Università degli studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia

An autograph manuscript of the work that inspired Foscolo and Leopardi has been discovered

An autograph manuscript of Vincenzo Monti’s Sciolti a Sigismondo Chigi, a work that influenced the poetry of Foscolo and Leopardi, has been identified and authenticated for the first time. The discovery was made by Marco Capriotti, a researcher and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the DHMoRe Centre for Digital Humanities at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, directed by Professor Matteo Al Kalak. The text provides new evidence for furthering our understanding of the poem, for which no manuscript copies had previously been known.

The findings of the research that led to the identification and authentication of the manuscript will be presented in a scholarly article, scheduled for publication in early 2027.

The discovery of the autograph manuscript is particularly significant given the place that Sciolti a Sigismondo Chigi occupies in the history of Italian literature over the past two centuries. The poem was published in 1783 and gained increasing recognition over the following decades, soon becoming one of the most widely read and imitated works of the nineteenth century. The work inspired Foscolo’s Dei Sepolcri, but its influence on Leopardi was even more decisive. Leopardi drew directly on Monti’s text for words and imagery in some of his most celebrated poems, including L’infinito (The Infinite), Canto notturno di un pastore errante dell’Asia (Night Song of a Wandering Shepherd in Asia) and Le ricordanze (The Recollections).

“The significance of this discovery lies not only in the exceptional nature of the document itself, but above all in the opportunity it offers to deepen our understanding of a work that gave unprecedented impetus to Italian poetry over the past two centuries, and without which some of the greatest masterpieces of our literature might never have taken the form in which we read them today,” comments Professor Matteo Al Kalak.

The DHMoRe Interdepartmental Research Centre is supported by the Department of Studies on Language and Culture and the Department of Engineering “Enzo Ferrari”, with the participation of the Departments of Law, Economics “Marco Biagi”, Education and Humanities, and Communication and Economics.

Professor Matteo Al Kalak specialises in archives and in the promotion and enhancement of historical and documentary heritage. He is the academic lead of the DHMoReLAB project, which involves the creation of digital archives and manuscript catalogues, including through the exploration of machine-learning capabilities.

Categorie: International - english, Notizie_eng