Us is a voice. Hypotheses on the chorus in 20th century Italian poetry

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the function of the chorus in different expressions (speaking of inspiration and ideological substratum) from 20th century Italian poetry. Considering the reinvention of genres and the deflagration of the boundaries between the written page and performance, the goal is to observe how third or collective voices find their way among the rubble (or its latest manifestations) of the lyric subject. These choruses comment on the situations recounted in narrative texts, often suggesting moral interpretations, or offer a diverging point of view, which could restore the “sense of History” latent in poetic production from the beginning to the last years of the century (in some cases even touching on the new millennium). Given these objectives, the investigation takes into consideration texts published from the beginning to the last years of the century (up to, in some cases, the new millennium). The presences of choruses are investigated within narrations in verse in whose polyphony a choral instance emerges, and in texts that are halfway between poetry and theatre. By comparing different choral procedures, that are recognisable as much by explicit author’s indications as by references within the texts, the aim is to verify how a function – rooted in a long literary tradition – changes and which of its features persist.