Slavia as a Comparative Model. Reflections on a Recent History of Slavic Literatures

The present essay aims to assess the very possibility of tracing a comparative history of Slavic cultures, by highlighting those elements that are potentially common to all these literary traditions. Starting from the examination of Marcello Garzaniti's recent monograph Storia delle letterature slave. Libri, scrittori e idee dall'Adriatico alla Siberia (secoli ix-xxi) [History of Slavic Literatures: Books, Writers, and Ideas from the Adriatic to Siberia (9th-21st Centuries), Rome 2023], the author evaluates two possible comparative perspectives: constructing a binary structure between two phe-nomena or groups of phenomena (for example, Slavia Orthodoxa and Slavia Latina), or interpret-ing the plurality of a class of phenomena in light of some central unifying element, around which the entire series can be arranged. Both these strategies have proved unsatisfactory, as the space of Slavic cultures is an evolutionary system in dynamic equilibrium, not a fixed totality of materials. Thus, it might be appropriate to abandon the very idea of an integral model referring to what is an inevitably open and infinitely plural class of phenomena.