Conference on Giovanni Pascoli in Argentina

An important conference on the effect of Giovanni Pascoli on Italian and European culture is being held this week in Argentina.

More than fifty researchers from Italy, Spain, Uruguay, Brazil and Argentina are seeking to shed some light on the integration of high culture and what could be termed “popular culture” in the language and literature of Italy.

This will be the main direction of the XVIII Congress of Italian Language and Literature Teachers and Researchers Association of Italian Language and Literature (ADILLI).

Last April marked a century of the death of one of the most important poets of the Italian literary history, and the conference will take a leading role in deciding just how important was Pascoli to European culture.

Giovanni Pascoli was one of the few Italian intellectuals of the late nineteenth century pursuing the same ends in Italian or Latin literature.

“He was a great interpreter of popular and social bodies of the Great Proletarian, as he defined Italy,” says Diego Poli, professor at the University of Macerata and specialist in the work of the author of Myricae.

“His poetic sensitivity was enhanced by his ability to listen,” insists Poli.

“Pascoli drew inspiration from such masters as Virgil, Dante and Homer but also from the peasants of Romagna and the Lucchesia with whom he shared his love of nature”.

His work is a fusion between unparalleled high culture and popular culture.

An Italian literary who’s great expressive power mixed popular Italian expressions with garfagnine, the Lucchesia Tuscan dialect.