Strumenti critici | 2026 | N. 170
Anno 2026 – 1 – Annata: XLI – N. 170 Mese: aprile
A cura di Federica Bellei
Titolo articolo: La virtù in situazione. Prime note sulla corrispondenza tra Gianfranco Contini e Giovanni Pozzi
In this contribution the correspondence between Gianfranco Contini and Giovanni Pozzi, edited by Ottavio Besomi and Stefano Barelli in 2025, is analyzed for the first time. The 116 letters cover a period from 1950 to 1989. Through these documents, it is possible to observe the evolution and the deepening of the relationship between the two correspondents, as well as the broadening of their mutual interests. At first, the letters mainly concern all the researches carried out by Pozzi under the direction or supervision of his master: his thesis on the Capuchin friar Orchi and on 17th century sacred oratory; the edition of Marino’s “Dicerie sacre” and “Strage de gl’innocenti”; the article on Tesauro and on the style of his “Cannocchiale”; the critical edition of Brunetto Latini’s works; the linguistic indexing of Frugoni’s works… Over time, Pozzi gradually frees himself from his master’s tutelage, and, as professor of Italian literature at the University of Fribourg, he develops new, independent interests and methods, thanks to the dialogue with two figures, Giuseppe Billanovich and Carlo Dionisotti. But his deep respect and sincere affection for Contini never waned; on the contrary, they grew stronger over the years. This is particularly evident in the letters from the last two decades (1970-1989), when the two scholars were a source of inspiration and joy for each other, due to their sharing of the fundamental values of literature and humanities.
Etichette: Epistolografia, Filologia, Carlo Dionisotti, Gianfranco Contini, Giuseppe Billanovich,Titolo articolo: Calvino zen?
In the writings assembled in “Collection of Sand”, Calvino adopts a stance towards Japanese culture and civilisation that oscillates between resistance and acceptance, between declarations of incompetence and acute insights into the philosophical and wisdom-based foundations that inspire it. The attention to form that governs the gardens of temples and imperial palaces – especially the dry garden of Ryōanji, a unique example of sand in the collection – seems, on the one hand, to suit the writer’s temperament by opposing the formless and chaotic nature of the Mexican Tule tree; on the other hand, it instils doubts and suspicions that do not lead to revelations, not even about the art of writing “haiku”, nor do they free him from his fears of disappearing into thin air.
Lingua: ItalianoPag. 29-42
Etichette: Letteratura, Lettore, Italo Calvino, Collezione di sabbia, Giappone
Titolo articolo: Punteggiatura emozionale. Le prose giapponesi di Calvino
The writings arising from Italo Calvino’s journey to Japan constitute a distinctive textual nexus and a privileged vantage point from which to illuminate an intimate, yet critically under-examined, impulse within the Palomar corpus: a fascination with the richness and variety of the world as spectacle. These texts foreground the significance of an emotional dimension in Calvino’s prose, here achieved through an economy of means and an intensity of effect. This dimension proves central to the quality of the reading experience his works afford, notwithstanding the enduring image of Calvino as a cold, cerebral, and calculating author.
Lingua: ItalianoPag. 43-59
Etichette: Lettore, Italo Calvino, Collezione di sabbia, Palomar, Giappone
Titolo articolo: Breaking Barriers in the Anglophone Global Novel
In embracing such complex phenomena as world literature, cultural globalism, and English monolingualism, the study of the Anglophone global novel requires an interdisciplinary approach. On the one hand, the global novel is a site where the practice of breaking barriers is a pre-condition for its existence and a complex aesthetic and epistemological conundrum. On the other hand, its market orientation betrays a problematic connection with globalisation and the unstable status of literature in the contemporary age. Drawing on current critical debates about world literature, as well as on a renovated interest in formal analysis recently advocated by literary critics, the first part of the article reflects on major epistemological issues that are constitutive of this field of studies, while the second part analyses a small corpus of contemporary Anglophone novels that testify to the vitality of this controversial literary genre.
Lingua: ItalianoPag. 61-81
Etichette: Amitav Ghosh,
Titolo articolo: «Tre anni di intensa felicità romana». Guido Ceronetti traduttore di Marziale
The paper presents an analysis of Guido Ceronetti’s translation of Martial’s “Epigrammaton libri”, with the aim of exploring, on the one hand, the similarities with the translator’s other works, on the other hand attempting to highlight its specific features.
Lingua: ItalianoPag. 83-111
Etichette: Epigramma, Letteratura latina, Traduzione, Guido Ceronetti, Marziale,
Titolo articolo: «Un pellegrinaggio alla patria e all’altare d’ogni poesia». Tommaseo studioso delle tradizioni popolari e i «Canti toscani»
This paper reconstructs the formative path of Niccolò Tommaseo as a scholar of popular poetry. Through a close analysis of his works published on «Antologia», the essay highlights Tommaseo’s growing awareness of specific qualities of popular poetry. From an initial distrust toward the people’s creative faculty, sustained by continuous scholarly inquiry and field-based investigation, the Dalmatian author recognizes the need for a scientific «study» of oral traditions, a process that culminates in the monumental project of “Canti popolari toscani, corsi, illirici, greci” (1841-1842). Consistent with Herder’s perspective and the European Romanticism view, Tommaseo identifies the people as the original subject of poetic creation and as the source of historical, linguistic, and moral truth. Popular poetry, considered as a form of simple and natural expression, is conceived as a model of dramatic authenticity and an instrument of civil education. From this prospective, the volume of “Canti toscani” outlines a complex cultural project, capable of integrating theoretical knowledge and practical application through a comparative and philological method. Within this convergence of competencies, the study of popular poetry takes on a redemptive value while simultaneously functioning as a foundational act in the formation of a nation grounded in the unity of language, sentiment, and consciousness. Tuscany thus becomes the ideal heart of a nation that has yet to be realized.
Lingua: ItalianoPag. 113-138
Etichette: Poesia, XIX secolo, Nicolò Tommaseo, Canti toscani,
Titolo articolo: Per «Stella variabile» di Vittorio Sereni: la clausola minima (sul ruolo di «già»)
This article examines the formal and semantic functions of monosyllabic clausulae in “Stella variabile”, focusing on three occurrences of the adverb “già” in verse-final position (“Un posto di vacanza”, “La malattia dell’olmo”, “Giovanna e i Beatles”), which together form a micro-system within the collection. Through an integrated analysis of the poems and their authorial variants, the study shows how, in these occurrences, “già” functions as a boundary point of rhythmic tension and semantic concentration. A comparison with similar cases, such as “più” in verse-final position, reveals a broader pursuit of the minimal clausula, a stylistic device that condenses Sereni’s poetics of threshold and expressive reticence.
Lingua: ItalianoPag. 39-146
Etichette: Variante, Stella variabile,
Titolo articolo: «Una sorta di festoso guazzabuglio»: la lingua di Giorgio Orelli critico
This study examines, with particular attention to lexical features, the language employed by the poet Giorgio Orelli in his critical writings. It explores the relationship between the evolution of Orelli’s critical language and his adherence to structuralism, highlighting the close – especially linguistic – interrelation between his critical and poetic works.
Etichette: Poesia, Strutturalismo, Giorgio Orelli, Accertamenti verbali,Titolo articolo: «In una specie di scossa pare di morire insieme»: la narrazione della violenza nei «Piccoli maestri»
In a passage from the “Nota” to “I piccoli maestri” (1976), Luigi Meneghello identifies a few obsessive nodes around which his writing took shape; among them, «la paura e il fascino della morte violenta». This paper explores the representation of violence – physical, psychic and linguistic – of the Italian civil war as a foundational experience that deeply affects individual and collective memory, moral consciousness and language itself. Through a close reading of key narrative episodes, the article focuses on the stylistic and lexical strategies Meneghello adopts to express the irrepresentability and inexpressibility of traumatic violence: reticence, understatement, irony, anti-rhetorical restraint, perceptual dislocation, and more. Drawing on the methodology of “Trauma Studies”, the analysis shows how the text attempts to contain the excess of reality produced by the shock through a psycholinguistic process of cauterization, whereby writing becomes an ethical and civic act of exorcism.
Lingua: ItalianoPag. 171-192
Etichette: Fascismo, Linguaggio, Violenza, Luigi Meneghello,
Titolo articolo: Per gli «Abbozzi amorosi del stile petrarchesco» di Alfonso Gioia. Primo avvicinamento, prove di edizione e commento
This contribution aims to offer a first critical essay on the “Abbozzi amorosi del stile petrarchesco” by the seventeenth-century Ferrarese intellectual Alfonso Gioia, an unpublished work preserved in an autograph manuscript held at the Biblioteca Comunale Ariostea in Ferrara (Cl. I. 355). The “Abbozzi amorosi” bear witness to an intense and troubled process of composition, marked by deletions, rewritings, and reconsiderations, and to a poetic workshop “in fieri”. The sample edition and commentary presented here, focusing on three sonnets, seek to highlight both certain defining features of Gioia’s late Petrarchism and the profile of a ‘liminal’ mode of writing, poised between imitation of models, continual corrective tension, and incompleteness, while laying the groundwork for a future systematic study of the entire “corpus” (also in light of the author’s other works).
Etichette: Petrarchismo, Poetica, Scrittura, Alfonso Gioia,Titolo libro/articolo recensito: Libri in Inghilterra. Scritti per «Comunità» (1952-1961)
A cura di: P. De Marchi e L. Zampese
Edizioni: Edizioni di Comunità, Roma – 2025
Lingua: Italiano
Pag. 215-218
Recensore/i: Francesca Donazzan
Etichette:
Titolo libro/articolo recensito: Henrik Ibsen e la spettralizzazione del reale
Edizioni: Solfanelli, Chieti – 2025
Lingua: Italiano
Pag. 219-226
Recensore/i: Franco Marucci
Etichette:
Titolo libro/articolo recensito: Il conforto dell’ombra
Edizioni: Einaudi, Torino – 2025
Recensore/i: Edoardo Costadura
Etichette: