Una ‘moderna mitologia’ floreale

Abstract

A sacred orator and poet, Melchiorre Cesarotti’s scholar and famous, among his contemporaries, as the epic poet of the Euganean Hills, the abbot Giuseppe Barbieri (1774-1852), born in Bassano del Grappa, reveals his fondness for themes linked to the nature also in a juvenile poem, composed in loose hendecasyllables and dedicated to the loves and the nuptials of the plants. In the Botanical Epithalamium, of which a comment is now offered, thanks to the fusion between the memory of the ancient and scientific interests, Barbieri gives a diverse life to multiple plant species and therefore creates a sort of new mythology, of which trees and shrubs, bushes and meadows dotted with corollas remain the protagonists.

Keywords

• Epithalamia. Flowers. Mythology. Plants. Poetry