Scene of the encounter between the poet and the Muse in the poem Urania by Alessandro Manzoni in the light of the classical tradition. Structural analysis

Abstract

The short poem Urania is the last neoclassical work of Alessandro Manzoni, one of the greatest representatives of Italian Romanticism. This paper analyses the chance meeting between Pindar and the Muse Urania. It examines whether this scene is structured in the same way as those in which chance meetings between poets and divinities take place in ancient literature. My analysis is inspired by research conducted by Tomasz Mojsik — a Polish scholar in history and classical philology — on the role of the Muses in Ancient Greek culture.