In the Canticle of the Wild Cock (1824), one of his Moral Essays, Giacomo Leopardi portrays the possibility of a lifeless, post-biological and totally dehumanized world. Life itself and human self-consciousness are depicted as temporary anomalies within the economy of universal naked material existence. At this stage, not having yet at his disposal the conceptual instruments to give these conclusions a materialistic physical foundation, Leopardi reaches them through poetical and rhetorical strategies. In particular, he reverses the midrashic figure of a cosmic rooster: far from being a symbol of awakening and regeneration, this Cock proclaims a chilling message, according to the visual angle of a dehumanized universe, and invites us to dry up all hope. This paper analyses: (i) cultural substitutions and reversals in Leopardi’s discourse, (ii) his techniques of argumentation, and (iii) the relationship between the Canticle and Leopardi’s nihilism and materialism.
Posthumanism, Nihilism and Midrash: the dissolution of all hopes in Giacomo Leopardi’s Canticle of the Sylvan Cock
PERFETTI, STEFANO
2013-01-01
Abstract
In the Canticle of the Wild Cock (1824), one of his Moral Essays, Giacomo Leopardi portrays the possibility of a lifeless, post-biological and totally dehumanized world. Life itself and human self-consciousness are depicted as temporary anomalies within the economy of universal naked material existence. At this stage, not having yet at his disposal the conceptual instruments to give these conclusions a materialistic physical foundation, Leopardi reaches them through poetical and rhetorical strategies. In particular, he reverses the midrashic figure of a cosmic rooster: far from being a symbol of awakening and regeneration, this Cock proclaims a chilling message, according to the visual angle of a dehumanized universe, and invites us to dry up all hope. This paper analyses: (i) cultural substitutions and reversals in Leopardi’s discourse, (ii) his techniques of argumentation, and (iii) the relationship between the Canticle and Leopardi’s nihilism and materialism.File | Dimensione | Formato | |
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