Strumenti critici | 2021 | N. 156

The homecoming of the prodigal is one of the paradigms that provide the foundation for the pilgrim’s journey in the Commedia. The first one to establish this parallel is Giovanni Boccaccio who, in his Expositions, writes that the «faithful and humble prayer to God» in Inferno II was received in Heaven in the way «the prodigal son was received by his pious father». The story of the ‘lost son’ echoes throughout the Comedy and, although there is no direct quotation from the parable, there are allusions and these allusions set the pace for the journey. This essay looks at the ‘well-travelled’ terrain of the prologue scene, at the fatherly figures that Dante meets during his journey as well as at those passages where motifs from the parable have been identified, and at the motherly figures and women in the poem that fill an important gap in the Gospel narrative.

The essay examines a few segments of Purgatorio XXVII: the passage through the wall of fire, Dante’s third and last dream in which Lia and Rachel appear, and Virgil’s final words to Dante. By analysing the twentieth-century critical literature on this canto, the author highlights the interpretative aporias that have been pointed out in various studies and arrives at the conclusion that aporia is precisely the characteristic feature of Dante’s reception in the twentieth century. An aporia holds together transcendence and immanence, the spiritual journey and the earthly element, the soul and earthly dimension. This specific form of reception is also verified in a few modern poets, such as Giovanni Pascoli, Vittorio Sereni and Silvio Ramat.

Alfieri’s autobiographical expression is a constant feature of his career as a writer, it reached its high point during his elaboration of the Vita, which was also admired by his great contemporary Goethe. In the early twentieth century, the fame of Alfieri as a writer of tragedy was waning as the young Eugenio Montale wrote in the Quaderno genovese (the Genoese Notebook). It seemed to some that this was his only surviving literary work (as Aldous Huxley explicitely stated, as did also at the close of the twentieth Century the critic Cesare Segre). The autobiographical account of Alfieri places his artistic vocation as a poet and above all as a tragic writer at its centre. That at first manifests itself unknowingly until the turning point of conversion at the age of twenty-six: the revealing and culminating moment. Furthermore, as a result of this, the story of his childhood and adolescence is conducted without nostalgia: if the former consists of nine years of «vegetation», the latter of «eight years of non-education».

In his short story Bawährter Thiel, Gerhart Hauptmann seems to turn to Émile Zola’s theory of the Roman expérimental. He tests the chain-reactions of his hero by bringing him into contact with different milieus. The various spaces are the background where phenomena are produced and they even symbolize different conceptions of the world. Spaces are also the result of imaginative projections. The sociological experiment has repurcussions on the author’s mode of writing and the structure of the story.

The essay deals with the problem of themes and genres identification in poetry and offers new analytical tools by demonstrating the rhetorical nature of sixteenth-century poetry. In fact, Petrarchist lyric texts should be studied with closer attention to their historical nature (not lastly because of their anchorage to the classical tradition) and as the result of the interrelation of three dimensions: the biography, the code (the socio-cultural and literary models), and the artistic creation. In this sense, this article offers an analysis of the funeral song Alma cortese by Pietro Bembo, in which the personal grief is elaborated through the transposition into an exemplary dimension and its reconsideration in light of the salvific value of the poetic word, but it is also presented through the filter of classical rhetoric norms. Furthermore, a new reading of Giovanni Guidiccioni’s sonnet 90 points out how the precise identification of the text’s genre is an essential operation as it orients the interpretation of the conventional elements and of the meaning.

This essay reconstructs the ideological history of the concept of origin between Romanticism and twentieth-century theoretical trends. More specifically, it shows how the ecdotic practices of philology reflect the philosophical concept of origin.

The article first examines the letters exchanged between Gadda and Alessandro Bonsanti, and moves on to analyze the correspondence between Gadda and his relatives. In the early thirties, the Florentine writer Alessandro Bonsanti was well-known in literary circles (in connection with the journals «Solaria» and «Letteratura»); Gadda instead was a newcomer in search of a publisher. Bonsanti helped him to publish his second book, Il castello di Udine, which was a success only with the critics. The correspondence between Gadda and his relatives, especially his brother Enrico and his mother, a very strong-willed woman, is very interesting from another point of view. The two brothers, who received a nationalist and severe education, were volunteers in the First World War: the letters show two parallel lives and two different temperaments. Carlo Emilio was indeed shy, introvert and thrifty; Enrico instead a wasteful and bold young man who, despite his flaws, became a myth after his death in a plane crash. The correspondence, accompanied by an exhaustive comment, offers valuable information on Gadda’s narrative work, from Il castello di Udine to La cognizione del dolore.

The article provides a philological analysis of Verso i Palù o Val Bone minacciati di estinzione, the opening poem of Andrea Zanzotto’s Sovrimpressioni (2001). Through the study of the papers held at the Centro Manoscritti of the University of Pavia, it explores the genesis of the poems and offers a new critical interpretation by placing it within the context of the poetics of Sovrimpressioni

The article investigates textuality and communication in the first segment of Antonio Gramsci’s Letters from Prison (November 20, 1926-July 10, 1928). It focuses on the following aspects: the expression of memory and the vision of the future; the idea and practice of a precise and detail-oriented writing; the narration and description between wonder and scientific observation of human reality; modes of reflection on the world and the self; the linguistic features of emotionality and inner conflict. These phenomena reflect two main functions that are assumed in Gramsci’s epistolary writing: the reconstruction of subjective identity and the recovery of the intensity of life.