Renato Serra (Cesena, 1884 - Monte Podgora, 1915) studied at the Regio Liceo Ginnasio Vincenzo Monti in Cesena, where he concluded his studies at the age of sixteen, without taking the final exam due to his very high grades. In 1900 he enrolled at the University of Bologna at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy. He graduated in 1904 with a thesis on the Style of Petrarch's Triumphs, discussed with Giosuè Carducci. In Turin he collaborated on the creation of an Italian-Latin dictionary for the publisher Paravia. He soon became part of the Florentine milieu of «La Voce». In 1915, in the midst of the war, he wrote one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century Italian literature, the Examination of Conscience of a Literater, published in the «Voce». On 20 July 1915 he was killed in combat on Mount Podgora, at just thirty years old.