The double nature of ‘source criticism’: Between philology and intertextuality

This article analyzes so-called ‘source criticism’, and it observes how this discipline historically and conceptually developed into the theory of intertextuality. This research traces the steps of source criticism from the end of the 19th century and through the 20th century, paying special attention to Italian literature; it deals with texts by critics Pio Rajna, Renato Serra, Ernst Robert Curtius, Gian Biagio Conte, Ezio Raimondi and Giuseppe Velli