“La ginestra” by Giacomo Leopardi

Formal and Ideological Aspects

Abstract

This article, through the analysis of the language and style with which Giacomo Leopardi constructed his poem “La ginestra” (first published in 1845), aims to present a picture of the complexity of the author’s poetics. The analysis was based on the method, used by Auerbach in Mimesis (1946), of selecting a “sample” of text from which the interpretation extracts general aspects of the work, the author and the epoch. In this sense, the poem – a kind of literary testament of the poet – divided Leopardian criticism between those who interpret it (based on the slight positive nod to the Enlightenment) as evidence of the author’s progressive positioning, and the other part of the criticism that disregards any possibility of Leopardi’s adherence to progressive political engagement, since the target of his criticism would be directed not only at a specific group (liberal Catholics), but at any form of “idealized rationality”.