Third annual seminar (March 2003)

The seminar was open to all students and teachers of Italian, and to all those interested more generally in the role of literature in man’s pursuit of the truth. 

All of the three speakers are experienced scholars and writers who have reflected at length on the issues involved. Their intention was to explore the relationship between literature and religion, art and mythology. While Luca Crescenzi looked at Romantic German literature to address the role of the poet as a mediator between the human and the divine, Marco Bazzocchi focused on the "new mythology" created by Leopardi to analyse the relation between literature and the truth, and Alberto Folin examined different aspects of the notion of truth in Leopardi’s writing.

Speakers

Marco A. Brazzocchi, L'ultima verità, ovvero la fine della letteratura

Marco Bazzocchi is Professor of Contemporary Italian Literature at the University of Bologna. He is the author of a critical edition of the Operette Moral and of the Paralipomeni della Batracomiomachia). He has written on Italian authors such as Pascoli (Circe e il fanciullino, La Nuova Italia, 1992) and Pasolini (Mondadori). He is interested in exploring symbolic and mythical elements in literary texts. He is currently working on Campana’s Canti Orfici and on the relationship between Pasolini and Elsa Morante.

Luca Crescenzil, L’ultima stagione degli dèi in Germania. Hölderlin, il mito e la comunità

Luca Crescenzi is Professor of German Literature at the University of Pisa and Rome ("La Sapienza"). He has published two volumes on E.T.A. Hoffmann (Il vortice furioso del tempo. E.T.A. Hoffmann e la crisi dell’utopia romantica, 1992) and on German fantastic narrative (Antropologia e poetica della fantasia. Per una genealogia della narrativa fantastica nel romanticismo berlinese, 1996). He has published a number of articles on Romantic German Literature and has translated works by Nietzsche, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Schiller, Goethe and, more recently, Hölderlin (Poesie, Rizzoli 2001).

Alberto Folin, Verità come svelamento, come rivelazione e come destino in Leopardi

Alberto Folin is Visiting Professor of Italian Literature at the "Suor Orsola Benincasa" Institute in Naples. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the "Centro mondiale della poesia e della cultura Giacomo Leopardi" in Recanati. He is co-editor of the series "Testi e Studi leopardiani" published by Marsilio, Venice. His publications include: Leopardi e la notte chiara (Marsilio, 1993), Pensare per affetti. Leopardi, la natura, l'immagine (Marsilio 1996), I diletti del vero (Il Poligrafo, 2000), Leopardi e l'imperfetto nulla (Marsilio 2001)