Arefev Dmitry Andreevich – Junior Researcher of the A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Leading Librarian of the M.I. Rudomino All-Russia State Library for Foreign Literature; ORCID: 0000-0002-1346-2939
Classicism and Romanticism were two main trends in the literary process of Italy at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The situation between them was quite acute as writers were divided into two camps. In 1818, the future classic of Italian literature G. Leopardi decided to enter into a polemic with his contemporaries and tried to publish his Discourse of an Italian on Romantic Poetry which he was prompted to write by his thoughts that had already begun to take shape in the literary theory developed in the Zibaldone. The article reveals some points of his early literary theory proposed in the Discourse of an Italian on Romantic Poetry as a universal creative method and a way to overcome the contradictions between the two literary trends in Italy in the first third of the nineteenth century and further developed in the Zibaldone, and the attitude of G. Leopardi to classicism and Romanticism.
G. Leopardi; Romanticism; classicism; Italian literature; Zibaldone; literary theory.