Strumenti critici | 2018 | N. 1

The author recalls his friendship and intellectual relationship with Cesare Segre by recounting some biographical events and by focusing on exchanges of ideas regarding both linguistic and more broad cultural issues.

This essays provides a biographical sketch of Cesare Segre by underlining his crucial role in the fields of both philology and literary criticism. Any methodological approach proposed by Segre was based on textual research and combined textual scholarship, semiotics and literary criticism, even when it came to essays on contemporary culture. Indeed, the twentieth century and the ethical and political crisis of European culture became a constant element in Segre’s critical reflections from the Nineties onwards. As a result, philology is identified by him with man’s rationality, as it constitutes a specific form of communication and thus a social act.

This study examines the prodigious work of the great scholar Cesare Segre, brilliant editor and acute theoretician in textual criticism. Philippe Ménard emphasizes the profoundness, the innovations and the careful moderation of the famous philologist.

«Medioevo romanzo», the journal founded by Alberto Varvaro and Cesare Segre with other scholars in 1974, published several articles concerning the follow up of Segre’s three major critical editions (Bono Giamboni, Richart de Fournival and the “Chanson de Roland”). New manuscripts and/or new editions challenged Segre’s achievements, and his readiness to update them shows his commitment to a continuous renewal of philology.

The article recalls a facet of Cesare Segre’s scholarly activity: the different stages, between 1990 and 2014, of his relationship with the French research branch known as “critique génétique”. Through her personal memories, the author retraces a section of Segre’s intellectual path, from his favourable consideration for the “généticiens'” work to his active role as the most authoritative interface between them and the Italian philologists.

The essay focuses on some aspects of Cesare Segre’s work and role in the context of the history of Romance Philology, and aims to stress his contribution to the renewal of the discipline as well as his loyalty to a well established tradition as regards comparativism and the relationship between philology and linguistics.

This article investigates a famous episode of the “Quixote” (I 20) by crossing two different research perspectives: the critical approach is inspired by two important sections of Cesare Segre’s last volume, “Opera critica” (2014). The comparison clarifies how Cervantes rewrote the literary source of the episode and how it was inserted into the narrative structure of the novel.

Cesare Segre understood the importance of analyzing the chronotope of literary texts as since the publication in Italy of Michail Bakhtin’s essay, “Form of Time and the Chronotope in the Novel”. Subsequently, in applying Bakhtin’s precepts he distinguished himself thanks to the originality of the results he achieved. This contribution reconstructs the salient moments of the theoretical route followed by Segre in dealing with the topic and synthesizes its main critical acquisitions.

The chronological and textual relationship between the version in prose and the versification of “La tierra de Alvargonzález” by Antonio Machado had aroused a heated debate. The version in prose, very detailed and full of extensive autobiographical references, was published in January 1912 in the «Mundial Magazine», the Parisian magazine directed by Rubén Darío. The romance was published partially in «La Lectura» (April 1912) and shortly after (June 1912) was included, with a substantial extension, in the first edition of the “Campos de Castilla”. If all commentators agree that “Campos de Castilla” is an almost definitive point of arrival, with bitter discussions there was an attempt to prove that in the drafting phase the prose version should come from the first draft in verse. The analysis of little-known autographs definitely excludes such reckless hypothesis.

The article explores the editing of “I segni e la critica”, the first book published by Cesare Segre with the well known editor Einaudi. The author, who has studied the documents held at the “Archivio storico Einaudi” in Turin, has discovered the first project of the book, which originally had a different title and then became a landmark in the history of structuralism in Italian literary theory and criticism.

The author tells the stories of ten German and Austrian linguists who had to flee Nazi Germany in 1933 and found temporary sanctuary in Italy until 1938. Afterwards, when they had to flee again, most of them to the United States where they had prestigious careers.

In this personal memoir I recall my first meetings with Cesare Segre and briefly mention his creative writings, the “autobiography” “Per curiosità” (with a slightly longer discussion of its theological dimension) and the divertissement “Dieci prove di fantasia”.

On October 23 1956 Gianfranco Contini wrote to Lanfranco Caretti, then professor of Italian literature at the University of Pavia, a letter which presented a reasoned argument to support Cesare Segre’s candidacy for the Pavia professorship in Romance Philology. By publishing and commenting on this letter, this article sheds light on the beginning of Segre’s university career as well as on Segre’s relationship with Gianfranco Contini’s teaching.

The relationship between Cesare Segre and the publisher Einaudi began in 1949 and lasted for all his life. During the course of these sixty-five years Segre was the editor and co-director of «Strumenti critici» as well as the author of about fifteen books and first of all a key advisor. The essay focuses on the beginning of this relationship, and particularly on the edition of Ariosto’s “Satire”, postponed various times through the years and completed only in 1987.

Cesare Segre’s collaboration with the «Corriere della Sera» covers the years from 1988 to 2013 and includes literary reviews as well as articles on political and civil issues.

The essay provides a heartfelt account of the author’s great friendship with Cesare Segre which began when the first issues of «Strumenti critici» were published, and which was characterized by several cultural exchanges until Segre’s passing. Some of the most significant and original aspects of Segre’s theory and critical applications are also rapidly mentioned.

This contribution discusses various aspects of Cesare Segre’s intellectual and personal history, with a focus on his social and political commitment.