L'Intelligence du poème conference

Matilde Manara has a doctorate in comparative literature and is currently leading a project at the Institut des textes et manuscrits modernes (ITEM) at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. Her research explores the theory of literary genres, particularly lyric poetry and the essay, as well as textual genetics. She has published several works, including L'intelligence du poème. Lyrisme et pensée chez Valéry, Rilke, Stevens et Montale (Classiques Garnier, 2023), and Così anche noi in un'eco, an edition of the correspondence between Franco Fortini and Hans Magnus Enzensberger (2022).

In her lecture, Matilde Manara will analyse the tension between narration and illustration in modernist poems, drawing on the work of Valéry and Rilke. She will defend the hypothesis that the genre of the essay is the closest heuristic tool, as well as the form most present in the minds of these authors, for understanding the modernist poem.