Prison Notebooks (Vol. 6)

The reader of this sixth volume of Prison Notebooks will find illuminating passages on “great” and “small” literature: Dante, Manzoni, De Sanctis, Pirandello and authors of serials for whom Gramsci created a refreshing reading, bringing them closer to the forgers of future “supermen.”

This Brazilian edition of the Prison Notebooks was organized by Carlos Nelson Coutinho — internationally recognized as one of the greatest experts on Gramsci's thought —, with the collaboration of Luiz Sérgio Henriques, essayist, translator and editor of the online magazine Gramsci e o Brasil, and Marco Aurélio Nogueira, associate professor at the São Paulo State University.

The six volumes of the Prison Notebooks are divided, according to Gramsci's own instructions, into "special notebooks" and "miscellaneous notebooks." In the former, Gramsci grouped notes on specific topics; in the latter, he gathered notes on diverse subjects. In addition to reproducing the "special notebooks" as they were bequeathed to us by the Italian thinker, this edition includes the notes contained in the "miscellaneous notebooks," relating to the basic content of each of the "special notebooks."

Volume 6 contains four of these "special notebooks": two dedicated to literature and art, one to folklore, and one to grammar—in addition to the section of notebook 4 in which Gramsci devoted 11 paragraphs to analyzing Dante's "Canto Ten of Inferno." These four special notebooks are followed, as in the other volumes, by a general section entitled "Miscellaneous Notebooks," which brings together Gramsci's scattered notes on the topics addressed in the aforementioned special notebooks: "Popular Literature," "Father Bresciani's Children," "The Non-National-Popular Character of Italian Literature," among others. Also found in this miscellaneous section are notes dedicated to folklore and grammar. At the end of the book, the appendix contains indexes that help readers navigate the six volumes.

"For those who live within a post-colonial formation, like us Brazilians, reading Gramsci can be fruitful. [...] Gramsci foresaw the construction of a socialist, democratic, secular, and national public life, which the organic intellectuals of the working class should promote." — Alfredo Bosi

"By 'people,' Gramsci understands the set of subaltern social classes or groups. But the notion presents an internal dialectic, linked to its own explication in a network of relationships that reaches the point of a link, albeit problematic, with the social totality. [...] It is not a static relationship, but a dynamic one. And the popular part of a nation transcends the national dimension itself and positions itself as a member of the international class." — Giorgio Baratta