Emilio Manzotti
The Crolla Amato Gadda Prize
Best Published Scholarly Work on Gadda
Panel 1 Chair
Emilio Manzotti is professor for Italian Language and Linguistics at Geneva University, Switzerland. He studied Mathematics, Linguistics and Philology at the University of Pavia, Kiel and Konstanz and has taught and given invited lectures in many universities and research centres in Europe and the US.
Emilio Manzotti’s research interests encompass the following domains: (1) lexical and propositional semantics (as for instance in Grammatica della sostituzione, in G. Beccaria and C. Marello (eds), La parola al testo. Scritti per Bice Mortara Garavelli, Edizioni dell’orso, 2002, 247-285); (2) textlinguistics (e.g., Lezioni sul testo, Editrice La Scuola, 1991); (3) linguistic and stylistic analysis of literary texts, with special applications to the poetry of Pascoli, Rebora, Saba and Caproni (e.g., «Crisantemi». Lettura di un’ode pascoliana, in Rivista pascoliana 14 (2002); «Senza esclamativi», (sopra un testo di Giorgio Caproni), in K. Adamzik and H. Christen (eds), Sprachkontakte, Sprachvergleich, Sprachvariation, Niemeyer, 2001, 261-280; «O poesia, nel lucido verso» (Clemente Rebora, Frammenti lirici, XLIX), in Analele UniversitÇŽÅ£ii BucureÅŸti – Limba ÅŸi Literatura Română 56 (2007), 93-115); (4) Italian language and grammar for teaching purposes (cf. Insegnare italiano. Principi, metodi, esempi, ed. by E. Manzotti and A. Ferrari, Editrice La Scuola, 1994) and the theory of composition (in 1995 Manzotti created a Master in Theory and Techniques of Written Communication at Geneva University); lastly, (5) the Å“uvre of C.E. Gadda. Manzotti first contribution to Gadda studies (an article on the syntax of La cognizione del dolore) goes back to 1979, and was followed by seminal textual analyses and key works of reference, including the commented edition of the Cognizione for Einaudi and two extensive Gadda profiles (in Letteratura italiana, Einaudi, 1996, and Storia della letteratura italiana, Salerno, 1999).
Manzotti is presently working on two (complementary) projects: the description of the logical-rhetorical structures of texts (one instance being the class of similarity and opposition relations between states of affairs or propositions); the development of what could be characterized as a conceptual macro-stylistics of the poetic text (this involves analysis of in-depth semantic processes of text construction and the resulting expressive, i.e., poetic effects).
