De Sanctis e la storiografia letteraria italiana

Abstract

The author analyses the impact of the «Storia della letteratura italiana» by Francesco De Sanctis about the Italian historiography of the Twentieth century, pointing out how the historicist line by De Sanctis has established itself as a historiographical model for the whole later literary history while, at the same time, it proposes an ideological reduction, from Croce and Gentile, to Gramsci, with the underlining of the «militant» aspects of his work. De Sanctis has conceived his «Storia» in relationship with the unitary process of the Risorgimento: only Carlo Dionisotti has criticised the historical reasons of such a model, and has aptly proposed a radical alternative one of a historical-geographical type. This alternative has recently begun to achieve results at a formative level.