Spiritual Voices: Antonia Pozzi, Cristina Campo, and Margherita Guidacci
type: CreativeWork
description: My doctoral dissertation examines the relationship between the sacred and literature, explores how the Bible has influenced the literary production of Antonia Pozzi, Cristina Campo, and Margherita Guidacci, and reveals that each author had a distinctive way of dealing with the Sacred Book. In the first chapter I retrace the studies on the topic of Bible and Literature, and I show how literary critics only recently have begun to work intensively on them (in the past the "historical school" founded by De Sanctis and followed by Croce devoted few studies to the subject of the sacred and even so, only to those periods where the influence of the Scriptures was clear and indeed obvious, such as the Middle Ages and the Counter-Reformation). In the same chapter I explain my reason for deciding to study Pozzi, Campo, and Guidacci. These three authors share analogous biographical experiences and episodes that deeply influenced their lives (the presence of an authoritarian father, family losses, and sad love experiences). Moreover, their studies (specifically, European writers and philosophers) were of the same nature. I demonstrate that, although contemporary Italian literature is heterogeneous and varied, these three women astonishingly shared the same background that explains their concentration on the sacred. In the following chapter I consider the writers individually, in order to examine the path that led them to a dialogue with the religious and the sacred. In Pozzi, the sacred is something that lies beyond human understanding and, for all her attempts to reach it, she always fails due to her incapacity to fully free helself from human passions. In Campo and in Guidacci on the other hand, the sacred search is always consistent and, notwithstanding some missteps and second thoughts, they are able to basically fulfill their task. After the study of their ideas, in the last chapter I move to the poetical language used by these writers. It has been very interesting to see w…
abstract: My doctoral dissertation examines the relationship between the sacred and literature, explores how the Bible has influenced the literary production of Antonia Pozzi, Cristina Campo, and Margherita Guidacci, and reveals that each author had a distinctive way of dealing with the Sacred Book. In the first chapter I retrace the studies on the topic of Bible and Literature, and I show how literary critics only recently have begun to work intensively on them (in the past the "historical school" founded by De Sanctis and followed by Croce devoted few studies to the subject of the sacred and even so, only to those periods where the influence of the Scriptures was clear and indeed obvious, such as the Middle Ages and the Counter-Reformation). In the same chapter I explain my reason for deciding to study Pozzi, Campo, and Guidacci. These three authors share analogous biographical experiences and episodes that deeply influenced their lives (the presence of an authoritarian father, family losses, and sad love experiences). Moreover, their studies (specifically, European writers and philosophers) were of the same nature. I demonstrate that, although contemporary Italian literature is heterogeneous and varied, these three women astonishingly shared the same background that explains their concentration on the sacred. In the following chapter I consider the writers individually, in order to examine the path that led them to a dialogue with the religious and the sacred. In Pozzi, the sacred is something that lies beyond human understanding and, for all her attempts to reach it, she always fails due to her incapacity to fully free helself from human passions. In Campo and in Guidacci on the other hand, the sacred search is always consistent and, notwithstanding some missteps and second thoughts, they are able to basically fulfill their task. After the study of their ideas, in the last chapter I move to the poetical language used by these writers. It has been very interesting to see w…
author: Di Nino, Nicola
language: Italian
keywords: Italian literature, Religious literature, Italian, Bible and literature, Literature, Literature, Modern, Campo, Cristina, 1923-1977, Guidacci, Margherita, Pozzi, Antonia, 1912-1938
date published: 2013
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:44:29Z
provider: Columbia University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Columbia University

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.7916/D8445KTB