Gianfranco Contini (4 January 1912 – 1 February 1990) was an Italian academic and philologist.[1]
He studied at the Collegio Mellerio Rosmini in Domodossola, then at the University of Pavia, where he graduated in 1933. Later, he studied also in Turin, where he met Giulio Einaudi, Massimo Mila, and Leone Ginzburg, who shortly after started the Einaudi publishing company. From 1934 to 1936, he lived in Paris, following Joseph Bédier's lessons, then he was called to teach in Florence and Pisa, where he became a contributor to "Letteratura", a literary magazine where he shared his views, among others, with Eugenio Montale, and where he began to collaborate with the Accademia della Crusca. In 1938, he was called to teach Romance Philology at the University of Freiburg, as a successor of Bruno Migliorini. Among his students, there have been the critics D'Arco Silvio Avalle and Dante Isella. After 20 years of brilliant academic activity, he was appointed at the University of Florence, and to the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. He was also associated with the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. He directed the Centre of Philology Studies of the Accademia della Crusca, until March 1971. He belonged to the Accademia dei Lincei, and was President of the Società Dantesca Italiana. In 1987, he went back to his hometown where he died three years later.
