Angelo Maria Ripellino and Czech Culture. Letters and other exchanges

The aim of the paper is to reconstruct Angelo Maria Ripellino’s path as a scholar in the field of Czech literary historiography and criticism, focusing on the formation of his methodological approach as it is shown in the shaping and contents of his first book, the Storia della poesia ceca contemporanea (‘The history of contemporary Czech poetry’; 1950). While writing this monograph, Ripellino could rely not only on his own remarkable knowledge of Czech culture, but also on the mentorship of prominent Czech scholars (among them Karel Teige and Jindřich Chalupecký), as is documented in the recently edited private correspondence between the Italian scholar and Czech writers and artists. Moreover, thanks to further materials from Ripellino’s archive, it is possible to better grasp the scholar’s ‘avant-garde’ understanding of literature and the arts, and thus his approach to their study and description.