Marino, D'Alessandro e due nuovi passeri solitari

The author highlights two sonnets concerning blue rock thrushes which have to date escaped the notice of scholars of the topos and have been ignored by commentators on Leopardi: the first, which appears in Giovan Battista Marino's Rime, sets the blue rock thrush in an angelic choir consisting of garden birds, celebrating its song and soaring flight; the second, which figures in Giuseppe D'Alessandro's Selva poetica, displays noteworthy affinities with Leopardi's poem, including the relationship of similarity-dissimilarity between the bird and its poet.