Il Ricciardetto, vol. I

A careful guide opens a window onto the lively world of an early‑18th‑century Tuscan poet whose verse slipped between the grand narratives of his age. The study shines a light on the poet’s “Capitoli,” short satirical pieces that have long been eclipsed by his more famous work, and shows how they reveal the humor, moral urgency, and sharp local awareness that animated his writing. By piecing together scattered manuscripts, family records and contemporary testimonies, the author reconstructs the poet’s private and public life, from a midnight birth in 1674 to his role in a celebrated Pistoian festival that sparked the very poem at the heart of the collection.

Beyond biography, the book situates this satire within the tensions of Cosimo III’s duchy, the rise of Jesuit influence, and the budding Arcadian movement. It argues that the Tuscan people wielded a refined, understated ridicule as a subtle weapon against authority, and that the poet’s verses captured this cultural counter‑voice. Listeners will come away with a vivid sense of how wit, politics, and personal ambition intertwined in a formative moment of Italian literary history.