Manzoni and justice: an esteemed guest to close the reading series on "The Betrothed"

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Institutional Communication Service

9 December 2019

Gustavo Zagrebelsky, one of the most prominent Italian jurist, former President of the Constitutional Court of the nearby Republic, will be the guest speaker invited to close the reading series on Manzoni's work. The three-year series dedicated to "The Betrothed" is proposed by USI Institute of Italian Studies. The conference will be held (in Italian) on Wednesday, 11 December  at 6 p.m. in the Lugano campus auditorium.

After five years of Lecturae Dantis dedicated to Dante's Divine Comedy, USI Institute of Italian Studies has dedicated a three-year series to The Betrothed, a classic work of Italian literature always considered essential for higher education.

There are few texts like "The Betrothed" that hold such a high responsibility to literary writing: to be a universal instrument of knowledge, able both to probe the deepest mysteries of the human heart, and to contemplate with clear rigor the injustices of society.The theme of Justice is of such profound relevance, not only in Manzoni's great book, but also in the current political and cultural context, that seemed to be the perfect theme for a final reflection. One of the most authoritative jurists, President Emeritus of the Constitutional Court of the Italian Republic, Gustavo Zagrebelsky, was therefore invited to seal the Manzoni's readings and to speak about Manzoni and justice.

Professor emeritus of constitutional law at the University of Turin, corresponding member of the Accademia dei Lincei, author of several books for important publishing houses and contributor to newspapers such as La Repubblica and La Stampa, Gustavo Zagrebelsky will retrace the novel by Alessandro Manzoni following the paths of justice and human injustice in the merciless fresco of a corrupt Italian society without a sense of community, typical of the seventeenth century but painfully recognisable even today. In this Reading it will emerge how victory must be won by human justice, which, however, is continually repressed and mocked in its attempts at rebellion. During the reading, it will be made clear why "The Betrothed" have become, for critics and the public, the emblem of the moderate and clerical novel of Italy between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.