Notes on the reuse of classical epic in the poetry of the late 18th century. Parini's "Giorno" and Savioli's "Amori"

Abstract

This paper proposes a reflection on the revival of the classical epic in the poetry of the second half of the eighteenth century by providing an examination of the re-use of ancient motifs and images in Savioli’s Amori and Parini’s Giorno. In a century in which the epic genre was not very popular, there was indeed a remarkable recovery of classicism not only from a linguistic and syntactic point of view, but also from a thematic one, as testified, among other things, by the frequent revival of mythological images. Within this framework, the investigation tries to identify the forms of recovery and reuse of the classical epic tradition. These forms are often identifiable with the reinterpretation of scenes not only in an encomiastic key, which is the most common, but also in an ironic and satirical, or even metaphorical manner, sometimes to embellish scenes of pronounced eighteenth-century style.