Literature as document and monument: from memorialization to cultural heritage

How can literature contribute today to the broader debate on cultural heritage and memory? How can we rethink literature not only as a reservoir of memory and a context for working through traumatic experiences, but also as the space of contestation / creation of collective and shared memories? This lecture will offer new answers to these questions by taking the cue from Professing Criticism: Essays on the Organization of Literary Studies by John Guillory (2022), and from the vivid debate its publication unleashed in the USA. In particular, it will address these questions by framing them in the dichotomy between document and monument that is at the center of historical research and visual culture studies. The goal is to reframe literature as part of our common cultural heritage for the present. This contribution will then analyze Anna Banti and Giuseppe Berto as modern writers who challenged the idea of literary monumentality and memory in their work.