For an Ethics of Lyric Discourse: A Reading of Leopardi's "La Ginestra"

  • Francesco Giusti Goethe-Universität Frankfurt
Keywords: Lyric, Dialogism, Ethics, Politics, Practice, Resistance, Crisis, Act, History, Leopardi, Toni Negri, Binni, Luporini, Witness

Abstract

The article focuses on Leopardi’s renowned poem La ginestra, o il fiore del deserto (1836) and on the scholars who have firstly explored the ‘political’ ideas proposed by this text: C. Luporini in his Leopardi progressivo and W. Binni in La nuova poetica leopardiana, both published in 1947. This particular field of the Leopardi scholarship – which originated in the postwar years – tries to bring the ideological ‘content’ of the text to the fore. After a quick look at Luporini’s and Binni’s readings, the inquiry focuses instead on the ‘form’ of the text, and more specifically on the practice of lyric discourse, in order to outline the general ethical dynamics which underlie the lyric use of language in La ginestra: the relationship between the “I” and the flower of the desert, the potential dialogism of the lyric voice, the context of production of the text, the posture assumed by the “I” and the historical position of the critics, the truth telling as an ethical act of individual and collective resistance to crisis. By looking at these dynamics, it is possible to reconsider the political ‘ideal’ proposed by the text – in particular the «social catena» («social chain») mentioned at line 149 – in the light of its discursive practices. The article, finally, emphasizes the similarities between this interpretative possibility and the philosophical interpretation proposed by Antonio Negri in his essay Lenta ginestra. Saggio sull’ontologia di Giacomo Leopardi (1987) in a cultural context very different from Binni and Luporini’s postwar Italy.  

  

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Author Biography

Francesco Giusti, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt
Francesco Giusti graduated in Comparative literature at the University of L'Aquila and, in 2012, he obtained a PhD in European Literature and Culture at the Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane (SUM) and Sapienza University of Rome supervised by Professor Piero Boitani. Then he held a British Academy Research Fellowship at the University of York (2013) and two DAAD Research Grants in the Department of romance languages and literatures at the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, where he currently collaborates with the section of Italian literature. His areas of research are: history and theory of lyric poetry and the lyric as a discursive mode; philosophical and psychoanalytic aesthetics; medieval literatures and their reception in contemporary literature and art. He has published many articles in Italian and international journals, such as Modern Language NotesThe ItalianistItalian StudiesLinguistica e FilologiaOtto/NovecentoBetweenIntersezioniCompar(a)ison, ContemporaneaRinascimentoEnthymemaStrumenti Critici. His monograph Canzonieri in morte. Per un'etica poetica del lutto (Textus Edizioni 2015) has been recently published. 

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Published
2015-11-30
How to Cite
Giusti, F. (2015). For an Ethics of Lyric Discourse: A Reading of Leopardi’s "La Ginestra". Between, 5(10). https://doi.org/10.13125/2039-6597/1695