Abstract

In 1990 Federico Tiezzi commissioned Giovanni Giudici to rewrite Dante’s Paradiso for his stage adaption of the entire Commedia, which was concluded the following year. This article aims to analyse Giudici’s drama from an intertextual perspective, by highlighting the way the poet used a great variety of literary and philosophical works as the basis for his personal interpretation of Dante’s third cantica. More specifically, it explores the relationship between Giudici’s rewriting and Walter Benjamin’s philosophical account of history and language as well as Augustin’s Confessions and other significant works and authors (like Paul of Tarsus, Franz Kafka, T.S. Eliot and Giacomo Noventa), who are quoted in the poet’s private notebooks but also in the text itself. Lastly, by considering Giudici’s poetic production and essays, the essay provides an interpretation of the text which takes into account the author’s poetic theory