Riccardo Donati: Leo Spitzer. Un profilo intellettuale

The Casa di Goethe is pleased to host the presentation of Leo Spitzer. Un profilo intellettuale, published by Carocci in March 2026. The author, Riccardo Donati, will be in conversation with the writer and essayist Guido Mazzoni.

One of the foremost philologists and literary critics of the twentieth century, Leo Spitzer (1887–1960) profoundly shaped the humanities through a method of textual interpretation based on the interplay of language, style, history and culture. Born in Vienna, forced into exile following the rise of Nazism, and later a professor in Europe and the United States, Spitzer embodied a conception of philology as a means of fostering dialogue between cultures and deepening our understanding of the human experience.

Filling a significant gap in Italian scholarship, Leo Spitzer. Un profilo intellettuale retraces the fifty-year career of Spitzer as a scholar and university teacher, offering a compelling portrait of his vibrant personality and of a European intellectual whose thought remains remarkably relevant today. His work continues to provide an essential point of reference for literary criticism, comparative literature and interdisciplinary research.

The event offers an opportunity to rediscover one of the central figures of twentieth-century European intellectual life and to reflect on the enduring legacy of his critical method through a conversation between Riccardo Donati and Guido Mazzoni.

Riccardo Donati © private

Riccardo Donati teaches Italian Literature at the Scuola Superiore Meridionale and the University of Naples Federico II. His research focuses on Italian and Euro-American literature from the eighteenth century to the present day. His recent publications include Critica della trasparenza. Letteratura e mito architettonico (Rosenberg & Sellier, 2016), Apri gli occhi e resisti. Sull’opera in versi e in prosa di Antonella Anedda (Carocci, 2020), Il vampiro, la diva, il clown. Incarnazioni poetiche di spettri cinematografici (Quodlibet, 2022), Queste mie carte argute. Sei studi su Giuseppe Parini (Cesati, 2022), and Leo Spitzer. Un profilo intellettuale (Carocci, 2026). In 2013, he was awarded the Giuseppe Borgia Prize by the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in recognition of his contributions to the study of poetry.

Guido Mazzoni © Dino Ignani

Guido Mazzoni has published, among other works, the poetry collections I mondi (Donzelli, 2010; Tirinnanzi Prize) and La pura superficie (Donzelli, 2017; Naples Prize and Pagliarani Prize); the books of literary criticism and theory Forma e solitudine (Marcos y Marcos, 2002), Sulla poesia moderna (Il Mulino, 2005), Teoria del romanzo (Il Mulino, 2011), and On Modern Poetry (Harvard University Press, 2022); and the essays on contemporary politics and society I destini generali (Laterza, 2015) and Senza riparo. Sei tentativi di leggere il presente (Laterza, 2025). He also wrote the introduction to Erich Auerbach’s essays collected in Letteratura mondiale e metodo (Nottetempo, 2022). He teaches literature at the University of Siena.

The event will be held in Italian.