Celati settecentista

Gianni Celati’s pioneering work on eighteenth-­century British authors stands in a close relation­ ship to his work as a writer of fiction. Celati has focused on key authors of the British canon, first and foremost on Swift. He has translated and introduced both The Tale of a Tub and Gulliver’s Travels. His essay Finzioni occidentali constitutes a groundbreaking reflection on the emergent culture of novelistic realism. Celati’s work as an eighteenth­-centurist has a theoretical significance. It articulates principles and attitudes that inform his narratives and, in general, his view of the aesthetic: his skepti­cism of the strong self of the Enlightenment, his interest in non-­teleological discourses, his determination to liberate perception from ideological biases.