(1729-1799) poet
Giuseppe Parini was born in Bosisio, a small village near Milan, Italy. His father later moved the family to Milan so that Giuseppe could acquire a formal education. Parini began writing poetry under the anagram of Ripano Eupilino and published Some Verses by Ripano Eupilino in 1752, which won him a place in the selective Academy of the Transformed in Milan.
In 1754 Parini was ordained as a priest and eventually became a tutor in the Serbelloni family, a post that pleased him only in that it provided material for his Dialogue on Nobility (1762), in which the corpses of a nobleman and a poet converse on the true nature of nobility. The publication of “Morning” and “Midday” in 1763, his poetic satire on the aristocracy later collected as The Day, improved Parini’s circumstances. He became a professor of literature at the Palatine School, and one of his plays, Ascanio in Alba, was put to music by Mozart and performed as an opera in 1771. During the French occupation, Parini reluctantly held a government post but was said to have distributed his stipend among the poor in protest of Bonaparte’s rule.
Parini also published his Odes (1795) and several literary treatises, including a tract on aesthetics, Principles of Literature (1801), but The Day is his most accomplished work. In the form of a mock epic similar to Alexander pope’s The Rape of the Lock, The Day chronicles the daily routine of an idle fop as though his activities were heroic deeds. The poem’s satire skewered the Milanese aristocracy, exposing the elaborate and superficial rituals of fashionable society by using the dandified nature of its hero.
After Parini’s death, “Evening” and “Night” were found among his papers, and the first complete edition of The Day was published in Milan in 1801. Its elegant verse, playful tone, and sharp insights into the follies of the idle life provided a model for later poets who, following Parini’s lead, hoped to use laughter to arouse shame and curb error.
An English Version of a Work by Giuseppe Parini
The Day: Morning, Midday, Evening, and Night. Translated by Herbert Morris Bower. Westport, Conn.: Hyperion Press, 1978.
Works about Giuseppe Parini
Griffiths, C. E. J., and R. Hastings, eds. The Cultural Heritage of the Italian Renaissance. New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1993. ‘
Tusiani, Joseph. “Giuseppe Parini, Poet of Education.” Paideia 3, no. 1 (1974): 26-33.
