November 2016 - Minor classics

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Title Minor classics
Authors Board member of Istituto cultura italiana (NGO)
Date 11/2016
Excerpt So, do you also know Federigo Tozzi, Girolamo Tiraboschi, Cesare Cantù, Goffredo Parise, Burchiello (Domenico di Giovanni), Teofilo Folengo, Aldo Palazzeschi, Carlo Michelstaedter, Ramusio, Marco Tizi, and Leonardo Bruni ?
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Is it the Italian culture just Dante, Boccaccio, Gabriele D'Annunzio, and ...?

We think that a populist and stereotyped promotion of Italian culture is not useful for anybody, and that on the contrary we must work in order to make more refined, articulated and learned, the mainstream culture.

So, do you also know Federigo Tozzi, Girolamo Tiraboschi, Cesare Cantù, Goffredo Parise, Burchiello (Domenico di Giovanni), Teofilo Folengo, Aldo Palazzeschi, Carlo Michelstaedter, Ramusio, Marco Tizi, and Leonardo Bruni ?

Federigo Tozzi, from Siena, and active also in Florence and Rome in the early XX, wrote, for instance “Bestie” and “Con gli occhi chiuisi”, and he continuously intervenes in the plot of his stories with great wit. [con grande piglio poetico], putting at the center feelings reduced at an elementary state. [mettendo al centro i sentimenti ridotti ad uno stato elementare]

Giroloma Tiraboschi, Jesuit abbot from Modena, librarian of the Este family and then of Duke of Modena, active in the XVIII century, is probably the greatest historian of Italian literature, with the great merit to having included the Latin literature into the Italian one. His main work “Storia della letteratura italiana” in 16 volumes, is an essay of “enormous erudition” and a classic literary work in itself: Girolamo Tiraboschi is a great writer, and his judgments are often quoted by other historians of Literature on a European scale. His style is concise and at the same time poetic, and its work unifies the most wide vision with the utmost precision of details. His judgment is acute and pragmatic, and the frequent citations of often unpublished documents (like manuscript letters) makes his work unique and absolutely captivating.

And ... we will continue the next time with others characters and elements of such list, also quoting some relevant passage of their work. They are not barely known because they are less great than Dante ... Boccaccio, Petrarca, and so on, but just because the nature of their work acts in the popular imagination in a more nuanced way, and cannot be easily reduced in stereotypes (often because the content of their message is not concealed under the attractive disguise of a tale).