Sui Germani come problema culturale. M.V. Molinari e 'La filologia germanica'

About twenty years after R. Wenskus’s thorough revision of the Old Germanic paradigm, M. Vittoria Molinari’s 'La Filologia germanica' appeared in 1980. Until then, in Italy, the study of Germanic philology had been dominated by works that were heavily indebted to Indo-European linguistics, and it was with the aim of overcoming these limits that the author recovered some elements that marked P. Scardigli’s historical approach. The linguistic analysis remained undisputedly prominent, but the innovative introduction combined with the subdivision of the book into geo-linguistic areas allowed the author to focus attention on historical-political elements as well as the religious and literary phenomena. The criticism of the concept of an original, monolithic 'Germanentum', and the attempt to overcome the traditional constraints of linguistics and textual criticism enabled the work to widen the ‘Germanic’ issue into an overall cultural problem.