Foscolo fra Dante e Alfieri

Here, a specific episode of Foscolo’s study of Dante is set in a historical context : his first contact with « il padre nostro Allighieri », our father Alighieri, as told by Foscolo himself in the first lines of the fragment known as Della poesia lucreziana. The autobiographical reading that is usually provided of such passage fails to capture the full wealth of its implications. Inspired by some of Carlo Dionisotti’s methodological guidelines, completed by Giuseppe Indizio’s and Carlo Ginzburg’s ones, the paper provides new documents about Foscolo’s Dalmatian years, with a focus on his mentor, Francesco Gianuizzi. The fragment acts as a tool to fruitfully investigate a broader area, halfway between biography and literary culture, than Foscolo’s words may suggest. Their ultimate meaning goes back to Vittorio Alfieri’s lesson, both in the image that Foscolo wants to give of himself and in the choice of Dante’s appellation, ‘father’. Echoes of Alfieri’s appellation can be found in two of Foscolo’s texts, the ode A Dante and a passage from the Ortis, if read in parallel with sonnet liii from Alfieri’s Rime.