Foscolo's "Parallel between Dante and Petrarch": A Perfect Harmony of Contrasts

During his stay in England, from 1816 to 1827, Ugo Foscolo was particularly aware of the importance of giving a new value and deeper meanings to Italian literature. The reasons were twofold: firstly, Romantic poets and essayists were keen on literature of Latin origin; secondly, from the very beginning of his English years, Foscolo had been developing a project which aimed to form the first nucleus of the future Italian learned class in London. That is why a fresh approach was needed in his mind, a sort of well combined mixture of a carefully philological analysis of texts and a detailed psychological exegesis based on historical evidence. He was convinced that eliciting an emotional response, together with a historical persuasion, was the best way to properly spread a better knowledge of the classics of Italian literature, avoiding cultural approximations and superficial interpretations. As he had stated in his Orazione inaugurale (1809), literature does represent the highest cultural manifestation of human ethical values; in the Middle Ages, Petrarch was the pioneer of a different kind of moral and poetical sensibility: with his three Essays on Petrarch (1823), Foscolo gave a detailed explanation of the Tuscan poet’s attitudes and feelings, which proved that he was far ahead of his time. In the following Parallel between Dante and Petrarch, instead, as it has been said, the poet of Laura seems to be somewhat diminished in his cultural and moral stature. In our opinion, Foscolo did not want to create hierarchical levels of importance. Therefore, through an accurate reading of the Parallel and an examination of its intertextual relations, our aim here is to demonstrate Foscolo’s original way of articulating his comparative discourse. Actually, he wanted to brightly enlighten the most relevant aspects of the two strong personalities and their profound impact on their epoch.