Giornale storico della letteratura italiana

Mario Pozzi (1939-2022), Italian Literature professor at the University of Turin and editor in chief of the Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana, was one of the foremost scholars on Renaissance language debates and treatises. He conducted research and edited works that were pivotal in the field of artistic literature and travel writings of the 16^th century. He explored the developments in the field of Italian Studies over time and conducted various studies on Benedetto Croce and on post-World War II scholars of Italian literature (Dionisotti, Fubini and Bonora). His compassion and generosity enabled many young scholars to further their research endeavours.

Dante’s Questio de aqua et terra has long been the subject of controversy. Dante’s authorship has been disputed; its “contradictory” links with the Commedia have been highlighted; questions have been raised about Dante’s reasons for composing it; and aspects of its doctrinal material have been identified in philosophical sources that were composed only after the poet’s death in 1321. These are questions worthy of scholarly attention. At the same time, they are also questions largely extrinsic to the text itself, namely, to its formal character. Despite a renewed interest in the Questio, little attention has been dedicated, as happened also in the past, to its status as a questio, and specifically as a questio disputata, the literary genre with which, suggestively, it is now beginning to be associated, and therefore to its relationship with the most important scholastic teaching and research tool of the late Middle Ages. The present study, which is published in two parts, aims to examine and define the formal and institutional character of the Questio (part one embracing subsections 1-6)-characteristics on the basis of which it is hoped to be able to propose some interpretative hypotheses about its possible functions, as well as its ideological ambitions (part two comprising subsections 7-9). In particular, the article explores the extent to which the association of the Questio with the questio disputata is useful, appropriate, and illuminating when attempting to establish its genre, the manner and structure of its argumentation, and the conditions of its oral presentation in Mantua and in Verona.

This article publishes for the first time a previously unidentified letter written and signed by Vincenzo Monti, housed at the Provincia Minoritica di Cristo Re dei Frati Minori dell’Emilia Romagna Archive in Bologna. The letter is dated 27 January 1807 and is addressed to Antonio Raineri Biscia, a young multilingual orientalist scholar from Forlì, in reply to a letter which he had sent to Monti on 8 January from Florence. The letter reveals that even before coming into contact with Amedeo Peyron, Monti showed a certain degree of interest in Eastern studies. The article contextualises the letter, providing an analysis of the document together with key biographical and bibliographical details concerning the recipient. The article also publishes three letters that Raineri Biscia wrote to Monti, all of which are housed in the Campori autograph collection at the Biblioteca Universitaria Estense in Modena; these letters are cited (but not published) in Luca Frassineti’s Supplemento all’epistolario di Monti.

Belli’s masterpiece in Roman dialect was not published during the author’s lifetime; instead, it was bound to secrecy for the most part, with only 23 of his sonnets managing to surface during this period. The first edition that brought together a significant collection of his poems in Romanesco was Sonetti anonimi, and it made no mention of Belli as the author; it was published secretly in 1864, just a few months after the poet’s death, by an action committee of irredentists inspired by Mazzini. Following a careful inspection of the manuscripts that gave rise to the collection, this article clarifies the role played by the architect Felice Cicconetti in the endeavour. It reconstructs the profile of this little-known figure and definitively attributes to him a corpus of five sonnets of political satire originally believed to be the work of Belli and later of an unknown exponent of the so-called ‘popular tradition’. An analysis of these poems highlights their verve and vitality-appreciated by Umberto Saba--and thus recognises Cicconetti to be one of Belli’s first imitators.

The Central Archives of the State in Rome houses a precious document signed by Salvatore Quasimodo in 1945. It is a form that he filled out as part of the purge proceedings which took place after the fall of the Fascist regime. Through an analysis of this document and its attachments (including a typewritten manuscript entitled “Brevi cenni sulla mia vita di ‘uomo di cultura’ durante la dittatura fascista” [Brief notes on my life as a ‘learned man’ during the Fascist dictatorship], which to date has only been published in part) and a reinterpretation of other well-known evidence, this article raises serious questions concerning the poet’s alleged antifascism. Other documents housed at the Historical Archives of the Milan Conservatoire provide further details regarding Quasimodo’s life, including his actual teaching title at the Conservatoire, which in fact was much more modest than he had purported, or his numerous absences, which de facto caused him to interrupt his teaching career long before his official retirement date.

Dante Alighieri, Commedia, a cura di Giorgio Inglese (Stefano Carrai), p. 140. - Giuseppe Parini, Il Giorno. Il Mattino, il Meriggio, il Vespro, la Notte, a cura di Roberto Leporatti, commento di Edoardo Esposito e Antonio Di Silvestro (Filippo Luca Sambugaro), p. 143. - Dispacci da un altro mondo. Il genere dell’idillio dall’età classica all’Ottocento, a cura di Alessandra Di Ricco e Claudio Giunta (Fulvio Vallana), p. 146.

a cura di, Mario Chiesa, Maria Luisa Doglio, Roberto Galbiati, Mario Pozzi

Si parla di: Dante. - «Moderni e antichi». - F. Barbaro. - L. Castelvetro. - A. Bacci. - L’autore e le sue maschere. - Verga. - Palazzeschi-Picchi. - «Aghios». - M. L. Doglio.