Ragionando di catastrofi: due voci ‘minori’ dell’Illuminismo meridionale

Abstract

The disaster literature plays a crucial role in the 18^th century culture of the Enlightenment, in particular in southern Italy. Among the literary genres used by the intellectuals there is also the dialogue, which two ‘minor’ authors such as the Calabrian Onofrio De Colaci (1746-1799) and the Apulian Francesco Antonio Astore (1742-1799) choose to discuss, respectively, the great earthquake of 1783 and the Vesuvius eruption of 1794. Both of them, right through the dialogue morphology, offer an important testimony about the enlightened sensitivity faced with the natural disasters, by distinguishing between true and false knowledge, science and superstition, primacy of the things and poetic imagination. The works in question, the Dialoghi intorno a’ tremuoti and the Dialoghi sul Vesuvio, therefore constitute a significant example of the need to study the Enlightenment thought of the Italian Mezzogiorno with the instruments of literary criticism.