Luciano Canfora

Canfora in June 2022

Luciano Canfora (Italian pronunciation: [luˈtʃaːno ˈkaɱfora]; born 5 June 1942) is an Italian classicist and historian. Born in Bari, Canfora obtained his first degree in Roman History in 1964 at Pisa University. He has for some years been Professor Emeritus of Classics at the University of Bari. His specialty is ancient libraries and his book The Vanished Library,[1] which is about the Library of Alexandria, has been translated into some 15 languages.[2]

Since 1975, Canfora has edited the periodical Quaderni di storia. In 1998, he published a rebuttal of Elena Agarossi and Victor Zaslavsky's work, Togliatti e Stalin. Il PCI e la politica estera staliniana negli archivi di Mosca, about criticism of Palmiro Togliatti and the Italian Communist Party.[3] He stood in the 1999 European Parliament election in Italy for the Party of Italian Communists. In 2004, Canfora published a history of democracy under the title La democrazia. Storia di un'ideologia.[4]

Biography

Education and academic career

Among Italy's leading philologists,[5] a student of the historian of antiquity Ettore Lepore,[6] Luciano Canfora is the son of the historian of philosophy Fabrizio Canfora and the Latinist and Greek scholar Rosa Cifarelli, both professors at the Quinto Orazio Flacco high school in Bari, as well as anti-fascist protagonists of the city's cultural and civic life after World War II. His mother was sister of jurist and magistrate Michele Cifarelli, a former member of the Action Party (Italy)e, deputy and senator of the Italian Republican Party.[7]

He graduated in Humanities with a thesis in Roman history in 1964 and received his postgraduate degree in Classics from the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. He began his university career as an assistant professor of ancient history and later of Ancient Greek literature. He is professor emeritus of Greek and Classics at the University of Bari and scientific coordinator of the Higher School of Historical Scuola Superiore di Studi Storici di San Marino.[8]

He is a member of the editorial boards of several journals, both scientific and high popularization, such as the Boston Journal of Classical Tradition[,[9] the Spanish Historia y crítica, and the Italian high popularization geopolitical journal Limes (Italian magazine). He is a member of the Fondazione Istituto Gramsci[[9] and the scientific committee of the Encyclopedia Treccani. He also directs, since 1975, the journal Quaderni di Storia (ed. Dedalo, Bari), the text series La città antica at the publisher Sellerio, the Paradosis series for Dedalo editions and the Historos series for Sandro Teti Editore.

He is a prolific author on philology, history and politics from ancient to contemporary times. Many of his books have been translated in the United States,France, the United Kingdom,Germany,Greece, the Netherlands,Brazil,Spain, the Czech Republic,Slovenia,Romania,Russia,Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. He is an elzevirista for Corriere della Sera and contributes to Il Calendario del Popolo, on which he has a regular column entitled Brother Babeuf.[10]

He coordinated and directed, together with Diego Lanza and Giuseppe Cambiano, Lo spazio letterario della Grecia antica for Salerno editore (1992-1996), a collective work on the different characters of Greco-antique philology, Ancient Greek literature and its persistence. Top Italian experts in Greek philology and history of literature contributed to this work. He received in 2011 for the Militant Criticism section the Feronia-City of Fiano Prize.[11]

In 2020 Luciano Canfora won the historical scientific section of the Acqui Award of History.[12]

Policy

Already a militant for some years in the Proletarian Unity Party (Italy) (PdUP), in 1988 he joined the Italian Communist Party (PCI);[13] after the Bolognina turning point he adhered to the third motion proposed by Armando Cossutta For a Socialist Democracy in Europe,[13][14] being elected to the party's central committee A few months after the subsequent dissolution of the PCI he joined the Communist Refoundation Party(PRC)[.[13]

He was a candidate for the 1999 European Parliament election on the list of the Party of Italian Communists(PdCI) in the Northwestern, Central and Southern Italy constituencies, without being elected.After the dissolution of Comunisti Italiani, he was called a “communist without a party.” In the 2018 general election, he supported the Free and Equal (Italy) list and candidate Michele Laforgia in the Bari uninominal election[.[15]

In a 2019 interview, he says he has “always been an Proletarian internationalism.

References

  1. ^ Canfora, Luciano (1989). The Vanished Library. London: Hutchinson Radius. ISBN 978-0-09-174049-8. OCLC 19847537.
  2. ^ "Cànfora, Luciano". Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (in Italian). Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Retrieved 4 July 2023.
  3. ^ Canfora, Luciano (1998). Togliatti e i critici tardi (in Italian). Rome: Teti. pp. 91–94. ISBN 978-8-8703-9781-9. Canfora describes the book by Elena Agarossi and Victor Zaslavsky as "a vibrant pamphlet that exploits some documents, rhapsodically selected and mostly already known, with the very firm intention of demonstrating a single assumption: that the PCI's policy was always and totally subordinate to Stalin's directives." According to Canfora, what he describes as the prejudicial anti-communism of the book reaches, in his own words, an "exhilarating aspect" when the two authors accuse the PCI of an insurrectionist drift. He states that the party considered the possibility of reacting with arms only if the United States "had intervened to prevent the imminent political elections" of April 1948. Since he says the thesis of Agarossi and Zaslavsky is that "communism is evil", a PCI that tries to defend itself and not to be overwhelmed does nothing but practice evil. He writes: "Rarely had one fallen so low in a self-styled book of history." Regarding the Salerno Turn, Agarossi and Zaslavskij argue that the occupying Allied powers would have supported the National Liberation Committee government, which would have removed Badoglio from power, ignoring, according to Canfora, "how tenaciously the English government supported the king and Badoglio". By reconstructing the story and downsizing Togliatti's role, Canfora argues that Agarossi and Zaslavskij arrive at a result that they did not intend: the one for which "Stalin is gigantic in diplomatic ability, farsightedness, and moderation". Canfora's conclusion is that if the authors "had really intended to do the noble job of scholars of history", they would have tried to understand the reasons for Togliatti's oscillations on such a tormented political choice, writing that "if they hadn't chosen to reduce the characters that affair, either to mere tools or to evil geniuses, would perhaps have had the result that a historian should care most about: understanding."{cite book}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  4. ^ Canfora, Luciano (2004). La democrazia. Storia di un'ideologia (in Italian). Bari: Editori Laterza. ISBN 978-8-8420-7298-0.
  5. ^ Bollettino della Società geografica italiana. Società geografica italiana. 2007. Retrieved 28 August 2023.
  6. ^ Gli 80 anni del prof Canfora: «Non so se li merito, ma farò di tutto per ricompensare della fiducia», retrieved 28 August 2023
  7. ^ Libertà vo' cercando--: diari 1934-1938 (in Italian). Rubbettino Editore. 2004. ISBN 978-88-498-0698-4. Retrieved 12 February 2023.
  8. ^ Mussolini e la storia: Dal socialismo al fascismo (1900-1922). Viella Libreria Editrice. 9 November 2016. ISBN 978-88-6728-756-7. Retrieved 12 February 2023.
  9. ^ a b Luciano Canfora entry (in Italian) in the Enciclopedia Treccani
  10. ^ IL CALENDARIO DEL POPOLO: Sport e altre storie (758) (in Italian). Teti srl. Retrieved 12 February 2023.
  11. ^ Redazione (15 May 2016). "Luciano Canfora, Tucidide: la menzogna, la colpa, l'esilio Premio letterario Giovanni Comisso" (in Italian). Retrieved 12 February 2023.
  12. ^ "Premi: Acqui Storia, ecco i vincitori della 53/a edizione - Piemonte". Agenzia ANSA (in Italian). 15 September 2020. Retrieved 6 May 2021.
  13. ^ a b c Luciano Canfora (18 February 2015). "Cossutta e gli sciocchi". il manifesto. Retrieved 19 February 2021.
  14. ^ "Pci: riunione degli aderenti alla "terza mozione"". Radio Radicale. 10 June 1990. Retrieved 19 February 2021.
  15. ^ "Elezioni, Laforgia (LeU) unisce gli intellettuali di Bari da Canfora a Carofiglio: "L'unica sinistra è questa"". la Repubblica (in Italian). 2 March 2018. Retrieved 18 April 2021.