Epistolario Digitale Leopardiano (EDiLe)

Programma di finanziamento: PRIN 2022

Ente finanziatore: MUR

Responsabile scientifico: Laura Melosi

Ruolo UniMC: coordinatore

Durata: 24 mesi

As part of the innovation process that affects cultural heritage in relation to the increasingly advanced development of digital technologies, these resources are also being used in the field of literary studies to improve not only conservation but above all the research potential and the possibility of disseminating knowledge. As in many international contexts, also in Italy - but on the strength of our specific philological tradition - "author portals" have been identified as a very effective tool for proposing a “dynamic” organization of data and for gathering the mass of information in a unified access point. There are several recent examples of such applications, often realized thanks to PRIN funding, such as the portal dedicated to Manzoni (www.alessandromanzoni.org), or those being published dedicated to Petrarca (http://petrarca-fe.netseven.it) and Tasso (www.torquatotasso.org): they constitute a whole, whose coordination and development is planned within specific PNRR lines of action. For Leopardi, in 2017 at the request of the National Centre of Leopardian Studies (Centro Nazionale di Studi Leopardiani CNSL) in Recanati, the Biblioteca Digitale Leopardiana (Leopardi’s Digital Library) initiative was prearranged and undertaken. The National Library of Naples and the Giacomo Leopardi Chair of the University of Macerata, together with the ICCU, collaborated to have a single and integrated access point to the different data related to Giacomo Leopardi’s works and their dissemination (biography, works, manuscripts, editions, library, bibliography, iconography).

The project is intended to be the first nucleus of the Biblioteca Digitale Leopardiana, calibrated within the limits set for the PRIN 2022; however, within these limits, we can create a complete whole that would be integrated into a broader structure. The focus is on a specific type of document: the letters, outgoing and incoming, that make up the correspondence of Leopardi, only partially cataloged and digitized in the initial phase of the Biblioteca Digitale Leopardiana. The intention is now to acquire the entire corpus of letters following the Epistulae standard, an elaborate structure already welltested by the University of Lausanne, made available to the project, that will be adapted to Leopardian specific needs. In this way, not only the catalog of Leopardi’s corpus of letters will be completed for the first time, but the information available to date will been riched and systematized. Starting from the censuses collected in Manus OnLine, we will integrate what has not been considered, giving priority to the letters of Leopardi’s correspondents, which constitute a large and essential part of the research. The digital reproduction of all the manuscripts will form the basis for a new digital scientific edition of Leopardi's letters.