Abstract

Through an intertextual web of references to the opening lines of Gabriele d’Annunzio’s Canto novo, Giovanni Pascoli begins the programmatic ode of the Canti di Castelvecchio, entitled La poesia, with the figure of speech of prosopopeia. This connects the poem not only to the votive epigrams in the Palatine Antology, but also and above all to the tradition of the evangelical prosopopeia (‘Io sono la luce del mondo’) and to the Johannine antithesis between the sun’s light and that of the lamp.