Le cose e i loro nomi. Attorno all’ultimo Leopardi

The chapters of this book, arising from research carried out over the past six years, aim to set different phases of Leopardi’s work in dialogue with one another, in an attempt to reread the distinctive features of the «nuova poetica» — characteristic of the 1830s — in light of its continuity with pages, reflections, and readings dating from the second half of the preceding decade. The title, and what might be called the volume’s general critical orientation, were guided by a wish to draw attention to Leopardi’s insistent emphasis on the necessity not only of discovering and accepting the «vero», but of naming it. For Leopardi, «chiamare le cose coi loro nomi» — ‘to call things by their proper names’ — does not merely mean ‘to tell the truth’; it also means refusing to abandon the nominalistic endeavour in its higher sense: that is, not relinquishing the aspiration to find a word, a definition capable of deepening our knowledge of «things» and of determining a precise interpretation of the reality that emerges from such conceptual pairings.