Ivan Pupo's latest Pirandellian book and the IA red rescue

Abstract

A long review of the latest book written by one of the most brilliant Pirandello scholars, Ivan Pupo, whose previous contributions Roberto Alonge has already had the opportunity to review. The scholar in question has always been interested in intertextual criticism, which connects two different authors. Alonge recalls a memorable essay by Pupo, dating back to about twenty years ago, which compared two plays, by Pirandello and Bernstein respectively, with a shrewd ability to focus on Pirandello's contradictions. Compared to that example of sounding, Alonge is unable to hide that this latest book by Pupo presents less memorable outcomes, for example in the analysis of Pirandello's drama "Non si sa come". He closes his speech by observing in a somewhat provocative way that Artificial Intelligence will soon replace the majority of university professors, who know how to work essentially in the direction of dissemination, rather than in the direction of interpretative originality; there will be few left, the only ones – according to Alonge – capable of working in the direction of close reading. Ivan Pupo could certainly be one of these few.