Teaching Gaspara Stampa: Canon or Counter-Canon? The Desire to Be «with», the Passion for Being «against»
Abstract
Gaspara Stampa’s Poems enjoyed a fluctuating critical reception. Either considered as a genuine expression of love or as the poetical diary of a non-conforming woman, her poems have been marginalized even by those critics that admired them most. In handbooks of Italian literature her texts appear together with those by contemporary male authors. Yet the definition of Petrarchism ended up limiting their counter-canonical pose as well as the author’s attempt to forge a different poetical language through the apparent acceptance of the prevailing one. This essay examines the main phases of Stampa’s reception from the eighteenth to the twentieth century (Bergalli, Franceschi, De Sanctis, Salza, Gozzano-Guglielminetti, Croce) and its impact on the teaching of Italian literature in schools until nowadays. Stampa’s texts are indeed suited not only to literary analysis but also to a sociological approach and to emotional-learning activities
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