Attualità di Contini filologo

Gianfranco Contini was the master of the italian philology in the XXth century. His idea of textual transmission and reconstruction, firmly grounded in a linguistic and structuralist thoeretical background, presented two key points: to deal with the diachronic development of medieval texts, and to publish them in a form readable by the contemporary public, as a part of our cultural history. This principles are questioned by the recent “new” philology, in which the focus on the synchronic dimension of the individual manuscript does not take into account the dynamic of textual variation and treats medieval texts as dead heritage. If we aim to renew understanding of the European literary tradition, Contini's philology is indispensable.