A Test of Powers: Writings on Criticism and Literary Institutions by Franco Fortini, Alberto Toscano (translator) ISBN 9780857423351, 0857423355 instant download

A Test of Powers: Writings on Criticism and Literary Institutions by Franco Fortini, Alberto Toscano (translator) ISBN 9780857423351, 0857423355 instant download

Originally published in Italian in 1965, A Test of Powers was immediately seen as one of the central texts of Italian intellectual life. By the time of the 1968 student revolts, it was clear that Franco Fortini had anticipated many of the themes and concerns of the New Left, which was no surprise, given that Fortini had spent more than two decades immersed in fierce ideological debates over anti-Fascism, organizing the alliance between progressivism and literature and other topics that found their way into A Test of Powers. In addition to politically focused essays, the book also features writings on a range of authors who influenced Fortini, including Franz Kafka, Boris Pasternak, Eric Auerbach, Marcel Proust, and Bertolt Brecht.

‘Fortini’s poetic production, literary criticism, political writings, translations, and journalism have assured him a position of the first rank among intellectuals of the Italian postwar period.’—Italica

Franco Fortini(1917–94) was a poet, essayist, literary critic, Marxist intellectual and translator. His incisive polemical interventions shaped Italian letters in the postwar period.