Giacomo Leopardi’s Search For a Common Life Through Poetry A Different Nobility, A Different Love

This book traces the development of Giacomo Leopardi in four different yet interrelated aspects of his life and work: his social origins and class in relation to his evolving conception of nobility; the mixture of idealism and misogynism in his attitude toward women and in his conception of love; his poems and prose writing on the theme of Italian independence; and his philosophical materialism as expressed in his poetry, his intellectual diary, and in his essays. Particular attention is given to the ways in which the thought of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche illuminates Leopardi's world view. An entire section of the book is devoted to the different personal, moral, and philological components of Leopardi's humanism. Throughout the book, sharp focus is kept on the connections between Leopardi's life and the historical period in which he lived.