Dialogic form and literary mimesis, Tasso to Leopardi

The lectures will tackle the development of the dialogic genre in Italian literature from Tasso’s Dialoghi to Leopardi’s Operette morali.
Specific attention will be devoted to the spatio-temporal dimension of the texts as inherited from classical and modern models. Aspects and functions of the dialogic form will be explored in relation to the authors’ different styles and ideals and the cultural contexts in which they operated, with a focus on the post-revolutionary and Romantic age.
A number of crucial questions will be asked: what role does the reader play in the textual mechanism of the dialogue? What sort of relation exists between the dimension of writing and that of reading, and between diegesis and mimesis? Of paramount importance will be a reflection on the theatrical dimension and its varying complexity in relation to the literary text.