Ritratto di uno stereotipo? Cicerone poeta e critico di poesia nelle antologie per la scuola di Giovanni Pascoli

Author: Gandini, Claudia
Title: Ritratto di uno stereotipo? Cicerone poeta e critico di poesia nelle antologie per la scuola di Giovanni Pascoli
Review/Collection: "Ciceroniana on line" IV, 1, 2020
Editor: Société Internationale des Amis de Cicéron
Year edition: 2020
Pages: 119-154
Keywords: Héritage - Fortuna - Legacy, Poesia - Poesie - Poetry, Stylistique et genres littéraires - Stilistica e generi letterari - Stylistics and literary genre
Description: [Abstract] The paper examines how Giovanni Pascoli portrays Cicero as both poet and critic in his school-room anthologies Lyra and Epos, published between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. In the foreword to both textbooks, Cicero emerges as an accomplished orator but a poor poet, a versifier who clings to tradition and whose verses show little sensitivity to the innovations of the so called Neoterics. The paper argues that Pascoli’s opinion is to be understood within the context of the ongoing debate in Italy about approaches to classical studies. Such debate took shape in opposition to the stance taken by German scholars of the Altertumswissenschaft, in particular by Theodor Mommsen who, in his Römische Geschichte, harshly criticises Cicero’s political and literary career. As part of the analysis, the paper studies the criteria underpinning Pascoli’s edition, translation and commentary of epichistorical fragments collected in Epos, with a focus on excerpts from De consulato suo (fr. II S = 10 Court).
Works:
Link: https://www.ojs.unito.it/index.php/COL/article/view/4673
Author initials: Gandini 20202