The aim of this thesis is to confirm the role of literature in the formation ofman and citizen through the study of cultural phenomena and historical and socialevents that have marked the theoretical studies and didactic applicationsunderlying the teaching of Italian literature over the last 70 years.How to teach literature today, at a time in history when there has alreadybeen talk for years of a crisis in the teaching of literature and a constant search totrace its causes and hypothesise some solutions, is the challenge that needs to beaddressed in order for literary education to regain its former centrality andcontribute to the formation of responsible and critical citizens.It was not easy to give a straightforward answer to the various questions thatconstituted the incipit of this research work: the fact that the teaching of literature,in Italy the basis of education for centuries, is going through a major crisis isunquestionable; that the crisis of literature and the crisis of the school are one andthe same, and that the school must accept the challenge of no longer being able tobe the sole training subject for young people, considering also that literature is nolonger the training subject par excellence, is beyond dispute.In order to search for a possible squaring of a circle, around which too manyunresolved questions revolve on the subject of the didactics of Italian literature,the research was divided into three parts.The first part, entitled Historical Excursus of the Main TheoreticalApproaches to the Didactics of Literature, dwells on the theoretical frameworkunderlying approaches, methods and objectives of literature didactics. This is inorder to show that the reference theories, which constitute the world of ideas, areclosely linked to the methodological approach that characterises the school realityof the classroom, and thus, the world of teaching action.Inventio auctoris, operis, lectoris? It was imperative, therefore, to take upthe vexata quaestio so long debated by literary criticism, concerning the centralityof the author (intentio auctoris), the study of the work (intentio operis), and theSubscribe to DeepL Pro to edit this document.Visit www.DeepL.com/pro for more information.2moment of enjoyment of the literary product (intentio lectoris), and to take stockof each.The second part, entitled The didactic consequences through the analysis of the most representative manuals, analyses how the various models of literaryeducation (historicist, formalist, structuralist, hermeneutic, to name but a few)underlying the three types of theoretical approaches (author-centredness, work centredness and reader-centredness) that have followed one another over timehave influenced the field of didactics.The third part of the research entitled New Educational Proposalsrepresents the experimental part with which an innovative approach was explored:the Writing Reading Workshop1(WRW).In the first of the three chapters, I paused to describe the origins andcharacteristics of the method, its areas of application, the structure of theworkshops and analysed the cornerstones that represent its connotative features.In the second chapter, I clarified the intent of my fieldwork, the motivationsthat led me to opt for qualitative research and the collection instruments used toconduct it.It was a classroom-based research that saw me in the role of observer, ofresearcher placed in the school context to understand how in everyday life theWRW method is applied taking into account different factors, such aspsychological, educational, social variables.Finally, the third chapter of this experimental part of the work includes thenarration of all the observations conducted in the classroom, the interview withthe teacher and the results of the questionnaires.