GIUDICI, ZANZOTTO, RABONI. AUTONOMIE ED ETERONOMIE DELLA PROSA

This dissertation investigates the non-fiction production of three Italian poets of the second half of the twentieth century: Giovanni Giudici, Andrea Zanzotto, and Giovanni Raboni. Adopting a transdisciplinary approach, it shows how these writings, often considered a "secondo mestiere”, according to Montale's definition, do not play a merely ancillary or vicarious role in the interpretation of the poetical work of their authors, but they prove crucial for the understanding of their intellectual figures. Following an Introduction that provides essential contextual details and describes the aims, scope, and method of the dissertation, Part One looks at the post-1991 non-fiction writings of these three authors, linking them to the end of a whole Weltanschauung. What emerges is a sense of the awareness that literary criticism and essay writing in general developed of political dynamics in the contemporary world. Part Two identifies and scrutinises this textual corpus from its beginnings, datable between the Liberation and the Economic Boom, considering Giudici, Zanzotto, and Raboni’s non-fiction and literary criticism books as macro-texts and a means of verification of the season they were written in. The Third and final Part analyses some newly-recovered unpublished, scattered, or unsigned essays and highlights their significance by framing them as part of the intellectual reflection of their authors.