I generi letterari nell’estetica crociana, fra tradizione e attualità

Proposals for a modern concept of genre in the aesthetics of Benedetto Croce

From an essay of 1894 up to his last writings of 1952, Benedetto Croce, whose philosophy dominated fifty years of Italian aesthetics and criticism, denied the value of literary genres. While Croce’s veto undoubtedly caused a temporal gap in Italian genre theory, from another perspective it may also be considered an advantage. In fact, Croce’s tabula rasa gave room to reflexions on genre which were free from tradition and open to innovation. In this article it is argued that in Croces own thought and criticism one notices some of the fundamental aspects of modern genre theory.