Biography

Ida Duretto earned a Ph.D. in Modern Literature and Philology at the Scuola Normale Superiore where she also completed her undergraduate and graduate studies. She then served as Associate Professor of Italian Studies at Kyoto University (2021-2026). She has held research and teaching positions at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, New York University, the University of Tokyo, and the Istituto Italiano per gli studi storici in Naples. Her research focuses on modern and contemporary Italian poetry, with particular attention to Giacomo Leopardi and Eugenio Montale, as well as on the interplay between memory and imitation in literary creation and on the Italian poetic canon. She is the author of the monograph “C’era una volta un piccolo scaffale”. Interpretazione e commento di “Altri versi” di Eugenio Montale (Lugano, 2023).
 

Project Summary

In his Discorso di un italiano intorno alla poesia romantica, Giacomo Leopardi reflects on the distance between modern and ancient poetry. He observes that while an excellent modern poet may stylistically resemble Tasso, poets such as Dante, Petrarch, or Ariosto can no longer exist. In this passage, Leopardi outlines a genealogy of Italian poetry that is both canonical and fractured. He refers to the Auctores of the national tradition, the so-called “four poets.” However, he draws a marked distinction among them, recognizing Ariosto as the last of the “ancients” and Tasso as the first of the “moderns.” This project investigates the canon of the four poets and its role in mediating the nineteenth-century reception of the Renaissance. Despite the importance of this canon, the historical mechanisms that defined and institutionalized it remain only partially understood. Moreover, while scholarship has often focused on Dante and Petrarch, the roles of Ariosto and Tasso have received less attention. The study examines how editors, critics, artists, and educators conceptualized and disseminated this model across textual and visual media, and how Leopardi’s reflections engaged with it. Combining literary historiography, book history, and visual culture, this analysis aims to demonstrate how the Renaissance functioned as a dynamic site of cultural continuity and renewal within modern Italian identity.