Modernist Storytellers. The Legacy of Luigi Pulci's Morgante in Modern Italy
This talk examines how the Transnational Italian Avant-garde revived and adapted a masterpiece in the literary genre of Renaissance epic: Il Morgante, written by Luigi Pulci in late-Quattrocento Florence at the behest of the Medici household. The talk shows how two of the most innovative protagonists of modern Italian literature - Alberto Savinio and Giorgio Manganelli - received and challenged this epic by reshaping it across arts and media to convey modern intentions and respond to new audiences. Building on the theoretical frameworks of adaptation and media studies, the talk discusses what readers discover about Pulci's oeuvre when we consider it through the lens of modernist authors, and analyzes the new light that these case studies shed on the many complexities surrounding Italy's modernity. Ultimately, this talk argues that looking at our classics through the lens of their diverse receptions allows us to tackle a crucial issue in the field of Humanities: how do
we read our past, and why?
