Maria Corti
| Maria Corti | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
7 September 1915 Milan, Italy |
| Died | 22 February 2002 (aged 86) Milan, Italy |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Occupation | Literary scholar and novelist |
Maria Corti (7 September 1915 – 22 February 2002) was an Italian philologist, literary critic, and novelist. Considered one of the leading literary scholars of post-World War II Italy, she was awarded numerous prizes including the Premio Campiello for the entire body of her work. Her works of fiction were informed by her literary scholarship but also had a distinctly autobiographical vein, particularly her Voci del nord-est (1986) and II canto delle sirene (1989). For most of her career she was based at the University of Pavia where she established the Fondo Manoscritti di Autori Moderni e Contemporanei, an extensive curated archive of material on modern Italian writers.
Corti was born in Milan, the only child of Emilio and Celestina (née Goldoni) Corti. Her mother was a pianist who died when Corti was ten years old. After her mother's death, her father, an engineer frequently absent from Milan while working in southern Italy, placed her in a boarding school run by the Sisters of Saint Marcellina. She would remain there for the next five years. After leaving the boarding school she studied at a liceo in Milan, living largely on her own apart from summer holidays spent with her father in Apulia. She then attended the University of Milan where she would eventually complete two laurea degrees. The first was in literature in 1936 with a thesis on medieval Latin supervised by Benvenuto Terracini. The second was in philosophy with a thesis on African Spir supervised by Antonio Banfi.
Corti's early academic career coincided with Italian Fascism and was curtailed by laws which prohibited women from holding university or liceo teaching positions. From 1939 to 1950 she worked as a teacher in a ginnasio (secondary school for students from age 11 to 16) in Brescia, dedicated herself to private study and writing, and was active in anti-Fascist circles. From 1950 until 1962 she taught at the Alessandro Volta liceo in Como and then at the Cesare Beccaria liceo in Milan. She also held a part-time teaching post at the University of Pavia from 1955 which she combined with her teaching at the liceo in Milan. After her mentor Benvenuto Terracini had returned from exile in 1947, she renewed her research collaboration with him and formed close personal and intellectual ties with his other students—Cesare Segre, Gian Luigi Beccaria and Bice Mortara Garavelli. The ties would last a lifetime, and Corti (who never married) and often spoke of these scholars as her "family".
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