Open Collections

Evoluzione tematica e strutturale nel Canzoniere di Umberto Saba

University of British Columbia

The thesis deals with some aspects of the Canzoniere , the major poetic work of Umberto Saba, who made his appearance on the Italian literary scene during the first decade of this century. The introduction and the first chapter are intended to provide summary background material on the literary-cultural situation in Trieste at the turn of the century within which Saba had necessarily to develop and work. Particular emphasis is placed on the fact that the city of Trieste, where the poet was born and lived most of his life, was culturally behind the times. This fact, together with Saba's own late cultural "awakening", contributed to the creation of a "peripheral" and "backward" style of poetry characterized by a touch of authentic realism which distinguishes and isolates him from his contemporaries, who were for the most part engaged in the attempts at poetic innovation. Another major characteristic of Saba's poetry derives from his acquaintance with Freud; in fact, the poet's interest in psychoanalysis constitutes the subject of the second chapter. Here the role which psychoanalysis plays in his poetry is defined by differentiating between "clinical" and "poetic" psychoanalysis, with reference to the poems written during the period in which he was undergoing psychoanalysis (1929-31) and to the writings in which Saba finally explicitly rejects psychoanalysis as an authentic source of poetic themes. The third chapter consists of a thematic and stylistic analysis of the poetry of the Canzoniere. with special emphasis on the early collections of Saba's work. The themes of these youthful poems are structurally related to those of the more recent works, where the poet, through a new sense of immediacy, transforms the motifs which dominated his adolescence, and in which a greater psychological clarity is accompanied by just as great a clarity of form.

Text

2010-02-12

For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use.

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/20162

Hispanic Studies

University of British Columbia

Graduate