Giordano Bruno’s powers of memory and his provocative ideas about the infinity of the universe gained him notoriety as an unorthodox thinker throughout the highest intellectual circles of 16th century Europe and inevitably attracted the attention of the Inquisition, which had him burned at the stake as a heretic in 1600. Bruno valiantly defended his ideas and his right to maintain them to the very end. His name, even at a distance of four centuries still creates controversy among scholars.

While recent historical assessments have shed new light on Bruno’s scientific and philosophical works, which are undeniably provocative, can the same be said of his literary works? I intend to explore the radical tendencies evident in his erudite comedy Il candelaio, which is often considered the end of the genre. Among critics there is a general consensus that the work is excessively enigmatic, offensive, and obscene. But the stylistic and thematic excesses that have so aggravated critics are entirely intentional. By including an exasperating number of prologues and an overkill of obscenity, cupidity, false learning, pedantry, and related motifs, Bruno pushed the genre to its ultimate capacities and made a mockery of its “rules”. A quintessential example of his aesthetic philosophy of the extreme and his attitude of antagonism, Il candelaio is entirely in keeping with the workings of Bruno’s mind in general, as evidenced by his other intellectual endeavors which made him a martyr to intellectual freedom.

Not only is Manzoni’s I Promessi Sposi considered to be one of the greatest books in the history of Italian Literature, it could also be said to be the work which most contributed to the rise of Italian nationalism leading to unification. Manzoni’s role in forging an Italian national conscious is undeniable, his socio-political ideas transmitted through the novel having produced historically significant ideological codes. Critics have since scoured the pages of Manzoni’s writings in attempt to determine the ideological biases underlying the novel’s conception. Of these biases or determinants, the one that has received the most attention, ever since Antonio Gramsci’s comments on I Promessi Sposi, regards Manzoni’s “aristocratic” attitude towards the lower classes. What Manzoni describes as an animalesque mob is not strictly synonymous with members of the lower classes, but with crowds in general. His irascible, unpredictable, and irrational Milanese masses demonstrate his profound understanding of mass psychology and exemplify the key characteristics of crowds as defined in Gustave Le Bon’s book, The Crowd. Comparing this self-proclaimed scientific work with Manzoni’s literary work, my paper analyzes the episodes in I Promessi Sposi in which the Milanese (which Manzoni had previously established to be “buoni figliuoli, nominati per la bontà in tutto il mondo”) suddenly “imbestialì”[1], in order to thereby determine how Manzoni’s ideas regarding crowds informed his conception of unification.

[1] Alessandro Manzoni, I Promessi Sposi, ed. Isabella Gherarducci and Enrico Ghidetti, (Florence: La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1990), 278.

In “La tecnica della nuova poesia,” Marinetti openly attacks his predecessors, ridiculing their aesthetics, and proposing instead an unprecedented idea of poetry based on a new way of viewing the universe. In order for a new poetic language to be created, the old must be destroyed. In the 1912 Manifesto tecnico della letteratura futurista Marinetti calls for the abolition from language of “tutto ciò che essa contiene in fatto d’immagini stereotipate, di metafore scolorite, e cioè quasi tutto. While Marinetti identifies no substantial difference between the verse of Homer and that of D’Annunzio, he considers his own revolutionary precisely because of its “spaventosa potenza di analogia." But does Marinetti’s actual use of metaphor entirely break free of tradition? Are his analogies as revolutionary as he claims? This article explores a sprinkling of metaphors from three of Marinetti’s works written at different periods of his literary career: "Le Bataille de Tripoli" (1911), "8 anime in una bomba" (1919), and "L’areopoema del Golfo della Spezia" (1935). Although these works appertain to different literary genres, (a journalistic account, a self-proclaimed “romanzo esplosivo” and an “areopoema,” respectively) all three treat the same topic, which is Marinetti’s favorite topic—war. The purpose of my analysis is to determine the degree to which his use of metaphor departs from tradition in different genres and at different stages of his poetic development. More importantly, if Marinetti’s use of metaphor is as revolutionary as he claims, how are we to go about understanding it? Perhaps the traditional models of metaphorical analysis are insufficient. I therefore intend to incorporate into my argument various philosophical perspectives on metaphor, some of which are considered as revolutionary as Marinetti’s poetry itself.