Research

• 2016-2019. Research Project, University of Turin, Department of Humanities, Responsible: Prof. Clara Allasia

Poet, literary critic, writer, playwright, librettist, journalist, screenwriter, actor and «lessicomane». Edoardo Sanguineti’s carrier is difficult to summarize under a single label. The Sanguineti’s Wunderkammer project, launched in 2016 at the University of Turin with the support of Compagnia di San Paolo and in collaboration with Utet, Archivio di Stato and RaiTeche, explored the interdisciplinary nature of the Genoese intellectual’s work and aimed to give visibility to a rich heritage of unpublished or scattered documents through their recovery and enhancement. 

All the documents acquired into the Wunderkammer "cases" and collected in an innovative database will soon be made available online through the project's official website, and a dedicated research area. In this latter section, through specially designed “Thematic Pathways,” documents stored in different “cases” or contexts will be brought into dialogue, allowing the public to follow the various Ariadne’s threads through the Sanguinetian labyrinth.

• 2017-2022. Post-doc research project, University of Turin, Department of Humanities, Holder of research grant: Dr. Chiara Tavella, Tutor: Prof. Laura Nay

The project, part of the broader Sanguineti’s Wunderkammer initiative, has made it possible to establish the foundations and tools necessary to systematically and thoroughly explore and examine the materials in Edoardo Sanguineti’s lexicographic archive, finally making the documentary heritage contained in the collection accessible and usable. The documents in the Sanguineti archive have been carefully reorganized, and upon completion of the cataloging process, they were stored in 50 archival boxes to ensure their preservation and protection. A preliminary inventory to assist consultation was also attached to the paper collection. In addition, all documents were digitized and entered into the Sanguineti’s Wunderkammer database, an invaluable digital resource that enables innovative and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of the author’s literary production. Research carried out so far has, on one hand, enabled a survey of the authors present in the collection, establishing the origins of the lexicographic sources (novels, poems, newspapers, magazines...), and on the other, allowed for an analysis of how Sanguineti reused this authorial material in his own poetry and prose.  

• 2018-2022. Research project, University of Turin, PhD in Humanities, XXXIV cycle, Phd candidate: Dr. Lorenzo Resio, Tutor: Prof. Laura Nay

This project consists in the creation of an extended archive of the sources employed by Edoardo Sanguineti during his collaboration with the publishing house Utet for the Grande Dizionario della Lingua Italiana founded by Salvatore Battaglia and the Grande Dizionario dell’Uso of Tullio De Mauro. In the first phase of the project a bibliographic catalogue will be drafted in order to index the sources Sanguineti sorted through and to enhance the Sanguineti’s Wunderkammer database aiming to extract, order and normalize the references to authors and sources. By bringing to an end this first step, it will be possible to proceed with the creation of the extended archive, designed to connect Sanguineti’s material of different nature and stored in different locations, such as the bibliographic fund stored at the University Library of Genoa and the lexicographic thesis assigned to students during his academic period in Salerno, then used as sources for his lexicographical articles. The purpose of the project is to digitally connect different funds and archives, reconstructing links between documents that have been relevant for his linguistic studies and in his poetic production.

• 2020-2024. Research project, University of Salerno, PhD in Literary Studies, PhD candidate:Dr. Eleonisia Mandola, Tutor: Prof. Laura Paolino

Ten years after his death, among the unpublished materials left by Edoardo Sanguineti are more than five hundred letters sent, in the year 1978 alone, to his son Federico. By making them available to the “Interuniversity Center for Edoardo Sanguineti Studies,” Federico has enabled their consultation and publication. In anticipation of a comprehensive study and full edition of this correspondence, edited by Eleonisia Mandola (unfortunately, the son's replies to his father do not appear to have been preserved), it is worth highlighting here a group of about twenty letters that reveal the writer’s keen interest in cinema, letters that together amount to a kind of embryonic history of film. It should be noted that this interest in cinema is woven into a labyrinthine form of writing that naturally encompasses a wide array of topics. The correspondence, while bearing all the hallmarks of letters written to a family member, stands out for a distinctive quality rarely seen in epistolary writing of the late twentieth century: the texts (noting that the father wrote to his son almost daily) follow a model typical of the classical world, the most fitting comparison being Seneca’s Letters to Lucilius. These are letters deeply engaged in interpreting reality, spurred by the son’s persistent intellectual provocations. From this dialogue emerges a raw and vibrant account of historical transformation, at a time when the fate of the nation itself was being shaped. We are presented with a form of private writing that was already prepared - almost destined - to be made public, shaped by an intense drive toward understanding the world. After all, the author is one of the most incisive intellectuals of the twentieth century, drawn into dialogue by a ‘son-Lucilius’.

• 2022-ongoing. Project of relevant national interest (P.I. Prof. Clara Allasia (University of Turin), C.I.: Prof. Federico Sanguineti (University of Salerno)

The project aims to create a knowledge graph, an agile and innovative tool designed to explore modernity and postmodernity through the extended archive of one of its key figures. The initiative involves collaboration between experts in the humanities and computer science, who will structure their work building on the previous project, Sanguineti’s Wunderkammer.

• 2022-ongoing. Project funded by Fondazione CRT (2020), P.I. Prof. Clara Allasia (University of Turin)

The project aims to reconstruct, through a selection of works from the rich private collection housed in Casa Sanguineti, the enduring friendships and fruitful collaborations between the poet and intellectual and some of the most renowned contemporary artists of his time. These relationships are fully revealed only when one also considers the many pages Sanguineti devoted to the world of art: for the author, there exists a profound connection between images and literary language, one that, ultimately, unveils the Face of the poet.

• 2023-ongoing. PNRR: partenariato esteso: CHANGES – Cultural Heritage Active Innovation for Sustainable Society – TEMATICA 5 “Cultura umanistica e patrimonio culturale come laboratori di innovazione e creatività” – SPOKE 3: Digital libraries, archives and philology. Researcher: Dr. Calogero Giorgio Priolo

Alongside a series of documents related to readings (lecturae) of individual cantos, the Dante section of the Fondo Eredi - evidence of Sanguineti’s decades-long engagement with the Florentine author as both scholar and poet - preserves a substantial collection of materials connected to a commentary on the Purgatorio that Sanguineti was set to publish with Le Monnier in the 1960s. Having clarified the possible reasons for the project's interruption through archival documents, the project aims to reconstruct both the editorial history of the work - from more than two thousand preparatory typescripts and manuscripts to approximately seven hundred pages of the final version, covering Purgatorio I and XXVI - and the interpretive strategies employed by Sanguineti. The project will explore both the continuities and the distinctive elements that mark his approach in relation to the tradition of the “centuries-old commentary.”

• 2023-2024. Post-doc Research grant (PRIN 2020), University of Turin, Holder of research grant: Dr. Saverio Vita, Tutor: Prof. Clara Allasia

A preliminary analysis of the materials in the Fondo Eredi Sanguineti has revealed a series of writings on diverse topics that go beyond what is already known to scholars and the public. The project aims to carry out a detailed cataloguing of the collection, as well as the reorganization and digital processing of the materials, also in view of the heritage protection status being sought from the Superintendency.
 

• 2023-2024. Research grant (PRIN 2020), University of Turin, Holder of research grant: Dr. Virginia Criscenti, Tutor: Prof. Clara Allasia

Edoardo Sanguineti devoted great attention to the vocality of language, the material sound that precedes its semantic function. This focus forms the foundation of his interest in music. He entrusted the musical component to the many artists who collaborated with him, while reserving for himself the scenic and verbal dimensions, viewing his music theatre as a theatre of the word. A preliminary analysis of the Fondo Eredi Sanguineti has identified a substantial group of texts for music - some unpublished, others scattered - occasionally accompanied by their corresponding scores. The project aims to reorganize, catalogue, and digitally process these materials.

• 2024-ongoin: Project funded by the Department of Humanities of the University of Turin, as part of the departmental Call for Third Mission/Social Impact Projects

This initiative is a pilot project aimed at introducing the public to the documents preserved in the archives of UniTo and its partner institutions—materials that demonstrate how Turin has been an extraordinary incubator of modernity, particularly in the literary sphere. The archives hold papers and libraries belonging to major literary figures and philologists active from the 19th to the 21st century (from Graf to Renier, from Gozzano to Pavese, from Sanguineti to Orengo), whose personal and professional lives intersected with major publishing enterprises. Their papers reveal far more than what typically interests specialists: they tell the stories of intellectuals grappling with rapidly changing worlds, bear witness to enduring connections, and echo the voices of key figures in the contemporary cultural landscape.