Abstract

Having taken note of the critical and didactic duplicity of the anthology, the essay questions the reasons which, starting from the late sixteenth century, favored its adoption in schools and made it the privileged method of approach to the literary texts. In particular it hypothesizes a connection between the culture of censorship expressed in the Index and the teaching model developed in the Jesuit colleges and defined by the Compagnia in the Costituzioni and in the Ratio studiorum. This model has been implemented in public schools without questioning the genesis, nature and implications of a teaching practice that most students and teachers continue to consider natural and neutral.