The Considerazioni al Tasso, together with the Postille all’Ariosto, are a further confirmation of refined literary education of Galileo. The scientist’s library includes, among various ancient and modern classics, even plays, particularly of Ruzzante, whose comedy – for the tendency to raillery and wit that characterize it – seems to have inspired the Galileian’s ability to define human masks, as well as the taste for the lapidary sentence. Placed in the wake of a long dispute against the scholastic tradition, the Considerazioni al Tasso allow Galileo to use, in the literary-critical area, the lexicon and rhetoric adverse to Aristotelianism, which find widespread deployment in his best known works, particularly in the Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo. In this critical study, we analyze the expressive solutions that are present in the pages dedicated to Liberata, mainly issuing from the language of comedy and therefore based on the comic consistency of the signifier. The reference is also tracked, by the scientist, for items such as, the decor, the verisimilitude, the point of view or estrangement, which reveal its sensitivity to the scenic dimension of the literary text.

The contribution is aimed to draw the narrative experience of Catherine Percoto (1812-1887), close to both the Friulian poet Francesco Dall’Ongaro (from whom she received the solicitation to deal specifically rustic literature) and the Milanese literary critic Carlo Tenca (who also gave her an example of a secular and moderate realism, deployed in the direction of the commitment) within the large literary scene related to the unification of Italy. The patrioctic theme, present in the production of the writer since ’48, is followed here by the wording of some of his most famous tales, never in isolation from patterns of rustic narrative, in which through the efforts and knowledge sharing to the farmer malaise – key elements of the philanthropic sensitivity of Percoto – refers to the brutality of the war as a deterioration of an already heavy living conditions of the rural class.

Galileo è stato un lettore appassionato e perspicace di celebri poeti italiani, dai quali ha preso eleganza e chiarezza di espressione. Nel contributo si guarda alle postille che lo scienziato ha vergato su una copia dell’edizione delle Rime del Petrarca brevemente sposte per Lodovico Castelvetro, pubblicata a Basilea nel 1582. Di datazione rimasta incerta, le annotazioni in esame attestano l’attenzione prestata dal chiosatore ad alcuni temi assai presenti nel canzoniere petrarchesco e a certe soluzioni espressive lì esperite. Anche in anni che preludono ad una più bassa fortuna, l’esemplarità del Petrarca viene qui ad essere ulteriormente confermata : Galileo, con intento talvolta emulativo, talvolta critico, sembra volersi avvantaggiare di quelle risorse anche nel proprio laboratorio di scrittura.

Since eighties, thematic criticism in Italy has gained a growing interest, despite some lingering uncertainties on theoretical and methodological points of view. The present contribution is aimed to present an overview − partial but not limited to – of thematic studies published in Italy in recent decades.