Ancient/Modern: the topicality of an antithesis

CYCLE: Ancient Modern: A Journey Through European literatures
SPEAKER: Mario Barenghi
DATE: Tuesday, December 2, 6:00 PM
LOCATION: Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, Largo di Villa Peretti 2

For several centuries, the ancient/modern antinomy constituted an important tool for interpreting literary phenomena and, generally, cultural evolution: a near-mandatory reference for any broad theoretical reflection, compared to a more slender and discontinuous presence of other opposing terms with respect to the modern West, which were often confined to the dimension of fashion (from eighteenth-century turqueries and chinoiseries up to the primitivism of the twentieth-century avant-gardes, through the japonisme of the entre deux siècles). Today, the opposition between ancient and modern, which is constitutively Eurocentric, seems to have lost its functionality, partly due to the serious weakening of the sense of history among the younger generations. Is there something that can replace it? Or is it no longer the time for antinomies today?
 

Mario Barenghi (Milano 1956) Milan 1956) teaches Contemporary Italian Literature at the University of Milano-Bicocca. His research focuses on narrative of the last centuries and literary theory. His latest published volumes are Poetici primati. Saggio su letteratura e evoluzione (Poetic Primates. Essay on Literature and Evolution) (Quodlibet, 2020), Il chimico e l’ostrica. Studi su Primo Levi (The Chemist and the Oyster. Studies on Primo Levi) (ibid., 2022), In extremis. Il tema funebre nella letteratura italiana del Novecento (In Extremis. The Funeral Theme in Twentieth-Century Italian Literature) (Carocci, 2023), and Calvino politeista. Studi per anniversari (Polytheistic Calvino. Studies for Anniversaries) (ibid., 2024).

Admission is free, subject to availability
Reservations via this link.