Name Enzo Giudici | ||
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Died October 4, 1985, Rome, Italy | ||
Enzo Giudici (Mussomeli, September 24, 1920 – Rome, October 4, 1985) was an Italian academic, specialising in French Renaissance literature, particularly Louise Labé and Maurice Scève. He was also a publicist close to fascism.
Contents
Biography
Enzo Giudici is the son of Isabella Sorce and Paolo Giudici, a teacher and writer. His mother died when he was 3 years old. At the age of 10, he left Sicily to live with his father in Piacenza, Pavia, Potenza and Rome.
During his studies, he was close to the Gruppo Universitario Fascista. During World War II, Giudici was not enrolled in the army for health reasons. He contributed to Orizzonte, the official newspaper of the Xa MAS, and Fronte Unico, a "virulent" fascist weekly publication directed by Vito Videtta, a member of the extremist Pietro Koch's "gang". In an article of December 1943, Giudici claimed that fascism was the negation of classes and individuals and was characterized by totalitarism and corporatism. He also collaborated to "Libro e moschetto", the newspaper of the Gruppo Universitario Fascista. In Universalità e nazionalità delle guerre (Universality and nationality of the wars), an article published in April 1943 by Libro e moschetto, he wrote: “The present war is together a universal and national war, in which the values and the fate of the world are being determinated - through our Italian national conscience. This fight is clearly between two centuries and two ideas, but though it is a fight between peoples, peoples do implement and represent ideas.” In 1944, during the Italian Social Republic, he debated with Roberto Farinacci on reforms in the magazine Repubblica fascista. He wrote in Repubblica Sociale, a monthly review directed by Manlio Sargenti, an article on "socialized and corporative economy". The same year, he wrote a book on the socialization of corporations. In 1946, he was the vice president of the executive board (vicepresidente dell consiglio direttivo) of the newly founded Movimento Italiano di Unità Sociale, which gathered the fascist elit and preceded, not only by name, the MSI. In 1947, he collaborated to Il Pensiero nazionale a magazine directed by Stanis Ruinas and aiming to gather "ex fascists leaning to the left".
The Italian journalist Gino Raya noted Giudici's "sensitivity" to the game of chess: he travelled distances to participates in tournaments, polemized on the introduction in Italy of the Elo rating system and wrote an article on its figure in literature.
His library of over 20,000 books is now at the university of Salento.
University positions
Studies on the École de Lyon
His "prolific" academic interest centered on a French literary movement of the Renaissance called École de Lyon particularly Louise Labé and Maurice Scève, the possible discoverer of Laura de Noves' possible tomb, highlighting, maybe exaggeratedly, Petrarch's influence. In 1958 he published a critical edition of Scève's minor works and in 1976, "the first proper critical edition" - though considered today partial and dated - of Microcosme, Scève's last work. In 1981, he published an erudite edition of Louise Labé works, considered "solid" and "luxuriant", though it has been since deemed incomplete. His sometimes "exceedingly footnotish" editor work and search for documents have been more appreciated by some specialists, who praise his "density of information", than his literary analyses. In recognition of his contribution the renewal of interest in these poets, he was awarded for this work a prix d'honneur by the Académie des Sciences, Belles-Lettres et Arts de Lyon.
Essays
Giudici was subject to criticism for his protracted relationship with fascism. In Memorie e pensieri di un cattedratico (Memories and Thoughts of a Professor), he considers such evocations as false and vile confusions of culture with politics. He claims that fascism is a "controversial" term and that he does not trust "contemporary -isms". Though the Italian historian Carlo Vallauri noted that Giudici "never identified himself" with the MSI, an affinity, sometimes considered as the expression of a "new right" "non-conformism", transcures from his later positions on the student movements and on the culture of fascism.
In L' avvento dell'asinocrazia (The Upcoming Donkeycracy) and Contestatori alla sbarra (Protesters at the Bar) he criticizes the student movement, which had started in Italy in 1967. His point of view has been considered by the historian Carlo Vallauri as "the clearer and most organic expression of the wholesome refusal to understand" this movement. The expression avvento dell'asinocrazia was first used in 1968 by Giovanni Sartori in an article published by the Corriere della Sera to characterize the student movement as a "triumph of the donkeys". In La scuola inutile (The ineffective school), initially entitled Asini allo spiedo per il pasto del barone (Jackass on the spit for big shots convenience), Giudici critics not only the "protestive" students, but also the "faint-hearted" political class.
In the late 1970s, Giudici contributed in the Secolo d'Italia, the newspaper of the MSI, to an ongoing debate on the culture of the fascist period. He questioned whether "fascism was only respectful of culture or itself productive of culture" and underlined the link between "fascist culture and the tradition of Risorgimento and ancient Rome". These considerations are developed in Ricerche sulla cultura dell'era fascista (Research on culture of the fascist era), a book published in 1982. and in Riflessioni sulla cultura del periodo fascista – published posthumously by Gaetano Rasi's Istituto di studi corporativi, a "reference point of studies and strategy for MSI's economical policy" – where Giudici refers to Robert Michels' analysis on Mussolini's syncretism.
In this last book, Giudici blames the fascist antisemitism. The Italian historian Gianni Rossi notes Giudici, though he does not deny or minimize the Mussolinian antisemitism, finds it "reluctant".