Intermediari e sostenitori del Settantasette: Tondelli come ‘nipotino’ di Eco

Abstract

The article investigates the rapport between Literature and impegno, through a focus on the writings of Umberto Eco and Pier Vittorio Tondelli. During the late Seventies, these two Italian authors lived in the same city, Bologna, and worked in the same academic department — the DAMS — Eco as a professor, and Tondelli as his student. Eco and Tondelli observed the Movimento del Settantasette, acknowledged its relevance and originality, and mediated its cultural meaning to the rest of society through their writings, occasionally published for the same media and republished by the same publishing house, Bompiani. Umberto Eco (1932–2016) was known as one of the most original authors who has added an insightful point of view on the relationship between Literature and impegno. In doing so, Eco has endorsed and represented in Italy the McDonaldian vision on the existence of a highbrow and lowbrow culture, declined according to Leslie Fiedler’s and Marshall McLuhan’s intuitions. Tondelli’s plural oeuvre and his own idea of impegno was greatly influenced by Eco’s vision and, partially, by the creative wing of the Settantasette. The primary objective of the article is to explain Tondelli’s pattern of impegno through an analysis of his works in light of Eco’s definition of impegno thus making a contribution to the ongoing debate about Tondelli’s form of commitment. The conclusion that might be drawn is that it is necessary, today, to revisit the Tondellian oeuvre as an example of Echian, lowbrow impegno.