Abstract

The sixteenth-century lesson constituted for Giacomo Leopardi a fundamental point of reference for proposing an alternative linguistic model, in sharp opposition to the rule established by the Vocabolario della Crusca. According to that, the present contribution aims to analyze the occurrences of Agnolo Firenzuola’s work within Leopardi’s texts, paying particular attention to Annotazioni to the Bolognese edition of the Canzoni (1824), a theoretical manifesto created to justify and legitimize a new « lingua pellegrina ». If the linguistic, lexicographical and stylistic reference seems certain, Firenzuola could interest Leopardi for his inclination to the novelistic and the fairy-tale, as well as his portrayal of a world governed by the same dynamics of “social Machiavellianismµ, both topics that, not unfamiliar to the operette satiriche of the early 1920s, would later be found in the Operette morali.