Il "Tieste" di Ugo Foscolo e l'estetica teatrale di Melchiorre Cesarotti. Per la storia e le implicazioni di un'inconciliabilità ideologica e filosofica

This work analyzes the tragedy written by Ugo Foscolo (1778-1827) at the end of his adolescence : Tieste. The drama has not been sufficiently studied yet, but presents various and important elements of interest. The idea of literature emerging from it is definitely new, and Tieste tries untrodden ways, incompatible with the dominant idea of tragedy at its epoch.
Most of all, Tieste marks a rebellion against the aesthetic canons of Melchiorre Cesarotti (1730-1808), a well-known philosopher who had a deep influence in the theatrical field and who had established the standards of a good tragedy. Cesarotti’s parameters were still those of the Enlightenment, and imposed a moral message to every tragedy, whose characters should be rewarded or punished on the basis of their goodness or their wickedness. For Cesarotti, a character would have encountered an unfavourable fate only as a consequence of a moral crime. His virtue, instead, would have avoided any danger.
In Foscolo, on the contrary, there is no providence, and the destiny of human beings doesn’t depend on their behaviour. Virtuous characters are powerless and succumb without even understanding why, while the evil tyrant triumphs, moved only by his sadism.
The evil is ineffable and inexplicable, and Reason, which solves every problem in Cesarotti’s Weltanschauung, is now helpless and meaningless. Foscolo’s first tragedy therefore represents the transition from an Ancien Régime world view to the phantoms and the nightmares of the contemporary age, when no certitude is possible anymore.