From the comedies of Goldoni to Manzoni’s Promessi sposi
Since the conception of his Fermo e Lucia down to I promessi sposi, Manzoni had eighteenth-century comedy and notably Goldoni’s plays as one of his main sources of inspiration. Yet a preference for a comparison with the French (Molière) and English (Shakespeare’s tragedies) theatre, and more recently with Beaumarchais and Da Ponte, has somewhat obscured the importance of Goldoni, whose influence on Manzoni and more generally eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Italian prose writing is paramount, even though not always easy to unravel owing to transcodifications of forms and between genres.
Lectures will focus on Goldoni’s compositional technique and the dramatic structure of his plays, as well as the influence they exercised over Manzoni’s narrative art.