(Mock-)heroic survival: the Vigo edition of Leopardi's "Paralipomeni della Batracomiomachia"

Abstract

In 1869 Giuseppe Chiarini edited the Paralipomeni della Batracomiomachia for Francesco Vigo’s editions in Livorno. This book is an editorial case that allows us to reflect on the reception of Leopardi’s Paralipomeni and, more generally, on the enduring vitality of the heroic and heroicomic genre in the second half of the 19th century: in the years in which the novel gained a hegemonic role in the Italian literary system, a classicist and Jordanian-ascendant association – like the one that linked Francesco Ambrosoli, Antonio Gussalli and Giuseppe Chiarini – defends the epos, also in its comic-satirical declination, as an illustrious and perennially topical form. An arduous battle, as the critics of the late 20th century would later highlight.