Carlo Ossola

Italian literary critic (born in Turin in 1946), Professor of Italian Literature at the universities of Geneva (1976-82), Padua (1982-88) and Turin (1988-1999). Since 2000, he is Professor at the Collège de France, Paris, where he holds the Chair of Modern Literatures of Neo-Latin Europe. Co-editor of the journals «Lettere Italiane» and «Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa»; member of the Accademia dei Lincei since 1995, member of the Scientific Council of the Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana.

From 2007 to 2017 Carlo Ossola was Director of the Institute of Italian Studies, USI. Author of essays in which philological acuity joins with the insights of the comparatist and the historian of ideas, he has worked extensively on Renaissance civilisation and on court culture in Europe: Autunno del Rinascimento: "Idea del tempio dell´arte" nell´ultimo Cinquecento, 1971 [re-edition 2014];  Dal "Cortegiano" all´"Uomo di mondo": storia di un libro e di un modello sociale, 1987, and its extended French edition: Miroirs sans visage. Du courtisan à l´homme de la rue, 1997. On the topoi of texts and ideas, at the frontier of literary space and its interpreters, are dedicated Figurato e rimosso: icone e interni del testo, 1988; e L´Avenir de nos origines. Le copiste et le prophète, 2004. In his studies dedicated to contemporary authors, a prominent place is reserved to Ungaretti: the monograph Giuseppe Ungaretti, 1975; the commented edition of the 1916 text of Il Porto Sepolto, 1981; the re-edition of Il povero nella città (1993), a book of poetic prose dating from 1949; and a volume of rare writings Filosofia fantastica. Prose di meditazione e d´intervento (1926-1929), 1997; the new "Meridiani" edition of the Poesie complete, 2009 and of the Traduzioni poetiche, 2010. He has edited unpublished and rare works by Juan de Valdés, E. Tesauro, J.-B. Bossuet, A. Rossi, C. Cantù, W. Deonna, R. Caillois, M. Olivetti, M. de Certeau, R. Barthes, D. Hammarskjöld, with particular emphasis on Baroque culture: L´anima in barocco: testi del Seicento italiano, 1995; Le antiche memorie del nulla, 1997 and 2007. For twenty years he directed the Corsi di Alta Cultura  organised by the Giorgio Cini Foundation, publishing, with Vittore Branca, volumes of broad cultural interest. He has dedicated in-depth studies to the institutional role of literature in schools: Brano a brano. L´antologia di italiano nella scuola media inferiore, 1978, and with P. M. Bertinetto: La pratica della scrittura: costruzione e analisi del testo poetico, 1976, alongside Insegnare stanca, 1982. He has edited, with Cesare Segre, the Antologia della poesia italiana (3 vol., 1997-'99) for the "Pléiade" Einaudi-Gallimard. Recent works include: Il continente interiore, Venezia, Marsilio, 2010; Libri d´Italia. 1861-2011 (Classici Ricciardi, 2011); Introduzione alla Divina Commedia (Marsilio, 2012); Letteratura italiana. Canone dei classici, UTET, 2012, VIII vol.; Conversation sur le temps (with Michel Butor), 2012; À vif. La création et les signes, 2013.