The Role of Sergio Bonazza in Italian Slavic Studies

Abstract

This contribution aims to give a scholarly and human profile of the Italian Slavist Sergio Bonazza (1938-2021), recently passed away. Bonazza was born in a Slovene-speaking village nearby Triest to a mixed family. He studied in Venice and Vienna, where he started his activity as a researcher in the field of Slavic studies history, especially in the Austro-German and Italian contexts of the 19^th century. His academic career unfolded mostly at the University of Verona, but also in Naples, Udine and Vienna. In 1987 in Udine, he was assigned the first chair of Slovene studies out of Slovenia. Gifted with a strong personality, he touched on a wide variety of concerns in different fields of Slavic studies, overcoming academic and cultural stereotypes, and often opening up new perspectives in the fields of history of Slavistics, Slovene culture and literature, Austro-Slavism, Slavic-Italian cultural relationships, Glagolitic writing in Eastern Italy, and more. Bonazza is well known as a specialist in the scholarly biography of the prominent Slavist Jernej (Bartholomäeus) Kopitar, to whom he devoted his best works, including a monograph.