Piccoli indizi con vaste ombre. Il concetto di storia nella Letteratura italiana di De Sanctis

The present essay intends to investigate the relationship between De Sanctis and Hegel in the view of the role that comedy plays within the Hegelian system. The essay tries to re-evaluate the impor- tance that the influence of authors such as Vico and Leopardi had almost as a counterbalance to the systematicity and teleology of Hegel’s thought. The History of Italian Literature, beyond the rig- id schematisations linked to the couple “poet” and “artist”, or “man” and “man of letters”, should instead be read as a true novel, which aims to show the progressive formation of Italian identity. At this level, I have attempted to reconsider the last, problematic pages of the History precisely as a manifesto of anti-systematic thinking, where small clues appear together with vast shadows