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Paola started following the work of Beniamin Chalupinski, University Of Birmingham, Italian Studies.
Department Member, Italian Studies
Thesis Title: 'Paragonarmi meco medesimo'. Immagine e memoria in Leopardi
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Prof. Michael Caesar
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About
After graduating in Italian literature at the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’, I completed a PhD at the University of Birmigham under the supervision of Prof. Michael Caesar. My thesis on Image and Memory in Leopardi was awarded a ‘Giacomo Leopardi Prize’ in 2010 by the Centro Nazionale di Studi Leopardiani in Recanati. My specialization is Leopardi and eighteenth and nineteenth-century Italian literature, the theory and practice of metaphors and the philosophy of memory from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. I am also interested in post-structuralism and intertextuality and I am currently exploring the relationship between poetry, philosophy and science in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries from a comparative European perspective.
I am currently a Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Italian and teacher of Italian in the Centre for Modern Languages.
Abstract of the thesis
The aim of my PhD dissertation is to show the importance of memory in Giacomo Leopardi’s Canti and Zibaldone, not only as a theme for his poems and a source of theoretical speculation, but as a modelling structure of his writing. Following the first chapter on Leopardi and the philosophy of memory from Locke to the first half of the nineteenth century, chapter II investigates the self-referential perspective implicit in the recurrence of certain images in the Canti, and its consequences for the structure of the book, both in the Piatti and the Starita editions.
Chapter III, focusing on the concept of clarity, demonstrates the importance and effect of Leopardi’s reading and re-reading of the Zibaldone, and shows the constant presence of a habit memory which acts through repetition, binds together demonstrative thoughts, and is responsible for their expansion. The second part of this chapter highlights Leopardi’s search for perfect images and their mnemonic power, as well as their general influence on the text.
Leopardi’s knowledge of the phenomenology of memory is reflected in the text and offers an insight into the strong links in his works between thinking and writing as a whole.
