Foscolo e Manzoni lettori di Parini

Parini, as is known, had two quite exceptional readers in the shape of Foscolo and Manzoni, who devoted close attention to his life and works not only during the period of their youth but throughout their entire lives. This paper highlihts three points that emerge form this remarkable dialogue at a distance: transformation of the observed fact of the indignities and abuse to which carriages subjected pedestrians into a literary theme, metamorphosis of the "giovin signore" into his chronological ancestor (and literay descendant) don Rodrigo, and a different attribution of meaning to the existential category of motion, identically presents in the works of the three authors.