"When the Text Undresses and re-dresses": Giancarlo Mazzacurati as a Commentator of Classics in Italian Narrative

Abstract

In the last years before his passing, Giancarlo Mazzacurati assigned a privileged place to the practice of commentary, in line with his interests as a scholar of comparative and contemporary literature, making it the key for an interpretive method that is rigorously accompanied by the required philological apparatus, that is respectful of the historical and semantic identity of the text, and that is nevertheless concerned in achieving values that speak to the present. In this paper I will focus, in particular, on two texts commented by Mazzacurati in the first half of the Nineties, only a few years before his death: Mastro-don Gesualdo (ed. 1992) and The Late Mattia Pascal (ed. 1993).

Keywords

• Mazzacurati
• Verga
• Pirandello
• Commento
• Filologia