Major Corrections

A trenchant analysis the thought of Sebastiano Timpanaro, one of the most original leftist thinkers of the 20th century

Sebastiano Timpanaro (1923-2000) was one of the most original leftist thinkers of the 20th century. His thought spans a unique range of subjects, from materialism to classical philology, from the Enlightenment to Freud, from science to socialism, from the history of linguistics to 19th century Italian literature.

Timpanaro confronted this manifold material with addictive clarity and incisive honesty. This book is the first serious attempt in any language to introduce Timpanaro’s thought in its entirety.

Drawing on original archival research, Geue shows the astonishing breadth of Timpanaro’s intellect and his eccentric dual profile as a Marxist and technical philologist. From this emerges not only a compelling portrait of a neglected radical thinker, but also a rallying call for the Left to revive its commitment to scientific truth and rigorous detail.Preface
Notes on Bibliography and Abbreviations

Introduction: Bit Parts
1 Red to the End
2 Philology and Its Histories
3 Enlightenment Classicists
4 A Material Boy
5 Freud’s Slips
6 Language and Linguistics
7 ‘Literary Criticism’
Conclusion: Battere e Ribattere

Acknowledgments
Index

"Sebastiano Timpanaro was one of the purest and most original minds of the second half of the twentieth century"
—Perry Anderson

"Tom Geue's book is by a long stretch the best discussion of Sebastiano Timpanaro's position in the Italian and European intellectual life of the second half of the twentieth century. Through a fresh reconsideration of Timpanaro's work and an unprecedented engagement with his archive it puts forward a fundamentally original and utterly compelling account of an exceptional scholarly and political trajectory. Geue explores pressing questions on the interplay between intellectual work and political activism, and sets a new standard to future projects on the history of classical scholarship. Timpanaro is carefully and sympathetically discussed on his own terms and in his own context, and the relevance of his work to global debates in the early twenty-first century is deftly articulated. A luminous, enlightening, and energising read."
—Federico Santangelo, author of Divination, Prediction and the End of the Roman RepublicTom Geue teaches Classical Studies at the Australian National University. He has written about the mysteries of anonymous writing in the ancient world, including the books Author Unknown: The Power of Anonymity in Ancient Rome (2019) and Juvenal and the Poetics of Anonymity (2017). He has also written Marxist criticism on classical Latin poetry. In 2021, his original research was recognised with the award of a Philip Leverhulme Prize.