The AMARGINE project aims to study some of the most important collections of books that belonged to Italian poets of the late twentieth century and deposited in libraries and public institutions, in order to prepare a census of the postillated books, a detailed description of the census material and a digitization of the most significant specimens.
In the history of European culture, the trace of the readings recorded in the margin of manuscripts and printed books has always played a central role in understanding the history of the reception of those works. The most important are the annotations posted by those exceptional readers who are the writers: here, in fact, the history of reception is accompanied by the history of intellectual formation and, in more than one case, of literary creation, especially when to be postulated are manuscripts and books that have constituted a central point of reference for one and the other. In their various conformations (from the simple sign of highlighting to the quick comment, up to the complex annotations), the annotations to the books are therefore an essential tool for reconstructing the use of texts by an author. The study of postillated books is even more fruitful when it is possible to place it in the study of libraries belonging to a writer: here in fact the single volume finds a place in the construction of a library according to sometimes very clear paths, sometimes to be deciphered not always easy.
In this general context, the Italian twentieth century is the historical-literary period in which the phenomenon of the postillated books has been studied in a less systematic way. Substantially neglected, in particular, the books belonged to the poets, on which this research has decided to focus its attention: in poetry, in fact, and especially with the second half of the twentieth century, the intertextual practice assumes a weight of absolute importance: research into volumes read and annotated by poets therefore plays a decisive role in the acquisition of confirmations in this direction. Equally important is the possibility of directly reconstructing that interdisciplinary culture linked to the theoretical reflection on the poetry that characterizes the crucial season of the fifties and sixties and which lays the foundations for the plot that often informs the literary production of these authors.