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Rena A. Syska Lamparska. Letteratura e scienza: Gregorio Caloprese teorico e critico della letteratura.

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Rena A. Syska Lamparska. Letteratura e scienza: Gregorio Caloprese teorico e critico della letteratura. Naples: Alfredo Guida Editore, 2005.

Gregorio Caloprese is nowadays generally remembered as the teacher of two truly innovative figures of the eighteenth century, Vico and Metastasio. For all its reductionism, this sort of indirect recognition of Caloprese's role in the history of Italian thought gives a clue to the genuine kernel of his teaching. Arguably, both Vico and Metastasio, for all the radical differences between them, understood the primary concerns shaping their teacher's provocative work: the need to renew the Italian Classical-rhetorical tradition; the need to free the voices of poets from the "baroque" corruptions and decadence of the times; the centrality of poetry in overcoming the polarization and presumed contradictions between, on the one hand, the scientific and analytical conceptions of the world and, on the other, the literary representations of reality.

This book by Rena Lamparska sets out to argue the importance and innovativeness of Caloprese's theoretical and critical thought within the intense cultural debates going on in late seventeenth century and early eighteenth century Naples. With great energy and cogency she...

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