Paths of literary theology: biblical intertextuality and theological status of Mario Luzi's and Piero Bigongiari's works

The research focuses on biblical intertextuality and the theological status of the work of Mario Luzi (1914-2005) and Piero Bigongiari (1914-1997), two key authors of 20th-century Italian literature, and is divided into two branches: firstly, the analysis of the intertextual methods through which the two authors have accepted and reformulated, in their work, themes and figures from the scriptural imagination, going beyond a merely decorative, aesthetic and accessory reuse of the biblical text; secondly, an examination of the theological status of their work, i.e. how the two authors position themselves with respect to tradition and theological thought, and which theological paradigms, including those of the extreme contemporary world, can be used to shed new critical light on their texts. The aim of the research is to analyse how the two poets construct a personal discourse on God that reflects a deep and recognisable connection with their poetic universe, illuminating it in turn, in a bidirectional perspective of mutual enrichment of theology and literature. In line with the two branches (biblical-literary and theological-literary) around which the research has developed, a two-part structure has been adopted: the first section is devoted to the paths of biblical intertextuality in the two authors and focuses on two biblical-literary case studies that reveal their approach to the scriptural text, which critics have so far neglected or treated only tangentially. The second section, on the other hand, focuses on the theological status of the two authors' poetic work and opens with a theoretical reflection on the nature of the relationship between theology and literature, as well as a concise but essential state of the art on what we have identified as four possible lines within which this relationship has taken shape and matured from the 1970s to the present day (narrative theology, literary theology, theopoetics and embodied theology). The reason for choosing to focus on these two authors in particular lies in the substantial - almost mirror-image - difference in the way they refer to the Bible and in the reworking of their theological discourse. Comparing Luzi and Bigongiari allows us to observe how, starting from the same intertextual reference and the same cultural background, it is possible to trace extremely different and equally relevant paths. The research therefore aimed to contribute, on the one hand, to the study of biblical intertextuality in contemporary poetry, following in the footsteps of scholars such as Northrop Frye, Robert Alter and Piero Boitani, and, on the other hand, to the broader field of investigation into the relationship between literature and theology, echoing the research of Jean-Pierre Jossua and Heather Walton, among others. The intention and firm determination behind the project was, in fact, to address the biblical-theological question without scientific superficiality, comparing the essential theoretical references in the twentieth-century and contemporary debate on the Bible and/as literature, and on the relationship between literature and theology, in Italy and abroad, relying on a broad and solid bibliographical support. On a broader level, the aim was to do justice to that 'third' field of research represented by the encounter between literature and theology - of which Jossua himself is undoubtedly an important promoter - with a view to healing the rift between literature and other fields of knowledge, restoring to the text what has always been its own.