La filologia classica alla Scuola Normale

Classical philology at the Scuola Normale originated with Domenico Comparetti, the major Italian philologist of the 19th century, who introduced the history-based approach of the positivist school to Pisa when he taught there between 1859 and 1872. One of his students at the Scuola Normale was Girolamo Vitelli, another great name in classical philology in Italy in the late 19th and early 20th century, who was the founder of papyrology in this country and although he taught in Florence rather than Pisa, his school maintained close ties with the Scuola Normale. During the late 19th and early 20th century, the Scuola Normale was a stronghold of philology as a historical science as opposed to the aestheticism supported by the idealist current, which dominated classical studies in Italy at that time. This approach received a boost with the arrival of Giorgio Pasquali who taught at the Scuola Normale from 1930 until he died in 1952 and whose extraordinary teaching made the Scuola Normale a major school of philology in Italy with an ongoing tradition of excellence.