Luca Serianni died. The linguist and philologist was 74 years old. The emeritus professor of history of the Italian language at the “La Sapienza” University of Rome, where he taught from 1980 to 2017, an academic of great authority and international fame in the field of studies on poetic language and historical grammar, died in hospital San Camillo della Capitale, where he was hospitalized in an irreversible coma following the after-effects of a road accident. On the first morning of July 18, Serianni was hit by a car while crossing the pedestrian crossing in Ostia, on the Roman coast, where he had long ago decided to live.
The announcement of the disappearance, which took place this morning at 9.30, when the doctors found the flat outcome of the electroencephalogram, declaring brain death, was given by the family who thanks “all those who have expressed their affection in recent days” . Family members and friends “express their personal gratitude to the health personnel of the San Camillo Hospital in Rome”.
“Luca Serianni is the most authoritative Italian linguist we have had in recent decades,” Claudio Marazzini, president of the Accademia della Crusca, told time.news. “We mourn a single teacher, who has had very close relations with his colleagues and students: he has formed a conspicuous group of scholars, some of whom occupy important positions in the world of studies”.
National member of the Accademia dei Lincei, of the Accademia della Crusca and of the Arcadia, of the Casa di Dante in Rome, vice president of the Dante Alighieri Society, director of the magazines “Italian linguistic studies” and “Italian lexicography studies”, Serianni dedicated his life to the “cult” of the “word”, written and spoken, establishing himself as one of the most influential Italian linguists, author of numerous texts on grammar that have made the recent history of linguistics. Since 2004, he has taken care of the updates of the Devoto-Oli Italian vocabulary and since the 2017 edition he has also become co-author.
The last public event in which Serianni participated was last July 6 in Florence when he attended the inauguration of the first two rooms of the Mundi, the National Museum of Italian, of which he was scientific coordinator, in the presence of the Minister of Culture , Dario Franceschini. It was the culmination of a cultural dream that she had been pursuing since 2003 with the exhibition “Dove il Sì Suona”, set up in Florence and then taken around Italy.
A scholar with vast interests in ancient and modern Italian linguistic history, Serianni wrote a successful “Grammatica italiana” (Utet), reprinted several times (also as Garzantina with the title “Italian” in 1997) and edited, with Pietro Trifone, a “History of the Italian language” in three volumes (Einaudi, 1993-94). Among his many recent books are: “First lesson in grammar” (Laterza 2010), “The Italian poetic language. Grammar and texts” (Carocci, 2009), “L’ora d’italiano” (Laterza, 2010), “Italian in prose” (Cesati, 2011), “Reading, writing, arguing. Reasoned writing tests” (Laterza, 2013). His volume of him is “Word of Dante” (Il Mulino, 2021), in which he summarized his many lexicographical and philological studies on the Supreme Poet.
Born in Rome on 30 October 1947, Luca Serianni was trained at the school of Arrigo Castellani, master of “purism” of the Italian language, under whose guidance he graduated in Literature in 1970 at the “La Sapienza” University of Rome. Assistant Professor in 1973, he was Professor of History of the Italian Language at the Universities of Siena (Arezzo, 1974-75), L’Aquila (1975-76), Messina (from 1976-77 to 1979-80). In 1980 he became full professor of History of the Italian language at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, where he concluded his prestigious academic career five years ago, surrounded by the esteem and affection of entire generations of students and colleagues. His first graduate in 1982 was Giuseppe Patota, now full professor of History of the Italian language at the University of Siena and academic of the Crusca.
Serianni was honorary doctorates of the University of Valladolid and that of Athens. In 2004 he received at the Accademia dei Lincei the Prize of the Minister of Cultural Heritage of the Prize for Philology and Linguistics. Since 2005 he was an honorary citizen of the Municipality of Bibbiena. He was a ‘visiting professor’ at the University of Santiago de Compostela and held a cycle at the Scuola Normale in Pisa and at the University of Basel.
Among the many institutions of which he was a member, also the Academy of Sciences and Letters of Turin, the Virgilian Academy of Mantua, the Lombard Institute of Sciences and Letters, the Lorenzo Valla Foundation; since 2012 he was “Research Fellow” of the Higher School of Advanced Studies of Sapienza; since 2011 member of the Scientific Council of the Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana and since 2010 vice president of the Dante Alighieri Society and, in the same association, he was president in the years 1999-2003 of the “Language Project” for teaching Italian abroad . He was a member of the scientific committee of “Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie”, “Contributi di philologia dell’Italia mediana”, “Italian journal of onomastics” and “Italian journal of linguistics and dialectology”.
In 2006 Serianni was appointed by the then Minister of Cultural Heritage as president of a “Technical Commission with the task of carrying out an overall examination of the language and terminology in the field of cultural heritage and activities and of elaborating the relative proposals”.
Serianni has participated in some important international collective enterprises: the “Lexikon der Romanistischen Linguistik” by G. Holtus, M. Metzeltin, Ch. Schmitt, the “Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft” by G. Ernst, M.-D . Gleßgen, Ch. Schmitt, W. Schweickard, the “History of Italian literature” by Enrico Malato; he wrote the update on Italian language and dialects for the Italian Encyclopedia Treccani (Appendix 2000); he collaborated on some well-known dictionaries of contemporary Italian: in the Eighties the Dardano (Curcio) and the Garzanti and finally the Devoto-Oli, directing the updates together with Maurizio Trifone.
Juror of the Strega Prize, in 2007, for his 60 years, a miscellany of studies written by 45 students (“Linguistic Writings for Luca Serianni”, Salerno editrice) was published in his honor, which he considered as his family.
His research activity has spanned almost all sectors of Italian linguistic history: from historical grammar to literary language, from the Middle Ages to the contemporary age, from phonology to lexicon. Particular attention has constantly paid to the philological assessment, considered preliminary and indispensable for the linguistic analysis of the text. He began by dealing with medieval Tuscan dialects (Arezzo and Prato), with edition and linguistic commentary on texts; the commented edition of a treaty from the late sixteenth century is also dedicated to Tuscany (the Turamino by Sienese Scipione Bargagli, 1976). In the eighties his interests concentrated in the nineteenth century; has studied, among other things, in essays of various extension, the normative codification of purists, the language of medicine, the Manzoni linguistic reform, the language-dialect relationship in Rome, with particular regard to Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli, the expressionism of Vittorio Imbriani. Since the 1990s, his attention to the literary language has led him to study authors and linguistically significant moments, especially of the 16th-18th centuries (representation of orality in the poetic language, Della Casa, Davanzati, Varano, neoclassical poetic language, Metastasio, lingua librettos etc.) and of the twentieth century (the last D’Annunzio, Pasolini, Bellonci, Tomasi di Lampedusa, Panzini lexicographer, contemporary newspapers, didactics of Italian); he dedicated particular attention to Carducci, poet and prose writer.
To Dante Alighieri Serianni has dedicated many articles and essays and a contribution on the linguistic color of the Comedy (2007). He has published two manuals of linguistic history of the first and second nineteenth century (Il Mulino, 1989 and 1990), then recast and updated in the volume “History of Italian in the nineteenth century” (Il Mulino, 2013); with Utet a great “Italian Grammar” (1988) and with Carocci an extensive treatment of the poetic language of classical Italian (XIV-XIX centuries) which systematically defines its salient features (“Introduction to the Italian poetic language”, 2001; new updated edition, with the addition of a commented anthology, “The Italian Poetic Language. Grammar and Texts”, 2009).
Serianni coordinated and introduced a volume, published by the Dante Alighieri Society and written almost entirely by his students, dedicated to language in the history of Italy (2001). In 2002, with Garzanti, a collection entitled “Travelers, musicians, poets. Essays on the history of the Italian language” appeared; in 2003, with il Mulino, “Italiani Writings”; in 2005, with Garzanti, a volume on the language of medicine (“A train of symptoms. Doctors and words: linguistic paths in the past and in the present”); in 2006, with Laterza, a “First lesson in grammar”; in 2009, with Carocci (together with Giuseppe Benedetti), an essay on Italian that emerges from school corrections: “Writings on the benches. School Italian between pupils and teachers”; in 2010, with Laterza, a reflection on the teaching of humanities in secondary schools (“L’ora d’italiano”); in 2012, with Cesati, the collection “Italiano in prose”; in 2013, with Laterza, “Reading, writing, arguing. Reasoned writing tests” (International Award “Città dello Stretto” in the same year) and “First lesson in the history of the Italian language” (2015). Also from Il Mulino he then published “Parola” (2016), “For the Italian of yesterday and today” (2018), “The sentiment of the language. Conversation with Giuseppe Antonelli” (2019). You edited “Illustrated history of the Italian language” for (Carocci, 2017) and “L’italiano. Speaking, writing, typing” (Istituto Enciclopedia Italiana, 2019). “The thousand languages of Rome” (Castelvecchi, 2021) preceded his latest work “Parola di Dante” (Il Mulino, 2021).
As president of the “Lincei per la scuola” Foundation, Serianni held many meetings in the institutes to talk to students about language and literature that he considered “national heritage”. He also directed the IOM, the Observatory of Italianisms in the world.
(by Paolo Martini)