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Italiani di scrittori. Sondaggi linguistici dal primo Novecento a oggi

The book offers some insights on authors of prose, still little investigated, placed between the early twentieth century and today. In the exploration of paths, works and presences, faced with the tools of linguistic analysis, two main red lines emerge: the one that binds the writers of the so-called entertainment literature, possibly turned to comedy (thus the essays on Guido da Verona, Piero Chiara and Ferzan Ozpetek); and the thread that is twisted on more or less pinkish female banks, on which are placed the essays on the poetess Antonia Pozzi, whose private writing is studied in diaries and letters, on Chiara Gamberale, on Jhumpa Lahiri and on other non-native-speaking writers who have chosen Italian as the language of literary expression; the Italians to whom the title of the book refers are in fact the different manifestations of our language, not necessarily the nationalities of the authors who employ it. In addition to a contribution dedicated to the essay writing of Claudio Magris, the collection is completed by some other insights on the themes of photonovels, romance happy endings and books on Italian. The chapters of which the volume is mostly composed are also united by the study approach, focused on the texts and aimed at their analysis by linguistic-stylistic levels, in particular, but not exclusively, with respect to rhetoric, syntax and lexicon. Starting from objective reliefs, in any case far from exhausting the richness of the texts, the purpose is to arrive at considerations of wider scope, with the aim of historicizing, interpreting and better characterizing the physiognomy of the works or authors considered. The exercise on texts has shown how the test of linguistic analysis can clarify or, in some cases, overturn impressionistic considerations.


Giuseppe Sergio teaches Italian Linguistics and Italian Language for foreigners at the University of Milan. He studied contemporary Italian, especially in his sectorial uses, also studying the vocabulary of fashion in the nineteenth century and the literary language of the twentieth century, even in its most popular declinations. In 2018 he edited the ninth volume of the National Edition of the Works of Giuseppe Parini, dedicated to the «Gazzetta di Milano» (1769).

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