Giuseppe Parini (whose original surname is Parino) was born May 23, 1729 in the village of Bosisio (currently in the province of Lecco) in a family of the small bourgeoisie of Brianza dedicated to the silk trade. Difficult economic conditions would impose upon Joseph the interruption of studies after the elementary classes, attended by the parish priest, but a well-to-do aunt offers his help, on condition that the boy continues his religious studies, up to the ordination to priest, who it will arrive in 1754.
The studies between Milan and Lodi do not solve the family straits, so that - according to what will almost be a constant of the existence of the poet - Parini is forced to engage in other jobs, especially as a teacher, to earn a living. Parallel is the literary career: in 1752 are published Some poems of Ripano Eupilino, ninety-four texts of heterogeneous subject that are inspired by the right of Arcadia (as emerges from the pseudonym 1) and the sixteenth-century poetry. In 1753, Parini was admitted to the Accademia dei Trasformati of Milan, an institution sponsored by the noble family of the Imbonati, which brings together aristocrats and ecclesiastics, and proposes to link the poetic models of tradition with the contemporary problems of the Lombard city: they are part the others, Pietro Verri (1728-1797), Giuseppe Baretti (1719-1789) and Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794). In these same years, from 1754 to 1762, Parini was tutor 2 at the Serbelloni dukes.
Here Parini has the opportunity both to come into contact with the culture of French Enlightenment (from Voltaire to Rousseau and Montesquieu to the Encyclopédie) and to closely observe the customs and traditions of the nobility, which will later constitute much of the material of his poem more famous, Il Giorno. In this phase, Parini composes the first odes (La vita rustica, which has long remained unpublished in 1757, the healthiness of the air of 1759), is dedicated to satirical works (Dialogue over the nobility, still in 1757) or controversy linguistics 3. In 1762 following a conflict with the Serbelloni family, Parini was fired and the following year published Il Mattino, the first part of the day. He then became preceptor of Carlo Imbonati (1753-1805), whom Parini dedicated the ode to Education in 1764. The following year Il Mezzogiorno was published.
If the critical consensus around the first two poemetti pariniani is almost unanimous, the next period is almost entirely dedicated to intellectual professions: Parini is first appointed director of the important "Gazzetta di Milano" (1768-1769) 4 then is professor of Fine Letters (ie, of Italian literature) first to the Palatine Schools of Milan and then to the Ginnasio di Brera. Inserted in the Academy of the Arcadia of Rome in 1777 (Parini chooses the pseudonym of Darisbo Elidonio), Parini works on the unfinished sections of Il Giorno, that is, the Vespers and the Night, but he dedicates himself above all to the drafting of the Odes (including La fall), whose first edition dates back to 1791 (the complete edition of the Works will be published between 1801 and 1804). Parini died in Milan in August 1799, a few months after the end of the Jacobin triennium and the return of Austrian troops to the city.