On Thursday, March 26, 2026, starting at 4:30 pm, a meeting on the theme “Domenico Rossetti and the ‘Divine Comedy’” will take place in the Conference Room of the “Stelio Crise” State Library (Largo Papa Giovanni XXIII, 6, 2nd floor).

Francesco De Nicola (University of Genoa) and Elvio Guagnini (University of Trieste) will discuss this topic with reference to their re-edition of Domenico Rossetti's essay, "Why Dante's poem is called the Divine Comedy. A dissertation by an Italian" (1819), with the addition of the author's handwritten annotations (1819-1841), published by EUT Edizioni dell'Università di Trieste.

In 1818, Domenico Rossetti addressed this topic in a lecture to the Società del Gabinetto di Minerva, which he founded in 1810. The text was printed in 1819 by the Società Tipografica de’ Classici Italiani of Antonio Fortunato Stella, a friend of great writers of his time, including Giordani, Monti, Porta, and Leopardi (for whom Stella was also editor). A copy of this book, now reproduced in facsimile, contains manuscript annotations added to the printed text by Rossetti up to 1841, a year before his death, with a view to a possible updated reprint of the text.

Born as a discussion on the origin and use of the adjective “divina” added to the title of the “Comedy”, the essay expands to a discussion on the genre and relevance of Dante’s poem with very interesting insights that show Rossetti involved – in the text as well as in the interesting added annotations – in a debate with the major previous and contemporary Dante critics from Vico to Schelling, from Schlosser to Witte, from Monti to Perticari, from Gabriele Rossetti to Foscolo: with positive feedback, in the case of coincidence of judgment, with even polemical points of view (as in the case of Foscolo), with interesting convergences (for example, on perspectives on reading Vico). And where Dante is considered the author of a work that is not a "poem for the vulgar" but a "supreme poem": destined and consecrated to "immortality", despite the "defects" noted by his own "admirers" – states Rossetti – to be attributed rather to the "times" and the "infancy of the language" than to the "ingenuity of Dante".

The meeting is organised as part of the “Minerval Thursdays” series in collaboration with the casa editrice EUT.