CRITICISM

Barricelli, Jean-Pierre. “Poésie and Suono: Balzac and Leopardi on Music.” In Romanticism across the Disciplines, edited by Larry H. Peer, pp. 99-113. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1998.

Explores the relationship between Romanticism and music through the novels of Balzac and the poetry of Leopardi.

Brose, Margaret. “Remembrance and the Rhetorical Sublime in Leopardi's Lyric.” Stanford Literature Review 6, no. 1 (spring 1989): 115-33.

Discusses the opposition between the temporal present and the poetic imagination in Leopardi's Zibaldone.

Carsaniga, Giovanni. Giacomo Leopardi: The Unheeded Voice. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1977, 129 p.

Approaches Leopardi's poetry and prose from a variety of critical perspectives.

Cook, Albert. “Leopardi: The Mastery of Diffusing Sorrow.” Canadian Journal of Italian Studies 4, nos. 1-2 (1980-81): 68-82.

Examines Leopardi's deep feelings of sorrow which prompted him to combine the romantic themes of love and nature in his writing.

Dasenbrock, Reed Way. “Petrarch, Leopardi, and Pound's Apprehension of the Italian Past.” ELH 58, no. 1 (spring 1991): 215-32.

Discusses Leopardi's debt to previous Italian poets, and the influence of these poets and Leopardi on the later work of Ezra Pound.

Frattini, Alberto. “The Leopardian Continent: A Continuing Exploration.” Italian Books and Periodicals 34, nos. 1-2 (January-December 1991): 5-10.

Surveys critical research on Leopardi in the years surrounding the bicentennial of his birth.

Garofalo, Silvano. “The Tragic Sense in the Poetry of Leopardi and Unamuno.” Symposium 26, no. 3 (fall 1972): 197-211.

Compares themes of joy and despair in the poetry of Unamuno and Leopardi.

Johnson, Trevor. “Hardy, Leopardi and Tess of the d'Urbervilles.” The Thomas Hardy Journal 9, no. 2 (May 1993): 51-53.

Explores Leopardi's work as a possible source of specific passages in Hardy's novel.

La Porta, Christina. “Confronting the Artifact: Interrogative Ekphrasis in Keats and Leopardi.” Rivista di Studi Italiani 14, no. 1 (June 1996): 36-47.

Studies similarities and differences in Keats's “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (1820) and Leopardi's “Sopra un bassorilievo antico sepolcrale” (1835).

Marroni, Francesco. “The Poetry of Ornithology in Keats, Leopardi and Hardy: A Dialogic Analysis.” Thomas Hardy Journal 14, no. 2 (May 1998): 35-44.

Explores commonalities between Hardy's The Darkling Thrush and Leopardi's Il Passero Solitario.

Molinaro, Julius A. “A Note on Leopardi's Il Passero Solitario.” Studies in Philology 64, no. 4 (July 1967): 640-53.

Examines the poetic language of Il Passero Solitario, maintaining that Leopardi invoked ancient words and phrases associated with Cicero, Horace, and Petronius.

O'Connor, Desmond. “From Venus to Proserpine: ‘Sappho's Last Song.’” Rivista di Studi Italiani 16, no. 2 (December 1998): 438-53.

Explores Leopardi's admiration for Sappho's poetry and his affinity for her unhappiness—a melancholy attributed to her unattractive physical condition.

Pacifici, Sergio. “Giacomo Leopardi: An Introduction.” In Leopardi: Poems and Prose, edited by Angel Flores, pp. 9-19. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1966.

Maintains that Leopardi's poetry and prose is as relevant today as it was in his own time.

Pesaresi, Massimo Mandolini. “Musing on the Infinite and the Sublime.” Italian Quarterly 28, nos. 109-11 (summer-fall 1987): 19-24.

Discusses Leopardi's notions of the sublime, both as it is applied to natural phenomena and to aesthetic judgments.

Williams, Pamela. “Leopardi's Aspasia Poems: ‘L'inganno estremo.’” In The Italian Lyric Tradition: Essays in Honor of F. J. Jones, edited by Gino Bedani, Remo Catani, and Monica Slowikowska, pp. 55-71. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1993.

Contends that Leopardi's four works often referred to as the “Aspasia poems” are part of the well-established Italian tradition of love poetry that includes the works of Dante and Petrarch.

Additional coverage of Leopardi's life and career is contained in the following sources published by the Gale Group: European Writers, Vol. 5; Literature Resource Center; Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, Vol. 22; Poetry Criticism, Vol. 37; Reference Guide to World Literature, Ed. 2; World Poets.