Prassi Ecdotiche della Modernità Letteraria
Journal of ecdotics' studies and author's philology
PEML provides immediate open access to its content on the principles that publicly funded research must be freely accessible to the public and that making research freely available supports a greater global exchange of knowledge and fosters progress. PEML does not charge either submission or publication fees nor article-processing expenses. Publisher copyright policies and self-archiving: Author's Pre-print: author can archive pre-print (i.e. pre-refereeing) Author's Post-print: author can archive post-print (i.e. final draft post-refereeing) Publisher's Version/PDF: author can archive publisher's version/pdf
A sequel to Cuore? De Amicis and Mantegazza, the story of a literary feud
Based on unpublished material, this article aims to reconstruct the relationship between the scientist Paolo Mantegazza, author of a sequel to Cuore entitled Testa (1887), and Edmondo De Amicis. Their relationship appeared friendly but was in fact marked by mutual envy. An analysis of the letters sent by the publisher Emilio Treves to Mantegazza also provides useful insights into the publishing history of De Amicis’s masterpiece, its immediate reception, and the planning of a follow-up volume.
Copyright (c) 2025 Prassi Ecdotiche della Modernità Letteraria https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
The review in the field of medieval texts
The essay traces the history of scholarly reviewing within medieval and Romance studies, from its nineteenth-century origins with Friedrich Diez, Gaston Paris, and Paul Meyer to its twentieth-century transformation through figures such as Gianfranco Contini, Cesare Segre, D’Arco Silvio Avalle, and Alberto Varvaro. It highlights the review’s evolution, its critical and informative functions, and the shifts brought about by historical, methodological, and textual medium changes. The essay concludes with a reflection on the current identity crisis of the review and its prospects.
«Revised and corrected by the Author»: The 1947 Edition of Amo, dunque sono by Sibilla Aleramo
This paper examines the textual variants between the 1947 edition of Sibilla Aleramo’s novel Amo, dunque sono and its first edition, published in 1927. A comparison of the two editions reveals a process of abridgement and omission, to which Franco Matacotta – Aleramo’s partner at the time – also contributed. The result is an edition not only less substantial, but also revised to eliminate stylistic and thematic elements considered unsuitable for the new post-war cultural and political climate.
«Appassionate incursioni nelle regioni della poesia». Lucio Piccolo’s unpublished letters
The paper conducts a first examination of Lucio Piccolo’s unpublished letters and, through the analysis of some of his letters and drafts, it offers an in-depth analysis of the major themes informing the author’s poetics. The critical study is followed by the edition, with explanatory notes and a comment, of ten letters kept in the Family Archive Piccolo and the Scheiwiller Archive in Milan.
The review in the actual field of Classical philology: origins and development
A historical analysis of origins and development of the review in the field of Classical philology – mainly Greek, but without neglecting Latin – from the 18th century to the present day, with special focus on aspects of length, editorial policy, and professional ethics, and remarks on the scholarly significance of reviews enriched with original ideas.
The craft of reading, the necessity of writing. Some reflections on reviews of Italian literature.
This essay addresses the decline of literary reviewing within the field of Italian studies, highlighting how structural, academic, and cultural factors have progressively diminished the space and relevance of this genre. The author identifies key causes, including the exclusion of reviews from national research assessment criteria (ASN and VQR), excessive teaching demands, and the fragmentation of the Italian literature field. In an increasingly competitive and dispersed academic landscape, reviews appear less appealing than other forms of publication deemed more “useful” for career advancement. Nevertheless, the author reflects on the epistemological importance of reading and critically engaging with others’ work, emphasizing the potential role of academic journals in revitalizing the genre through careful selection of topics, reviewers, and formats.
Training in reviewing: a teaching exercise on editions of contemporary texts
This contribution offers a reflection on the relevance of editorial philology methods within the field of contemporary Italian literary studies. Drawing on recent teaching experience in a graduate course in Publishing, the essay illustrates how the design and use of a structured review form can serve as an educational tool for the analysis of critical and scholarly editions of modern and contemporary texts. The paper highlights the challenges of integrating philological awareness into contemporary literary criticism and proposes the structured review as a valuable exercise for developing skills in examining the mechanisms of textual transmission and editorial criteria.
The Database of the Observatory of Critical Editions: a tool for methodological sharing among different Filologies
The Observatory of Critical Editions (OEC) has developed a database to collect, organise and consult files and reviews on critical editions of ancient, medieval, modern and contemporary texts. The article explores the functioning, purpose and methodological implications of this tool, with particular attention to the disciplinary transversality it promotes. Through concrete examples, the contribution of the OEC to the reflection on editorial practices and to the sharing of experiences between different philologies is highlighted.
Militant literary criticism in the twentieth-century
This essay examines the form and function of militant literary criticism within the Italian twentieth-century cultural context, questioning both the factors that enabled its central role and the reasons behind its gradual disappearance. Through a historical and critical reconstruction of emblematic controversies—such as those surrounding Gli indifferenti, Il Gattopardo, and La storia—the author demonstrates how militant reviewing functioned as an ideological intervention and a means of cultural positioning, embedded in a dynamic exchange with the literary society of the time. The essay identifies three essential conditions for the existence of this critical mode: a relatively closed yet recognizable intellectual circuit, a non-specialist middle readership, and a strong extraliterary anchoring. Militant reviewing is thus defined by its paradoxical nature—both ephemeral and universal—capable of linking the particular to a broader ideological framework. In conclusion, the author considers what remains of this tradition today and identifies, in certain online literary platforms, the potential for a renewed critical militancy suited to the media landscape of the twenty-first century.
This essay analyzes the premises, developments, and critical implications of the Osservatorio sulle Edizioni Critiche, an initiative launched by scholars at the University of Milan to foster interdisciplinary dialogue around philology understood as a pursuit of textual truth. Such truth, though rarely attainable, is treated as a methodological benchmark for distinguishing the historical and linguistic reality of a text from the interpretive layers added over time. The author proposes a notion of "transversal philology," capable of transcending disciplinary boundaries through the shared use of practices and tools, among which the critical review of scholarly editions plays a key role. However, the idea that such reviews could serve as a systematic tool for comparison has clashed with the current academic undervaluation of this form of contribution. While acknowledging changes in the academic landscape and the rise of new assessment criteria, the essay defends the formative, scientific, and dialogic value of reviewing as an exercise in critical reading, shared responsibility, and original contribution to philological knowledge. The reflection concludes with a call to preserve such instruments of awareness in an age marked by a crisis of truth and interpretation.
Vittorini and the french and english editions of 'Le Meretrici'
Elio Vittorini's Le città del mondo is a work-in-progress, a magma of ideas and projects conceived, then altered, abandoned, and resumed in new forms; the printed edition is a posthumous edition, constructed according to non-philological criteria. In this situation, it is more important than ever to focus on what the author himself published during his lifetime. From the project Le città del mondo, two publications were issued during the author's lifetime, covering the same portion of the text: one in France, published by Gallimard, and the other in England, by Jonathan Cape. In 1997, Edoardo Esposito compared these with the first edition, identifying some textual discrepancies; however, the issue has remained underexplored, and no material evidence seemed to support the authorship of the Cape and Gallimard operations. Two documents have been found in the Vittorini Archive at the Centro Apice, filed among the preparatory materials for magazine extracts, which share the same characteristics as the foreign editions identified by Esposito. Through a series of collations and comparisons, the probable authorship of the editorial operation has been verified, allowing for reflection on its purposes.
Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
«He will be forgotten because he is incomprehensible». Luigi Meneghello as an unpublished translator of John Donne
The article explores the Luigi Meneghello’s unpublished translations into Vicentine dialect of selected texts by John Donne. Through the examination of avant-textual materials and the genetic reconstruction of the texts, the study conducts an analysis of selected passages that exemplify the methods by which the author adapts the original poems to the Vicentine cultural and linguistic system. The translations are then situated within the broader context of Meneghello’s literary work. In the appendix is provided the translation of The Good-Morrow.
Cronaca della tavola rotonda IL LIBRO DIGITALE E LE NUOVE PROSPETTIVE EDITORIALI (Università degli Studi di Milano, 3 maggio 2023)
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More on Montale’s "Midsummer-Night’s Dream" translations. New witnesses and documents
The essay presents a new witness to Montale’s Midsummer-Night’s Dream translation. It consists of the script owned by Guido Salvini, who collaborated with Max Reinhardt in directing the show during the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in 1933. This script contains the first form of the translation, earlier to the text used by Reinhardt (worse, as the new witness helps to show) and to the booklet (which contains, as is known, a text partially modified by Francesco Pastonchi). The script is also compared with a copy of the booklet that Montale gave to Mario Praz: Montale’s annotations on this copy confirm his primitive metrics and translation choices. Lastly the full text of Montale’s translation according to the Salvini-script is published, together with the booklet variants and Montale’s annotations.
In the secret of a revolutionary laboratory
The paper offers a meticulous overview of the guiding principles and decisions that have shaped the preparation of the National Edition of Giovanni Verga’s Works: the progress achieved to date, the ongoing efforts, and the plans for the future, both immediate and long-term. Retracing the stages involved in the creation of such a monumental undertaking as the National Edition of Verga’s works inevitably means, in the author’s own words, «charting the history [...] of authorial philology as applied to prose texts in the late 20th century». From the earliest editions of Verga’s works to the establishment of the Verga Foundation, from the inception of the first series of the National Edition to the critical exploration of Verga’s correspondence, this account provides a detailed map of the genesis and development of the literary production and critical study of a pillar of Italy’s narrative tradition.
«Forse non è più tempo di vacanza». Records, translations and unpublished autographs from the correspondence between Vittorio Sereni and Ariodante Marianni (1959-1982)
The rich correspondence between Vittorio Sereni and the translator and poet Ariodante Marianni allows to retrace the key moments of a profound friendship that lasted more than twenty years. The essay delves into the most relevant human and literary experiences shared between these two figures both in public and in private contexts. Moreover, between 1959 and 1961, Sereni sent Marianni some early versions of poems later included in his collection Gli strumenti umani. A philological appendix focused on these unpublished autographs is added at the end of the paper.
Edizioni di testi e applicazioni ecdotiche
For the new catalogue of Ugo Foscolo’s letters. Part 1. The collections of Giuseppe Martini, Federico Gentili di Giuseppe, Natale Mazzolà e Maria Calzavara di Mazzolà: discoveries, notes, annotations
The contribution presents some of the methods and operational choices undertaken in the realisation of the new catalogue of Foscolo’s letters starting from the analysis of the collections of Giuseppe Martini, Natale Mazzol. and Maria Calzavara and Federico Gentili di Giuseppe. The reconstruction of the collections and the events that affected them, the current location of the autographs and their analysis will provide an example of the methodological approach followed and the effort to update the entire corpus.
In Cesare Pavese's Classical Translations Laboratory. The 'terrible language' of Philoctetes: critical edition and commentary
In approaching the history of Cesare Pavese's relationship with Greek language and culture, the contribution focuses on the private translations he carried out during his confinement in Brancaleone calabro (1935-1936). This period marks a turning point in his learning of Greek, which will also influence his subsequent creative production.The author's very particular translation choices are analysed in the contribution, starting with the translation of Sophoclean Philoctetes (vv. 1-169), whose critical edition and commentary is provided.
Copyright (c) 2024 Prassi Ecdotiche della Modernità Letteraria https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
On the variants of «O beatrice» by Giovanni Giudici
«O beatrice» marks a turning point in Giovanni Giudici’s poetic journey, especially from the point of view of linguistic experimentation and meta-poetic reflection. Indeed, in the period coinciding with the writing of the collection, Giudici reflected onthe issue of poetic language and his own conception of the poem. This paper sets out someof Giudici’s literary and philological reflections and analyzes the most significant authorial variants, identified through survey work in the archives, in order to outline the poet’s main lines of work and shed new light on the author’s poetics and the 1972 collection.
«Due timidi». Carteggio Vittorio Sereni-Lento Goffi
Il contributo indaga i rapporti tra Vittorio Sereni e Lento Goffi attraverso la pubblicazione, con commento, delle lettere corse dal 1951 al 1980: quelle attualmente note, diciannove più due telegrammi, sono conservate presso l’Archivio Sereni di Luino e l’Archivio privato Goffi. «Due timidi». Correspondence Vittorio Sereni-Lento Goffi The paper investigates the relationships between Vittorio Sereni and Lento Goffi through the publication, with a commentary, of the letters from 1951 to 1980: those currently known, nineteen plus two telegrams, are preserved in the Archivio Sereni of Luino and in the Archivio privato Goffi.
Sulla nuova edizione del «Giornale di guerra e di prigionia», «Il castello di Udine» e altre questioni gaddiane
Il saggio prende in esame la recente edizione del Giornale di guerra e di prigionia di Carlo Emilio Gadda (Adelphi 2023), a cura di Paola Italia, mettendone in luce le novità e le differenze rispetto al testo critico procurato da Dante Isella (Garzanti 1992). I quaderni riemersi nel 2019, redatti da Gadda nel novembre-dicembre 1918 durante la prigionia a Celle Lager, rivelano dati cruciali sul suo rapporto conflittuale con Ugo Betti e sulle connessioni tra il Giornale e le prose belliche del Castello di Udine (Edizioni di Solaria 1934). Delving Into the New Edition of Carlo Emilio Gadda’s “Giornale di guerra e di prigionia” and its Relation to “Il castello di Udine” and Other Works The essay examines the latest edition of Carlo Emilio Gadda’s Giornale di guerra e di prigionia (Adelphi 2023), curated by Paola Italia, highlighting its innovations and differences compared to the critical text provided by Dante Isella (Garzanti 1992). The notebooks, unearthed in 2019 and penned by Gadda during his imprisonment in Celle Lager in November-December 1918, unveil crucial insights into his conflicted relationship with Ugo Betti and the interrelations between the Giornale and the war-related prose later collected in Il castello di Udine (Edizioni di Solaria 1934).
Antigraph and Author's Variants: Observations from Elio Vittorini's Archive Papers
Obiettivo di questo intervento è presentare quello che ormai si definisce abitualmente un ‘caso di studio’, scelto tra le carte dell’Archivio personale di Elio Vittorini, conservato presso il Centro APICE dell’Università degli Studi di Milano, dove sono conservati alcuni documenti che senza dubbio alcuno possono essere considerati i materiali che sono stati consegnati in tipografia per la composizione dei volumi a stampa di alcune opere dell’autore. Inoltre, sono conservati anche altri documenti che si pongono in diretta relazione con questo preciso momento del lavoro sul testo letterario, cioè appunto le fasi che precedono il ‘visto si stampi’. L’osservazione di queste carte consente di misurare empiricamente alcune definizioni di antigrafo, ricavandone considerazioni utili per potere sostenere la loro efficacia in termini non tanto descrittivi, quanto piuttosto interpretativi, quando è possibile introdurre di fronte ai documenti conservati una lettura che si inserisca nel quadro della critica delle varianti e della filologia d’autore.
OEC Seminar _ The Question of the Antigraph
Durante la preparazione delle relazioni per la loro pubblicazione è emerso con evidenza – data la possibilità di misurarsi con gli esiti scritti di un confronto avvenuto in forma orale ormai un anno fa – quanto il passaggio alla tecnologia digitale interferisca non solo con alcuni dei processi produttivi del libro, ma anche con le fasi di lavorazione del testo, ciò in particolare perché viene eliminato il processo di composizione tipografica. Con il digitale infatti più nessuno ricompone il testo dell’autore, il quale viene fatto passare di file in file, di software in software (importato in particolare da un software di videoscrittura di uso privato, come l’ampiamente diffuso Microsoft Word, al software di impaginazione attualmente di riferimento, cioè Adobe InDesing, di uso invece professionale), fino alla sua pubblicazione, la quale per altro non necessariamente coincide con l’impressione su carta, ma può portare alla creazione di un formato ePub leggibile su supporti digitali, appunto. Ma che l’esito sia un libro cartaceo o un ebook non interferisce con la questione dell’antigrafo che si sta qui indagando.
Il ruolo dell’editing nell’elaborazione dell’antigrafo
A partire da alcune esperienze sul campo, il presente contributo mette in luce le difficoltà di ricostruire il passaggio dall’originale all’antigrafo di testi che hanno subito un processo editoriale moderno, entro il quale sono spesso coinvolte varie figure, talvolta numerose e parecchio diverse l’una dall’altra. In un tale contesto, infatti, è necessario considerare anche gli scambi tra l’autore, il redattore e le altre persone coinvolte, molti dei quali tuttavia, non sono documentabili. Dunque, anche per opere recentissime, come è normale in filologia, ciò a cui si può giungere è quasi sempre, se non sempre, solo un’approssimazione o un’ipotesi. The role of editing in creating the antigraph Taking its cue from some relevant experiences within the field, this contribution highlights the difficulties in reconstructing the transition from the original to the antigraph of texts that have undergone a modern editorial process. This usually involves various figures, sometimes quite different from each other. In such a context, it is necessary to consider the exchanges between the author, the editor, and individuals, many of which, however, are not always documented. Therefore, even for works that have been very recently published, as is usual in philology, what can be achieved is almost always, if not always, only an approximation or a hypothesis.
Alcune osservazioni sul termine antigrafo
Il presente contributo, afferente al ciclo di incontri intitolato L’albero e le sue radici II. La questione dell’antigrafo: carte per il tipografo, prende le mosse da una riflessione sul termine "antigrafo" e sulla differente accezione con cui viene impiegato dai filologi che operano in ambiti diversi. Da tale osservazione muove la proposta, del resto già insita in una delle tante definizioni date del vocabolo, di adottarlo in senso più largo, non solo affinché filologi classici, romanzi e italiani possano più facilmente intendersi, ma anche perché divenga applicabile allo studio delle tradizioni di testi del Novecento che, prodotti da pratiche diverse, per le quali godiamo di una documentazione sempre più vasta e dettagliata, richiedono un ampliamento delle categorie. Some observations on the term "antigraph". This contribution, which opens the section dedicated to the seminar The Tree and Its Roots II: The Issue of the Copy: Papers for the Typographer, begins with a reflection on the term "antigraph" and its different meanings employed by philologists working in various fields, sometimes causing communication difficulties. From this observation arises the proposal to adopt the term in a broader sense, not only to enable scholars to share the same specific language but also to apply it to the study of contemporary texts. These texts, produced through different writing practices and tools, require an expansion of categories.
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Recensione di Angela Siciliano, Catalogo della biblioteca di Giorgio Bassani, Ravenna, Pozzi, 2023
Recensione di Voltaire, «La Pulcella d’Orléans. Traduzione in ottava rima di Vincenzo Monti», a cura di Arnaldo Bruni, Bologna, CLUEB, 2020,
Recensione di Francesco Sberlati e Riccarco Paolo Uguccioni (a cura di), «Giulio Perticari filologo e patriota», Ancona, Il lavoro editoriale, 2023
Per il "Quaderno di traduzioni" di Montale. La prima stampa dei "Frammenti di una riduzione del Midsummer-Night’s Dream" di Shakespeare
Il saggio ricostruisce l’occasione e la storia testuale dei Frammenti di una riduzione del Midsummer-Night’s Dream (Quaderno di traduzioni, 1948). Montale collaborò, traducendo le parti in versi, alla versione italiana preparata da Paola Ojetti per la messinscena di Max Reinhardt, in occasione del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino del 1933. Non venne tuttavia accreditato come autore: il suo contributo si ricava dal quaderno di regia di Reinhardt e dal libretto di scena, che qui si analizzano come testimoni della versione del Maggio. Si offre infine l’edizione critica dei frammenti. Montale’s Quaderno di traduzioni. The Frammenti di una riduzione del Midsummer-Night’s Dreamand their first print The paper focuses on Montale’s Frammenti di una riduzione del Midsummer-Night’s Dream (Quaderno di traduzioni, 1948), and analyses their drawing up circumstances and textual history. Montale helped Paola Ojetti to translate the play for Max Reinhardt’s staging, on the occasion of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in 1933. He translated the verse sequences, but was not credited as author. One can read his translation in Reinhardt’s promptbook and in the booklet of the show, which are here considered as textual witnesses of the Maggio version. Lastly, a critical edition of the Frammenti is produced.
Review of Paola Italia e Monica Zanardo (eds.), «Il testo violato e l’inchiostro bianco. Varianti d’autore e potere», Roma, Viella, 2023,