Tra letteratura e scienza: rappresentazione del Delta Padano

At the heart of this paper is the relationship between literature and anthropology. The richness of this relationship also emerges when these two genres of writing, novel and ethnography, focus their descriptive / analytical gaze on a territory of modernity. The case study analyzed is Ferrara, where, between the early 1950s and the late 1980s, a network of intellectuals came to life who produced a series of visual works outside and inside the city walls - if we think of painting , to photography, cinema, video art - of writings - reportage, social investigations, essays, poems, stories, novels -, of anthropological value. At the base of the gaze of this generation of intellectuals there was a strongly transdisciplinary point of view where the separations between what is "science" and what is "literature" were less evident, also considering the absence of humanities and the institution of the first chair of Anthropology in Ferrara only in 2008/2009. What weight and scientific value should we give today to these literary productions? How did these influence the image we have today of that territory outside the walls of Ferrara which we call Delta Padano? How much have they influenced the institutionalization of the first chair of cultural anthropology in the city?