Dediche leopardiane II : lavori eruditi e falsi dell'adolescenza e della giovinezza (1815-1825)

The first part of this research, concerning the Leopardian dedications of the childhood and adolescence (1808-1815), was published in the first issue of «Margini» (2007, 1). The research is now concerned with the years of the adolescence and youth (1815-1825), with special focus on dedications premised to erudite works or declared as such. The typological and formal variety of the first years is substituted by an absolute homogeneity: dedications of epistolary sort, in prose and in Italian, with an only exception (epigraphic and Latin) of uncertain dating. Anyway, an intellectual or affective kind of relationship between the author and his dedicatees remains. The essay ends with the analysis of a dedication premised to a particular forgery, Inno a Nettuno (1817), which marks the first publication of Leopardi as a poet: behind the stratagem of a translation of an antique Greek hymn and with the protection of a rich para-textual apparatus (dedication, Avvertimento and Note), which - with his status of presupposed truth, reinforced by the marginal collocation - plays a role of absolute highlight to credit the presumed discovery and to build the multiple and diffracted images of a very refined and unconventional pasticheur.