Mario Fubini

FUBINI, MARIO (1900–1977), Italian literary historian and critic. Born in Turin, Fubini belonged to the group that gathered around the young liberal intellectual Piero Gobetti (killed by the Fascists in 1926). Fubini was first a schoolteacher and later a professor of Italian literature at the universities of Palermo (1937–39), from which he was removed owing to the antisemitic laws promulgated by the the Fascist regime, Trieste (1945–49), Milan (1949–67), and Pisa at the prestigious Scuola normale superiore (1967–77). He took an early interest in French literature, publishing two monographs, Alfredde Vigny (1922) and Jean Racine e la critica delle sue tragedie (1925), but subsequently concentrated on Italian literature, particularly that of the Renaissance and Romantic periods. He wrote a number of studies of fundamental importance including Ugo Foscolo (1928); Studi sulla critica letteraria del Settecento (1934); Vittorio Alfieri: il pensiero – la tragedia (1937, 1960³); Dal Muratori al Baretti (1946); Foscolo Minore (1949); Ritratto dell' Alfieri e altri studi alfieriani (1951, 1963²); Romanticismo italiano (1953); and La cultura illuministica in Italia (1957). Stressing the indissolubility of the connection between culture and literature, Fubini formulated various modifications of Croce's aesthetics, to which he basically adhered. The results of Fubini's research on linguistic problems are contained in Stile e umanità di Giambattista Vico (1946), Studi sulla letteratura del Rinascimento (1947), and Metrica e poesia (1962). An authority on Dante, Fubini also published a collection of essays, Il peccato di Ulisse e altri studi danteschi (1966). He was editor of the Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana, and he promoted and directed the publication of several classical Italian texts, to which he appended important introductions and notes.

Sources: Encyclopaedia Judaica. © 2007 The Gale Group. All Rights Reserved.