What is literature? Starting from this question (title of a famous essay by Jean-Paul Sartre of 1948), we will follow - along the path of reading and knowing how to read - other questions: where does the letter come from? What demands, needs or desires do you express? And again: is the letter of a game an end in itself, a pure amusement, or does it speak of the world, reflects it, imitates it? And, in this case, according to transparent or deforming methods? And what kind of message or meaning does a literary work convey? Can it be translated into full and rational words or does it have characteristics that make it refractory to logical discourse? And is this meaning fixed in time or does it change according to the reader, to the ages, to the societies and in short to the perspective that is adopted? Are there any criteria for establishing the aesthetic excellence of a text, or is it all delegated to subjective sensitivity, or to the choices of elites that require that only certain works be considered valid? And finally: what and to whom does literature serve? We will try to cross the fields of investigation to which these questions look, thanks to a survey of some of the most important literary theories of the twentieth century, then pausing to a careful analysis of the Novellas by Luigi Pirandello, a march of characters and situations that in their many facets, they force you to look at life like a shattered mirror (Giovanni Macchia). The textual universe and Pirandello's style choices will be the cornerstone for a reasoned and conscious reflection of the linguistic tool in its most refined, literary form, to give context and depth to the voice of the language and the letter has the task of teaching it to school.
