Poetry for Climate / Climate for Poetry

This special issue of Rivista di studi italiani marks a significant step in the direction of conjoining the two practices of poetry and environmentalism – practices that until very recently have not been paired except in the work of a few Italian scholars and artists. The main questions we aim to explore in this issue are the following: 1. How can poetry contribute to setting new parameters for the discourse about climate change, about the relationships between humans and the natural world, and about the humanities? 2. How have environmental preoccupations permeated Italian poetry? 3. How can poetry shape the debate about the modes and strategies we can employ to respond to the ever-changing conditions of our habitats? Or, to put it differently, we might summarize everything in one allencompassing question: “Why poetry and climate?” In exploring the ways in which this versatile genre has adapted to its environment, the contributions collected here display an admirable variety of topics, approaches, and methodologies, while spanning the entire length of Italy’s literary history, from Dante to the 21st century. The essays have been grouped into three main categories: “Framing the Issue”, “Early Modern/Modern Authors”, and “Contemporary Poets”.