20th Century Italian Studies of Literature and Arts. An Archival, Intermedial and Digital Approach

This research proposal aims to investigate and analyze the main contributions of Italian Studies of Literature and Arts in the 20th century. By focusing on three case studies of particular relevance, we intend to study the key theoretical frameworks and critical approaches present in these studies; secondly, their authors’ visual culture and the iconotextual strategies adopted in their works; thirdly, the scientific relevance and more general cultural impact of the latter, in particular on artistic and literary creation.

Studies on the relationships of literature with the other arts and media constitute today one of the most vibrant areas within Comparative Literature. The study of their history on the one hand can enhance the new insights the most recent approaches have to offer; on the other hand, it can encourage epistemological revision and the development of new research directions, not only in the field of Comparative Literature but also in recently emerging neighbouring fields such as Visual Culture Studies and Intermedial Studies. Historical investigations on this field are still, however, still scarce, and focused exclusively on key theoretical frameworks and critical approaches. Within them, little attention is paid to Italian language studies.

In contrast, Italian Studies of Literature and Arts constitute a laboratory particularly suited to the study of the history of the field – it should be specified that, by Italian studies, we mean those belonging to the Italian cultural sphere as a whole, including Italian-speaking Switzerland. As emerged from the preparatory bibliographic surveys, Italian studies offer a rich and varied history. Some very important cases emerge within it, those of Mario Praz, Giovanni Pozzi, and Lea Ritter Santini, which stand out not only for the specific importance of their contributions, but also, on the one hand, for the rich dialogue interwoven with the international debate on the subject; on the other, for the very recent accessibility of their archives.

This research proposal intends to go beyond the approach focused solely on the key theoretical frameworks and critical approaches, integrating it with the study of the authors’ visual culture, the iconotextual strategies adopted in their work and the academic and broadly cultural impact of the latter. In pursuit of these objectives, it makes use of an enlargement of the corpus and the adoption of a mixed methodology. For the first time in the history of these studies, this proposal makes use of scholarly archives (papers, correspondence, libraries and photo archives), with the possibility of gaining highly valuable insights into theoretical frameworks, visual culture and the impact of their owners. In terms of methodology, this project goes beyond the traditional approach of the History of Science/of Ideas, integrating it, on the one hand, with the methodologies of Intermedial Analysis applied to the authors’ critical iconotexts; on the other hand, with the Digital Humanities, with specific reference to the tools of recognition of visual and textual patterns and of social network analysis. In this regard, a partnership has been established with Cambridge Digital Humanities. Another area of methodological experimentation is the study of the photo archives of Literature and Arts’ scholars, developed in partnership with the Photothek of the Kunsthistorisches Institut Florenz.

Results will be relevant not only for Comparative Literature, but also for Visual Cultural Studies, Intermedial Studies and Italian Studies. In the fields of Digital Humanities and Photo Archives Studies, the project is the first experiment in applying the respective methodologies to critical studies on Literature and the Arts. In a broader sense, this research will have an important impact not only from a scientific but also from a cultural point of view, especially with regard to the reception of Literature and Arts Studies among writers and artists.