A discussion followed the presentation. The biography analyses the complex figure of the Slavist intellectual of Florentine origin who emigrated to the United States in 1938 and during his years at Harvard University was one of the founders of the discipline of comparative literature.
Renato Poggioli (Florence 1907-1963) was an Italian literary critic and specialist in Russian literature. He is known for his book Teoria dell’arte d’avanguardia of 1962, translated into English as The Theory of the Avant-garde. In it he argued for the strict connection of the avant garde with the legacy of Romanticism.
The book consists of sixteen essays by historians, Slavists, and Italian scholars of international renown who for the first time reconstruct the multifaceted identity of one of the most influential Italian academics on the international scene during the Second World War.
The speaker was Roberto Ludovico, director of the Italian Studies programme at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.