Great poet, author of the Canti, the masterpiece of modern Italian lyrics, but also great prose writer, philosopher, and scholar of literature and philology, Giacomo Leopardi was a complex and exceptional personality. His work in the course of the decades progressively came to be recognised as a bench mark of literary modernity, not only in Italy but across Europe and the world, as highlighted by the very numerous studies by critics and translations into all the most important languages within the sphere of culture.

The three pathways (biographical, textual, thematic) aim to give easy to use information and comments on Giacomo Leopardi’s life, works and thinking, with the main aim of encouraging the reader to experience his extraordinary works directly.

Contrary to general opinion, Leopardi’s life was rich in affections and travel. The biographical pathways firstly trace a picture of the poet’s family: his parents, Monaldo and Adelaide, and his dearest brother and sister, Carlo and Paolina; there follow the itineraries of his travels and the places where he lived, from Rome to Naples; they lastly delineate portraits of his friends and the women he loved.

The textual pathways briefly analyse all of Leopardi’s work, both in verse and prose, from his early writings to those for the theatre, from translations to essays and letters, down to the fundamental texts of his literary production: Operette morali, Paralipomeni della Batracomiomachia, Pensieri. Particular attention is of course given to Leopardi’s masterpiece the Canti, looked at analytically with an information sheet for each composition.

Love, antiquity, civilisation, desire, pain, illusions, melancholy, ennui, memories, society, hope: the thematic pathways follow these and many other central themes in the thought of Leopardi, offering a quick glance at his work and in particular his extraordinary philosophical diary, the Zibaldone di Pensieri, for which there is a selective thematic and analytical index.