| Sumario: | The article investigates the rapport between Literature andimpegno, through a focus on the writings of Umberto Eco and Pier Vittorio Tondelli. During the late Seventies, these two Italian authors lived in the same city, Bologna, and worked in the same academic department — the DAMS — Eco as a professor, and Tondelli as his student. Eco and Tondelli observed theMovimento del Settantasette,acknowledged its relevance and originality, and mediated its cultural meaning to the rest of society through their writings, occasionally published for the same media and republished by the same publishing house, Bompiani. Umberto Eco (1932–2016) was known as one of the most original authors who has added an insightful point of view on the relationship between Literature andimpegno. In doing so, Eco has endorsed and represented in Italy the McDonaldian vision on the existence of ahighbrowandlowbrowculture, declined according to Leslie Fiedler’s and Marshall McLuhan’s intuitions. Tondelli’s plural oeuvre and his own idea ofimpegnowas greatly influenced by Eco’s vision and, partially, by the creative wing of theSettantasette. The primary objective of the article is to explain Tondelli’s pattern ofimpegnothrough an analysis of his works in light of Eco’s definition ofimpegnothus making a contribution to the ongoing debate about Tondelli’s form of commitment. The conclusion that might be drawn is that it is necessary, today, to revisit the Tondellian oeuvre as an example of Echian, lowbrowimpegno.
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