PAOLO MURIALDI E LE PAGINE CULTURALI DEL 'GIORNO': LETTERATURA E ARTE NEL MONDO(1960-67)

The first part of this research focuses on Paolo Murialdi as a journalist, the second one considers his cultural choices for the newspaper ‘Il Giorno’, in particular for the special weekly page Letteratura e arte nel mondo and for the monthly supplement ‘Giornolibri’. Murialdi, well known as the major historian of Italian journalism, was born in 1919 in Genoa, where he started his career at ‘Il Secolo XIX’. After the Second World War Murialdi settled in Milan and changed several editors: he worked for ‘Milano Sera’, ‘L’Avanti!’, as well as for ‘L’Umanità’ and for ‘Corriere della Sera’. In 1956 Murialdi accepted the role of editor in chief in the brand new newspaper ‘Il Giorno’. He was initially responsible for political information but, from 1960 till 1967, he also supervised cultural sections: he structured Letteratura e arte nel mondo and ‘Giornolibri’, published from 1963 to 1966. Murialdi’s special page was quite different from the traditional Italian Third page: the absence of the Elzevir, the accessible language, new cultural and critical reports and several book reviews were its main features. Thanks to young and still unknown collaborators, critics and writers, such as Pietro Citati and Alberto Arbasino, but also to historians and experts like Brunello Vigezzi, Marco Valsecchi, Enzo Forcella, Roberto De Monticelli, Pietro Bianchi and many others, Murialdi designed cultural pages concerned with literature, philosophy, history, arts and mass culture.