GIORGIO BÀRBERI SQUAROTTI, La teoria e le interpretazioni, Napoli, Alfredo Guida editore, 2005, pp. 146

Giorgio Bàrberi Squarotti's essay integrates theoretical reflection with textual analysis to steer exegesis away from the shallows of hyperspecialism and a focus on contemporaneity. The work, divided between a historical overview and the practical implementation of theories, defends the autonomy of literary status against purely extrinsic approaches—such as sociology or psychoanalysis—that would reduce the text to a mere document. Drawing on the lessons of great philologists such as Curtius and Auerbach, the author proposes a synthesis between the analysis of the particular and the striving for totality, seeing intertextual dialogue between ancient and modern as the key to interpreting the present. Criticism thus emerges not as an exact science, but as a literary genre endowed with profound existential depth: an activity "obsessed" by direct engagement with texts that aims to give meaning to being and richness to the life of the mind.