Vestigi della storia del sonetto italiano (Vestiges of the history of the Italian sonnet)
The Vestigi della storia del sonetto italiano was printed in January 1816 in Zurich by the publishers Orell e Füssli in just three copies, accompanied by dedications signed by the author to three women. The longest dedication is to Quirina Mocenni Maggiotti, the woman who had supported him, also financially, during the months of exile and to whom Foscolo intended to pay homage with a precious booklet. The other copies were for two women the author had met during his stay in Switzerland: Susanna Füssli, the daughter of Zurich book trader Johann Heinrich Füssli, who had given Foscolo a friendly welcome upon his arrival in the Swiss city, and Matilde Viscontini Dembowski, an attractive Milanese lady, who was also loved by Stendhal and who the author had known in Milan and met with during the first months of his exile.
The booklet included an anthology of 26 sonnets by as many authors for a total of 364 verses (the reference to the number of compositions, 366, contained in Petrarch's Canzoniere) that accompanied the female readers throughout the year. Each sonnet came with an introductory note with biographical details about the authors, linguistic and lexical observations, brief critical notes that also contain references to Foscolo's works and autobiographical references. The writer had used the fourth volume of Muratori's Della perfetta poesia italiana (Of the perfect Italian poetry, 1706) in choosing the works and for the comments.
The collection opens with a sonnet by Guittone d’Arezzo and then features poems by the best Italian poets, from Dante, Petrarch and his followers, to Tasso and the Baroque and Arcadian poets and ends with sonnets by Parini, Alfieri and Foscolo himself. To close the collection the poet chose the sonnet Un dì s’io non andò sempre fuggendo,, the only one presented without any comments: it was no coincidence that the poet used a sonnet devoted to the theme of exile to seal a book conceived in the tragic circumstances of his distance from his homeland.
