Death in William Drummond and Giacomo Leopardi

This article offers a comparison between the thought of Giacomo Leopardi and the seventeenth-century Scottish poet William Drummond of Hawthornden, establishing a previously unexplored connection between two prominent figures in Italian and Scottish cultures. The study examines the authors’ attitudes towards death, and in so doing highlights changing perspectives on this subject in Western culture. It emphasises both the affinities that link the two writers, arising from shared philosophical concerns, and the ways their differing metaphysical and religious beliefs shape distinct interpretations of mortality and human existence. The analysis is based on a textual comparison between Drummond’s A Cypress Grove: or, Philosophical Reflections against the Fear of Death and Leopardi’s Operette Morali and Canti. This article represents the first critical study to re-examine A Cypress Grove in the light of Leopardi’s literary production.