Carlo Salinari (November 17, 1919 – May 25, 1977) was an Italian literary critic and academic.

Career

Salinari graduated in literature at the University of Rome in 1941. A member of the Italian Communist Party, he was an active participant in the Patriotic Action Groups. He was one of the organizers of the

Via Rasella attack The Via Rasella attack ( it, attacco di via Rasella) was an action taken by the Italian resistance movement against the Nazi German occupation forces in Rome, Italy, on 23 March 1944. Location Via Rasella is located in the centre of the city ...

in March 1943. He was arrested by Italian fascists in April 1943 and handed to the German occupiers. He remained a prisoner of the Germans until the liberation of Rome. Salinari taught at the universities of

Palermo Palermo ( , ; scn, Palermu , locally also or ) is a city in southern Italy, the capital (political), capital of both the autonomous area, autonomous region of Sicily and the Metropolitan City of Palermo, the city's surrounding metropolitan ...

Cagliari Cagliari (, also , , ; sc, Casteddu ; lat, Caralis) is an Italian municipality and the capital of the island of Sardinia, an autonomous region of Italy. Cagliari's Sardinian name ''Casteddu'' means ''castle''. It has about 155,000 inhabitant ...

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...

Salerno Salerno (, , ; nap, label= Salernitano, Saliernë, ) is an ancient city and ''comune'' in Campania (southwestern Italy) and is the capital of the namesake province, being the second largest city in the region by number of inhabitants, after ...

and Rome where he chaired the Faculty of Letters in 1977. He was responsible for the Cultural Section of the Communist Party. In 1954 he founded with the magazine '' Il Contemporaneo'' with

Antonello Trombadori Antonello Trombadori (April 24, 1917, Rome – January 19, 1993, Rome) was an Italian politician, art critic and journalist. Born in Rome into a family of artists (his father Francesco Trombadori was a painter) Trombadori lived a happy life in ...

which promoted

Marxist aesthetics Marxist aesthetics is a theory of aesthetics based on, or derived from, the theories of Karl Marx. It involves a dialectical and materialist, or dialectical materialist, approach to the application of Marxism to the cultural sphere, specifically a ...

. He was a convinced defender of neorealism and wrote numerous articles and essays on this theme which were partially collected in 1960 in the volumes ''La questione del realismo'' (''The question of neorealism'') and, in 1967, in ''Preludio e fine del realismo in Italia'' (''Prelude and End of Neorealism in Italy''). He studied decadentism and completed several studies on Gabriele D'Annunzio,

Giovanni Pascoli Giovanni Placido Agostino Pascoli (; 31 December 1855 – 6 April 1912) was an Italian poet, classical scholar and an emblematic figure of Italian literature in the late nineteenth century. Alongside Gabriele D'Annunzio, he was one of the great ...

, Antonio Fogazzaro and

Luigi Pirandello Luigi Pirandello (; 28 June 1867 – 10 December 1936) was an Italian dramatist, novelist, poet, and short story writer whose greatest contributions were his plays. He was awarded the 1934 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his almost magical power ...

. Among his many works are remembered ''Miti e coscienza del decadentismo italiano'' (''Myths and consciousness of Italian decadentism'', 1960), ''Storia popolare della letteratura italiana'' (''Popular history of Italian literature'', 1962), as well as his commentary on Boccaccio's ''

Decameron ''The Decameron'' (; it, label=Italian, Decameron or ''Decamerone'' ), subtitled ''Prince Galehaut'' (Old it, Prencipe Galeotto, links=no ) and sometimes nicknamed ''l'Umana commedia'' ("the Human comedy", as it was Boccaccio that dubbed Dan ...

'' (1963). He was director of the magazine '' Il Calendario del Popolo'' from 1966 until his death in 1977.

Awards

Two Silver Medals of Military Valor

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Salinari, Carlo 1919 births 1977 deaths Italian Communist Party politicians Italian Marxists Italian Marxist writers Italian Marxist journalists Italian partisans Italian resistance movement members Academic staff of the Sapienza University of Rome Academic staff of the University of Milan Academic staff of the University of Cagliari University of Palermo alumni Sapienza University of Rome alumni