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Editors' Introduction: Tradition and the Individual Text

2019; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 134; Issue: S Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/mln.2019.0051

1080-6598

Federica Brunori Deigan, Francesco Ciabattoni, Stefano Giannini,

Giambattista Vico and Joyce

Editors' Introduction:Tradition and the Individual Text Federica Brunori Deigan (bio), Francesco Ciabattoni (bio), and Stefano Giannini (bio) "No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead. I mean this as a principle of æsthetic, not merely historical, criticism." (T.S. Eliot, 273) "Un'ora di solitudine può vincere i vuoti del tempo, e una vita letteraria si fa d'improvviso presente, è possibile ascoltarne netta la voce in mezzo al brusio contemporaneo." (Maria Corti, 11) The teaching of Pier Massimo Forni at Johns Hopkins University has provided guidance for generations of Italian scholars in North America. His seminal essays in the field of Italian literature have been a beacon for researchers on both sides of the Atlantic. This volume collects a set of original essays generously contributed by many friends, colleagues and former students of Pier Massimo Forni who are all indebted to his teaching and wisdom. Echoing T. S. Eliot's famous essay, "Tradition and the Individual Talent," the title of this volume is meant to recall the core vision of [End Page S-ix] Eliot's poetry and literary criticism which also constituted the core of Forni's teaching: each literary text must be analyzed as a link in the chain of its tradition, i.e. the literary critic must pay attention to both the text's references to its literary antecedents and the individual novelties contained in it. The voice of the creative artist in the artifact is as engaged in a dialogue with past masters and contemporary interlocutors as it is in singing a new song. The shared theme of this collection of essays is Forni's core belief that tradition has a shaping influence in both the creation and the evaluation of the individual artwork. The artist's dialogue with beloved masters and/or opposing predecessors is embedded in the fabric of the text via patterns of phrases, meaningful echoes, variations on wording. The critic detects these implicit references to highlight the artist's innovation as well as his stance vis à vis tradition. The goal to reconstruct and explicate this literary network is the unifying method that inspires our critical investigations. Pier Massimo Forni wrote about many authors and aspects of Italian literature, not only revealing new viewpoints from which to examine the classics, but also directing attention to the fundamentals of essay writing through the use of finely honed critical tools. His humble and dedicated attitude in analyzing and interpreting a textual artifact has often unearthed hidden aspects within the text itself. Forni's inspiring motto, predicare criticamente (to teach critically), has become a methodological point of reference among scholars of literature who, in their profession, have to tread the fine line between fidelity to the text at hand and its possible philosophical and psychological interpretations. To write literary criticism means to do readers a service, to illuminate a text, to choose a lens and explore its diffractive potentials. If a work of literature is a captivating panorama that we may glimpse through a window, literary criticism is the pane through which we gaze. One important way to understand and critically teach a text is to place it in the context of literary traditions. This volume presents an array of essays by established scholars in the fields of literature, music, cinema and cultural studies, all unified by Forni's critical method. The present collection represents not only a living testimony of Forni's impact on Humanistic Studies worldwide, but also a rich opportunity to approach critically different texts so as to shed light on unexplored points of contact. The individual contributions each stand out for their clarity and academic thoroughness, and the volume's thematic richness and variety is in itself an innovative approach to the study of the humanities: [End Page S-x] Forni's lesson shows that virtually any text (a poem, a film, a TV show) can be analyzed consistently through the lens of philology and intellectual rigor. The originality of analysis and the reach of...