Seventy Years of Polish Studies on the Pages of "Ricerche slavistiche"

Abstract

The article aims at analyzing the contents of the first and the new series of the academic journal "Ricerche slavistiche” from its foundation to 2021, in order to identify and define the lines of development of Polonistic research in Italy. The analysis makes it possible to indicate the main hermeneutical directives of the first phase of the journal's existence in the studies on ancient Polish literature and on the literary relations between Italy and Poland. In a diachronic perspective, it is possible to witness the transmission of the values and convictions of the great Slavist Giovanni Maver to subsequent generations of Italian Polonists. “Ricerche slavistiche” in fact reflected his deep conviction that Polish studies cannot ignore the great historical and cultural heritage of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The journal’s founder believed in the constitutively hybrid and composite character of Polish culture, a fertile and complex melting pot, a terrain of encounter, exchange and dialogue between the Latin and Byzantine, Germanic and Slavic worlds, where products and values of European civilization, often still little known, have been developed for many centuries.