Preface

The present web-site is designed to be a tool for the study of the works and life of Giorgio Bassani. It presents bibliographical references of every sort, from 1936 through September, 2002, drawn from books, literary journals, and from newspapers, in seventeen languages, that reported, when they were issued, news about Bassani's publications, in prose and in verse, as they came out in Italy, and abroad. These publications also carried news of literary prizes and honours, about the publishing world, on Botteghe Oscure, and the discovery of Il Gattopardo, on political and critical stances, about the Partito d'Azione and the Partito Repubblicano, on the RAI, the battles waged by Italia Nostra, news of cinema conceived by Bassani, and cinema created by others inspired by his works, and, finally, about his public and private life, in Ferrara, abroad, and in Rome. Today, these references furnish us with important clues for further research.

My bibliography does not aspire to furnishing complete news, but seeks, rather, to offer broad coverage of the multiple facets of the periods of the Master's life, from many points of view, expressed by some well-known personalities and some lesser-known, by specialists in the literary world, by students, by famous journalists, and the man-on-the-street. Articles by literary critics in books, and in traditional literary journals, are listed; interviews published in rotogravures, news from specialized bulletins, from weekly illustrated periodicals, communications from sports magazines, and marketing journals are, also, included, along with comments from dailies, and from the weekly and monthly press. This book does not include an exhaustive list of publications, in sundry forms, by Giorgio Bassani, a task destined for a subsequent publication already being researched, and reserved for a date in the not-too-distant future.

The caring and attentive reader will be able to read through the periods of Giorgio Bassani's life, achieving a careful analysis and a critical reading in order to know the man better, his genius, his passions and the literature he left to those who come after him. If this publication could encourage a wider audience for Giorgio Bassani's works, its main purpose would be already accomplished.

I began collecting material for this web site as a Fulbright Fellow, in 1966, when I was teaching at the University of Sassari in the Department of Anglo-American Language and Literature that was being reorganized in that period. It was my duty, then, and for several years, to teach my Sardinian students the history of the various methods of research, literary criticism and teaching.

A few years later, in 1970, I assisted in founding, in Rome, in the heart of the Eternal City, the Saint Mary's College Rome Program, which I have been directing now for many years, and where I still occasionally teach Italian language and literature to students from Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, Indiana, USA. An integral part of these students' course of study is learning methods of research and doing research in a library abroad, be it on a small or a grand scale, in a foreign language. For a student who often lives abroad only for a few months, this is not always an easy enterprise. A foreign student cannot help but feel ill at ease because of language differences, and because of research methods and procedures, completely different from those used in the student's own country.

Being accustomed to studying in huge North American university libraries, open twenty-four hours a day, where books are available directly to the user through the so-called "open shelf system", the North American student feels, in the beginning, at least, lost in the maze of the routine in use in Italy, today, in the great city and university libraries and central archives, where the user is permitted a limited choice of volumes daily, and where the user must request permission to have yet a third party photocopy new and old texts for research.

Assigning to each of my students the task of obtaining bibliographical material from Roman libraries to use daily, in class, not only gave them the possibility of personally experiencing this kind of research in Rome, but, also, furnished us all with a little collection of material for simple reports, as well as more elaborate research papers. From this undertaking, I drew the idea of collecting all the information possible in order to provide my students with a complete picture of the life and works of Giorgio Bassani.

Please note that, in an attempt to simplify using this volume, I have noted a number for each entry to the left of each page, in the margin, and, to the right, a sigla identifying the field of interest to which the entry refers, along with a sigla for the language of the entry, if it is not Italian. Entry numbers are ordered chronologically by year, and, then, by date, within every single year. In the case of entries for which only the year of publication is given, these are listed at the beginning of the chronology for each year. I have chosen to indicate the month of publication for all other entries, in words, not numerically, to avoid confusion between European and Anglo-Saxon and North American usage. As a general rule, I have listed as much information as is possible and reasonable, in my possession, for each entry. I highly recommend using both the Author Index and the Periodical Index for the most complete inclusive use of this volume.

The slow, yet far-reaching and comprehensive growth, over the years, of an instrument of this sort, could not have been sustained, certainly, without my students, and would not have been possible to complete without the assistance of many kind, and helpful people, in various parts of the world. I thank my colleagues and friends, and Saint Mary's College.

Portia Prebys

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