Luciano Canfora (Italian pronunciation:[luˈtʃaːnoˈkaɱfora]; born 5 June 1942) is an Italianclassicist andhistorian. Born inBari, Canfora obtained his first degree in Roman History in 1964 atPisa University. He has for some years been professor emeritus of Classics at theUniversity of Bari. His specialty is ancient libraries and his bookThe Vanished Library,[1] which is about theLibrary of Alexandria, has been translated into some 15 languages.[2]
Since 1975, Canfora has edited the periodicalQuaderni di storia. In 1998, he published a rebuttal of Elena Agarossi andVictor Zaslavsky's work,Togliatti e Stalin. Il PCI e la politica estera staliniana negli archivi di Mosca, about criticism ofPalmiro Togliatti and theItalian Communist Party.[3] He stood in the1999 European Parliament election in Italy for theParty of Italian Communists. In 2004, Canfora published ahistory of democracy under the titleLa democrazia. Storia di un'ideologia.[4]
Education and academic career
Among Italy's leadingphilologists,[5] a student of the historian of antiquity Ettore Lepore,[6] Luciano Canfora is the son of the historian of philosophy Fabrizio Canfora and the Latinist and Greek scholar Rosa Cifarelli, both professors at theQuinto Orazio Flacco high school in Bari, as well as anti-fascist protagonists of the city's cultural and civic life after World War II. His mother was sister of jurist and magistrate Michele Cifarelli, a former member of theAction Party, deputy and senator of theItalian Republican Party.[7]
He graduated inHumanities with a thesis in Roman history in 1964 and received his postgraduate degree inClassics from theScuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. He began his university career as an assistant professor ofancient history and later ofAncient Greek literature. He is professor emeritus of Greek andClassics at the University of Bari and scientific coordinator of the Higher School of HistoricalScuola Superiore di Studi Storici di San Marino.[8]
He is a member of the editorial boards of several journals, both scientific and high popularization, such as theBoston Journal of Classical Tradition,[9] the Spanish Historia y crítica, and the Italian high popularization geopolitical journalLimes. He is a member of the Fondazione Istituto Gramsci[9] and the scientific committee of the EncyclopediaTreccani. He also directs, since 1975, the journal Quaderni di Storia (ed. Dedalo, Bari), the text series La città antica at the publisher Sellerio, the Paradosis series for Dedalo editions and the Historos series forSandro Teti Editore.
He is a prolific author on philology, history and politics from ancient to contemporary times. Many of his books have been translated in theUnited States,France, theUnited Kingdom,Germany,Greece, theNetherlands,Brazil,Spain, theCzech Republic,Slovenia,Romania,Russia,Turkey and theUnited Arab Emirates. He is an elzevirista forCorriere della Sera and contributes to Il Calendario del Popolo, on which he has a regular column entitled Brother Babeuf.[10]
He coordinated and directed, together with Diego Lanza and Giuseppe Cambiano, Lo spazio letterario della Grecia antica for Salerno editore (1992–1996), a collective work on the different characters of Greco-antique philology,Ancient Greek literature and its persistence. Top Italian experts in Greek philology and history of literature contributed to this work. He received in 2011 for the Militant Criticism section the Feronia-City of Fiano Prize.[11]
In 2020 Luciano Canfora won the historical scientific section of theAcqui Award of History.[12]
Policy
Already a militant for some years in theProletarian Unity Party (Italy) (PdUP), in 1988 he joined theItalian Communist Party (PCI);[13] after the Bolognina turning point he adhered to the third motion proposed byArmando Cossutta For a Socialist Democracy in Europe,[13][14] being elected to the party'scentral committee A few months after the subsequent dissolution of the PCI he joined theCommunist Refoundation Party (PRC).[13]
He was a candidate for the1999 European Parliament election on the list of theParty of Italian Communists (PdCI) in the Northwestern, Central and Southern Italy constituencies, without being elected.After the dissolution of Comunisti Italiani, he was called a "communist without a party." In the 2018 general election, he supported theFree and Equal list and candidate Michele Laforgia in theBari uninominal election.[15]
In a 2019 interview, he says he has "always been aProletarian internationalist".
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