Abstract
For Carducci, the years that preceded the publication of the Rime in San Miniato (1857) were marked by many poetic projects and just as many failures: he tried repeatedly to gather his own compositions into a poetry collection, though never satisfactorily. The manuscripts of his puerilia bear the traces of these many efforts. Together these manuscripts provide an unpublished portrait of the young poet and a lively image of his laboratory. This essay therefore attempts a new reading of the poetic beginnings of Carducci from a critical point of view that has not yet been considered.