Abstract

This dissertation discusses whether Giacomo Leopardi can be considered a philosophical heir of Giambattista Vico, as some scholars retain, despite the fact that there is no evidence that Leopardi read Vico’s New Science or other works until late ; too late to demonstrate a direct influence of the philosopher’s thought on the deepest nexuses of Leopardi’s reflection. This dissertation clarifies how Leopardi responded to Vico-related questions characterizing the culture of his time through an innovative methodology that looks at the diffraction of Vico’s ideas in Bourbon Restoration Italian culture. This work aims to paint a dynamic picture of Italian nineteenth-century polycentric culture through a geographical organization of the material; it in fact tackles the diffusion of Vico’s works and ideas from Naples to Venice, to Milan, to Leopardi’s hometown Recanati, to Florence, and again to Naples. Not only does this work shed new light on the existence of a Vico-Leopardi philosophical lineage, but it also present an original study of perceptions of time and history and of the dichotomy ancient/modern in Post-Napoleonic Italian culture.