspective and choices of the author as a novelist.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book a collection of Leopardi's poems?

No. It is a critical work about Leopardi written by Federico De Roberto, originally in Italian; its content is a discussion of the poet and his work, not the poems themselves. To read the poems, you need to find a separate collection or anthology of Leopardi's poetry.

Can I read this book without knowing Italian?

Reading the original requires intermediate to advanced Italian, because the text is in old-fashioned nineteenth-century written Italian. If you know no Italian at all, you might first read a Chinese translation of Leopardi's poems, then consider approaching this book with a dictionary or in comparison, or look for relevant Chinese-language scholarship.

Where can I get the electronic edition?

This book is distributed by Project Gutenberg as a free ebook and can be searched and downloaded by title or author on its official website. Project Gutenberg offers plain-text ebooks in various formats, suitable for reading on a computer or e-reader, with no purchase required.

Comments

Find this book

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Federico De Roberto Author · Italian · 1861–1927

Federico De Roberto (1861–1927) was an Italian verismo writer. Born in Naples, he moved with his family to Catania in early childhood. He began his career in journalism and associated with leading verismo writers such as Verga and Capuana, whose influence shaped his own fiction. His masterpiece, I Viceré, traces the rise and fall of a Sicilian aristocratic family to reflect the social changes around Italian unification; his other works include L'Illusione, Ermanno Raeli, Documenti Umani and Catania. His fiction focuses chiefly on Sicilian society and historical change, with a precise, restrained style and close attention to psychology and social observation. Twelve of his works are held in the collection. Public information on his life and writing is limited and calls for further study.