L'ermeneutica 'protestante' di Guido Paduano

Although he never produced a theoretical summa of his own literary hermeneutics, Guido Paduano developed over the years a consistent method of textual interpretation, displayed in a vast and diverse corpus of literary criticism. In this paper, I aim to set Paduano’s literary criticism in its cultural context, and to point out the principles of literary hermeneutics it consistently, although implicitly, rests upon. It can be shown that Paduano’s closeness to the text’s propositional meaning is a reflection of his idea of literary signification, which ultimately depends on the reader’s direct, independent relationship with the text. In this respect, I try to highlight the pivotal role played by character analysis in all of Paduano’s literary readings, which also makes it possible to reconsider Paduano’s debt to Francesco Orlando’s Freudian literary theory.