Abstract

The article proposes some considerations about the question concerning Dante's fortune in the Italian studies. Running from the age of the 'Risorgimento' and through Italian unification into the present years, the author gives an outline of what have been the main differences in the way of reading Dante. Special attention is devoted to great criticism of Michele Barbi and of Ernesto Giacomo Parodi, after words to the speeches pronounced by Benedetto Croce in 1921 and by Gianfranco Contini in 1996. Major problems like that of the unity (or of non-unity) in the dantean Poem meet the theoretical question of what poetry is, as well as that one on the role of philology in understanding Dante. And to finish some remarks reveal a rather pessimistic view of the author in his considering the perspective that, in the near future, young generations will understand the dantean tongue.