Abstract

Thanks to huge linguistic coring into Beppe Fenoglio’s work, we now know that the « grande stile » was the outcome of a long path of research. The present essay intends to go back to the beginnings of this path and trace it back to the writer’s youthful workshop, focusing on the first Resistance production: the analysis starts from the seven Racconti della guerra civile and then moves to the Appunti Partigiani focusing on the lexical, syntactic and rhetorical components. The investigation also benefits from the possibilities offered by the critical editions of which Fenoglio’s work, for well-known reasons, is extraordinarily provided: some information will, in fact, be drawn from the valuable variant apparatuses that certify the corrective process. This work does not pretend a character of exhaustiveness, but aims, in the meantime, to focus on the stylistic peculiarities of these early writings and to highlight similarities and dissimilarities between these early writings and the later production.