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In her poetry collection falsche freunde the German-speaking artist Uljana Wolf develops a translinguale Lyrik, a poetic voice dwelling on a linguistic and geographical border zone. Building on Emily Apter’s concepts of untranslatability, this paper investigates how Wolf’s structural and thematic checkpoints instil a strong political commitment into her poetry. Furthermore, this engagement is here interpreted as the expression of the paradigm of the postmigrantische Gesellschaft. Finally, the paper argues that through the choice of the term ‘alien’ over the category ‘fremd’ Wolf suggests an innovative shift in the representation of migratory dynamics, from their cultural dimension to their biopolitical significance.

Theo Padnos published My Life Had Stood A Loaded Gun in 2004, when Prison Studies were burgeoning and gaining academic attention globally. Neglected by critics, the book relates the author's experience as literature instructor in an American prison. Engaging methods of pedagogical research and reader-response criticism, the paper investigates the role of literature in the cultural activities of young male inmates in a medium security jail in Vermont. An original amalgam of crime reports, pedagogy of literature, and autobiographical criticism, Padnos' study for the first time confronts young criminals with a literary canon dripping with violence. The experiment sheds light on the reading activities of prisoners, on their and the author's social background, and on the power of American literature to speak to marginal groups.

Linguists argued that the Cockney dialect, in London, is expected to be replaced by Multicultural London English in the years to come. However, this does not imply that Cockney is dead, as recent research revealed that it just moved to Essex. This paper aims at examining whether (l) vocalisation, a common feature of Cockney, is still present in the London district of Bermondsey. Ten working-class English speakers, stratified by age and sex, have been recorded by means of sociolinguistic interviews. The results, discussed both quantitively and qualitatively, show that: (a) (l) vocalisation is present in all age cohorts, with young speakers favouring the non-standard feature; (b) preceding long vowels trigger (l) vocalisation.

The so-called indirect passive, where the subject is not the argument of the underlying verb that bears the Theme/Patient role, is generally understood to be a bi-clausal phenomenon (cf. Kuno 1973; Shibatani 1978; Kuroda 1979). In other words, the passive morpheme rare is merged with a clause, and then the resulting item is combined with the subject. In this paper, however, we argue that the indirect passive is best understood as a mono-clausal phenomenon. We first point out that with some instances of the indirect passive, the passive morpheme rare is not understood as being combined with a verb or clause in syntax. Thus, we are led to assume that the lexicon contains numerous instances of the Vrare form. This implies that even when the passive morpheme rare is combined in syntax, it forms a constituent with the relevant verb; hence, the indirect passive is a mono-clausal phenomenon. We furthermore maintain that when the indirect passive involves the merging of rare with a verb in syntax, the verb must be a volitional verb, and demonstrate that this generalization, as well as the case particle alternation involved in the indirect passive, poses a challenge to the bi-clause analysis but not to the mono-clause analysis. Finally, we review one of the main arguments for analyzing the indirect passive to be a bi-clausal phenomenon, which concerns the antecedent of zibun. We show that it is inconclusive at best.

The goal of this paper is to reconcile the definite marking with the indefinite-like semantics of those superlatives that take a relative/comparative reading. Following Szabolcsi (1986) and Heim (1999), we will assume that the difference between absolute and relative readings of superlatives is represented at the syntactic level of semantic representation, LF (Logical Form). We will however depart from Heim’s hypothesis that what raises at LF is the superlative operator itself (EST). We will instead assume a quantificational-determiner analysis of EST, which involves two raising operations at LF: EST-raising to Spec,DP and raising of the whole superlative DP (Determiner Phrase) to a scope position in the sentence. We will examine the relative readings of quality superlatives. The generalizations and the proposed analysis are not assumed to extend to quantity superlatives.

This paper analyses Angela Carter’s desecrating tendency to taboo-breaking in thematic and formal terms. By referring to her short-fiction production and focusing on “John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore", I intend to show how gender/patriarchal and genre/authorial taboos are similarly broken and transmuted into daringly subversive outcomes. In line with her feminist agenda and postmodern transformism, Carter superbly challenges, sabotages, violates, de- and re-constructs traditionally codified sexual and gender taboos by mimicking such reversals through new narrative solutions. If diversity, multiplicity and change guarantee the continuity of life, incest can easily metaphorise a taboo relationship based on repetition of the identical, sameness, and immobility, to be finally transformed, if not avoided. Consistent with many of her female characters’ incestuous relationships with parents or siblings, Carter also establishes incest-like relationships with previous authors and narrative discourses, which she predatorily appropriates. Carter’s resulting narrative testifies to the fact that taboos must be first experienced to be eventually broken. It is in the dialectic between rule and infraction, taboo and its violation that Carter’s writing is rooted, constantly looking for borders to be crossed.

Designed as a paper reflecting on the editorial mediation of early modern French literary texts, this article maps the educational activities conducted on the Tragiques Inventions site since 2020. In particular, it delves into the procedures linked to documenting, generating and manipulating descriptive and analytical (meta)data. A new concept of ‘hand-reading’ is being developed – the possibility of using digital technology to prioritize human intervention in the construction of knowledge through textual editing. This concept will bring a fresh perspective on early modern literary texts.

There is a substantial body of scholarship arguing for the relevance of magic realism to Toni Morrison’s fictional production, with one exception being her last novel God Help the Child, which, in that respect, has been remarkably overlooked. The present paper intends to fill this scholarly gap by focusing on what Morrison called “enchantment”, a powerful blend of magic and realism that she employed to represent a host of racial and ancestral issues of Blackness, often of a traumatic kind.

Sylvia’s Lovers is a novel about war. It is a historical novel set in the years 1793-1800 during the Napoleonic wars, and written by Elizabeth Gaskell in the years 1859-1862 when the American Civil War broke out, in April 1861. Examining Gaskell’s correspondence with Charles Eliot Norton in the years 1861-63 and the articles Norton wrote in support of the War and the anti-slavery cause, this paper explores the way in which the news coming from America and the debates on the contemporary events left a significant mark on the second part of the novel. The implied reference to the context of the American Civil War would shed new light on Gaskell’s narrative choices concerning the plot and the main male character’s development, which has been substantially overlooked.

Linguists argued that the Cockney dialect, in London, is expected to be replaced by Multicultural London English in the years to come. However, this does not imply that Cockney is dead, as recent research revealed that it just moved to Essex. This paper aims at examining whether (l) vocalisation, a common feature of Cockney, is still present in the London district of Bermondsey. Ten working-class English speakers, stratified by age and sex, have been recorded by means of sociolinguistic interviews. The results, discussed both quantitively and qualitatively, show that: (a) (l) vocalisation is present in all age cohorts, with young speakers favouring the non-standard feature; (b) preceding long vowels trigger (l) vocalisation.

The so-called indirect passive, where the subject is not the argument of the underlying verb that bears the Theme/Patient role, is generally understood to be a bi-clausal phenomenon (cf. Kuno 1973; Shibatani 1978; Kuroda 1979). In other words, the passive morpheme rare is merged with a clause, and then the resulting item is combined with the subject. In this paper, however, we argue that the indirect passive is best understood as a mono-clausal phenomenon. We first point out that with some instances of the indirect passive, the passive morpheme rare is not understood as being combined with a verb or clause in syntax. Thus, we are led to assume that the lexicon contains numerous instances of the Vrare form. This implies that even when the passive morpheme rare is combined in syntax, it forms a constituent with the relevant verb; hence, the indirect passive is a mono-clausal phenomenon. We furthermore maintain that when the indirect passive involves the merging of rare with a verb in syntax, the verb must be a volitional verb, and demonstrate that this generalization, as well as the case particle alternation involved in the indirect passive, poses a challenge to the bi-clause analysis but not to the mono-clause analysis. Finally, we review one of the main arguments for analyzing the indirect passive to be a bi-clausal phenomenon, which concerns the antecedent of zibun. We show that it is inconclusive at best.

The goal of this paper is to reconcile the definite marking with the indefinite-like semantics of those superlatives that take a relative/comparative reading. Following Szabolcsi (1986) and Heim (1999), we will assume that the difference between absolute and relative readings of superlatives is represented at the syntactic level of semantic representation, LF (Logical Form). We will however depart from Heim’s hypothesis that what raises at LF is the superlative operator itself (EST). We will instead assume a quantificational-determiner analysis of EST, which involves two raising operations at LF: EST-raising to Spec,DP and raising of the whole superlative DP (Determiner Phrase) to a scope position in the sentence. We will examine the relative readings of quality superlatives. The generalizations and the proposed analysis are not assumed to extend to quantity superlatives.

This paper analyses Angela Carter’s desecrating tendency to taboo-breaking in thematic and formal terms. By referring to her short-fiction production and focusing on “John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore", I intend to show how gender/patriarchal and genre/authorial taboos are similarly broken and transmuted into daringly subversive outcomes. In line with her feminist agenda and postmodern transformism, Carter superbly challenges, sabotages, violates, de- and re-constructs traditionally codified sexual and gender taboos by mimicking such reversals through new narrative solutions. If diversity, multiplicity and change guarantee the continuity of life, incest can easily metaphorise a taboo relationship based on repetition of the identical, sameness, and immobility, to be finally transformed, if not avoided. Consistent with many of her female characters’ incestuous relationships with parents or siblings, Carter also establishes incest-like relationships with previous authors and narrative discourses, which she predatorily appropriates. Carter’s resulting narrative testifies to the fact that taboos must be first experienced to be eventually broken. It is in the dialectic between rule and infraction, taboo and its violation that Carter’s writing is rooted, constantly looking for borders to be crossed.

Designed as a paper reflecting on the editorial mediation of early modern French literary texts, this article maps the educational activities conducted on the Tragiques Inventions site since 2020. In particular, it delves into the procedures linked to documenting, generating and manipulating descriptive and analytical (meta)data. A new concept of ‘hand-reading’ is being developed – the possibility of using digital technology to prioritize human intervention in the construction of knowledge through textual editing. This concept will bring a fresh perspective on early modern literary texts.

There is a substantial body of scholarship arguing for the relevance of magic realism to Toni Morrison’s fictional production, with one exception being her last novel God Help the Child, which, in that respect, has been remarkably overlooked. The present paper intends to fill this scholarly gap by focusing on what Morrison called “enchantment”, a powerful blend of magic and realism that she employed to represent a host of racial and ancestral issues of Blackness, often of a traumatic kind.

Theo Padnos published My Life Had Stood A Loaded Gun in 2004, when Prison Studies were burgeoning and gaining academic attention globally. Neglected by critics, the book relates the author's experience as literature instructor in an American prison. Engaging methods of pedagogical research and reader-response criticism, the paper investigates the role of literature in the cultural activities of young male inmates in a medium security jail in Vermont. An original amalgam of crime reports, pedagogy of literature, and autobiographical criticism, Padnos' study for the first time confronts young criminals with a literary canon dripping with violence. The experiment sheds light on the reading activities of prisoners, on their and the author's social background, and on the power of American literature to speak to marginal groups.

Sylvia’s Lovers is a novel about war. It is a historical novel set in the years 1793-1800 during the Napoleonic wars, and written by Elizabeth Gaskell in the years 1859-1862 when the American Civil War broke out, in April 1861. Examining Gaskell’s correspondence with Charles Eliot Norton in the years 1861-63 and the articles Norton wrote in support of the War and the anti-slavery cause, this paper explores the way in which the news coming from America and the debates on the contemporary events left a significant mark on the second part of the novel. The implied reference to the context of the American Civil War would shed new light on Gaskell’s narrative choices concerning the plot and the main male character’s development, which has been substantially overlooked.

In this paper, Old High German mood alternations in the different types of subordinate clauses (complement, adverbial and relative clauses) are discussed. The use of the subjunctive in subordinate clauses is notoriously more frequent than in Modern German and has not yet been thoroughly investigated. Based on a comprehensive corpus study, the paper will show that the licensing conditions for the subjunctive in Old High German are determined by notions such as veridicality and – in relative contexts – specificity. These conditions are thus similar (but not always identical) to those observed for Modern Greek and Romance languages. Furthermore, a syntactic analysis is provided in order to account for the licensing of the subjunctive in each type of subordinate clause.

This paper deals with Latin discontinuous nominal expressions (hyperbatons) both by a diachronic perspective internal to Latin (I-VI cent. A.D.) and compared to Romance languages. A nominal expression can be considered discontinuous when its word order is interrupted by one or more elements. In these cases a violation of the principle of the ‘domain integrity’ takes place. Discontinuity is typical of Latin and sets it apart from Romance languages, in which hyperbatons are not allowed. It is well attested in all phases of Latin so that it is considered one of the most distinctive feature of Latin word order. In this paper, we explore the hypothesis that not all linearly discontinuous orders are real hyperbatons. In fact, cases in which the order Modif.-N or N-Modif. is interrupted by the complement of one of the two categories are frequent; in this perspective the domain of hyperbatons results consistently restricted. As regards real hyperbatons, we will propose the following three syntactic configurations: Type 1 due to the extraction of an element within the phrase; Type 2 due to the insertion of a weak element in second position; Type 3 due to the insertion of a verb. A final observation will concern the fact that we find in Latin kinds of hyperbatons that can be considered a clear sign of those that will develop later in Romance because they involve clitics which are absent in Latin.

This paper investigates the syntax of non-topicalized preverbal subjects in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). In BP, both locative PPs and locative DPs can occur in preverbal position: Na escola do Pedro aceita cartão de crédito; A escola do Pedro aceita cartão de crédito. In the latter case, the verb agrees with the locative. In BP, it is also possible to find non-argument constituents triggering verbal agreement, as in Essa estante cabe muitos livros. These sentences have been analysed as innovative constructions restricted to BP. This paper shows that some of the above structures are also present in other languages, e.g. Italian; not all of them are therefore innovative constructions of BP, and subcases need to be differentiated. The hypothesis is that sentences with preverbal non-argumental subjects have the same syntax as sentences with argumental subjects. What seems to occur in some cases is a modification in the verb thematic grid. We interpret BP’s “flexible diathesis” patterns as revealing that in this grammar, a variety of verbs have undergone a modification of their thematic grid which their counterparts in European Portuguese and other Romance languages did not.

Indefinite nominals can typically be modified by pre- or postnominal adjectives in Romance languages. With the exception of a small group of adjectives concerning physical or moral characteristics whose meaning changes according to their pre- or postnominal use, the position of an attributive adjective does not alter its meaning. However, prenominal adjectives in a Spanish indefinite trigger its specific interpretation, thus preventing its variable reading; the same phenomenon obtains also in Catalan. The aim of this paper is to discuss specific cases in some Sicilian dialects – mainly in the dialect of Delia (province of Caltanissetta) – in order to provide further evidence of the fact that prenominal evaluative adjectives force the specific interpretation of indefinites in Romance. Since Sicilian dialects do not typically display prenominal adjectives, this paper will therefore draw on elatives to check whether Sicilian shows a parallel restriction in the postnominal position.

In this paper aspects of the sibilant system in the variety spoken in the Germanic language island Sauris/Zahre in north-eastern Italy are presented. I investigate whether an intermediate, postalveolar “shibilant” (from Protogermanic */s/) in preconsonantal position is preserved from Middle High German as observed in other German minority languages in northern Italy. In Sauris/Zahre, in preconsonantal position a postalveolar realization is sometimes mentioned in literature, while in Modern Standard German and most related varieties in this position historical, postalveolar */s/ is retracted to palatoalveolar /ʃ/.

The influence of loubok (Russian popular print) on Dostoevsky’s works is a topic deserving more attention than has been given up to now. It makes us understand how Dostoevsky got inspiration from popular iconography. The present article could be a further contribution to this research topic; its aim being to investigate the recurrence in Dostoevsky’s poetics of a particular typology of popular print, showing how a wife beats her husband after he came back home drunk. This loubok spread widely through Russia (the peasant family version) and Germany (the cobbler version). In particular the German version, which had a wide readership thanks to the German printer G. Renner and was named “Der Blaue Montag” was undoubtedly known to Dostoevsky, since it was widespread in the very period he travelled through Germany. In this paper I will try to show how the Russian novelist caught not only the general setting but also some details from this version to describe Marmeladov’s home in the scene (I, 2) when he comes back home and faces a violent welcome from his wife Katerina Ivanovna.

The call for a “New Mythology” represents one of most controversial traits of German Romanticism. In the early works of F. Schlegel and F.W.J. Schelling, as in the so called Älteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus, mythology stands for the Utopia of a universal reorganization of knowledge, capable of founding, after the Legitimationskrise of the modern era, a new horizon of shared ideas and values. Starting from an investigation of the mythological form as legitimation instrument and utopian catalyzer, this paper aims to shed light on the historical genesis of the “new Mythology” and its outcomes.

This paper examines Heidegger’s Beiträge zur Philosophie with the aim of shedding light on its messianic-eschatological approach. Firstly, I take into account the formal structure of history through a reference to Aristotle’s grasp of κίνησις and its principles. I then try to connect this structure to the complex epochal movement of Universal History, as it emerges from Heidegger’s works in the ‘30s. Lastly, I deal with the concept of the last-God’s realm in order to stress the messianic dimension of Heidegger’s projects for the new humankind known as the Futurians.

In the interwar period, the Soviet Union experienced an unprecedented attention towards children’s literature. The October revolution was a driving force for all the arts and particularly for the editorial production aimed at forging the ‘new man’, embodied in the present moment by the younger generation. The CPSU increased its investment in all forms of publications – books, magazines, posters – and proposed them for mass production with the scope of educational engineering. Through an analysis of the literary and visual contents of the 1920’s issues of the magazine Murzilka, this paper aims at defining the characteristics of the new man as they appeared on the pages of one of the most popular magazines for children in Soviet Russia.

During the 1970s, the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) initiated a redefinition process of its political culture, deeply inspired by libertarian and anti-statist themes having its fulcrum in the idea of “self-management”. The paper aims not only to examine the ways in which the ideal of self-management is translated concretely into two fundamental areas of the political debate of the time, but also to understand the role played by the idea of self-management in the PSI’s evolution in a neoliberal sense.

In the contemporary literary universe, where the ‘commercial pole’ of literary field prevails over the ‘autonomous’ one, according to the dichotomy introduced by Pierre Bourdieu and furtherly developed by Pascale Casanova, the phenomena of so-called ‘world fiction’, has been becoming increasingly widespread. Considering that many readers read the works of fiction in order to experience the Other and the Alterity, the writers originating from or somehow related to peripheral cultures are expected to represent their cultures. The value of authenticity is attributed to their representations, even if the author’s autonomy is significantly limited by the rules of the chosen genre (‘world fiction’), and of the literary field they are trying to penetrate. Starting from these premises and focusing on the extraordinary success of two American writers of Balkan origin, Tea Obreht and Sara Nović, in this paper I will try to provide some answers to the following questions: what is the expected image of the Balkan in the USA literary field? Is the discourse of balcanism still present? And why do these images, although fictional, have an importance for the real world?

As a paratextual element, headlines occupy a prominent place in the layout of texts, thus performing a wide range of pragmatic functions. In journalistic articles, titles tend to serve as a bait to seduce readers who are offered multiple and varied proposals on account of the journalist macro-genre. This paper examines the type of headings that the writer J.F. Mira – anthropologist, Hellenist, novelist, and translator – has used in his journalistic essays over four decades of publications in multiple distinguished newspapers throughout the Catalan-speaking world. This broad period allows for an analysis that indicates a gradual transformation of the titles he chooses, characteristic that shows how titles mode brings together text and any specific sociocultural context. In addition, from this perspective, the Valencian writer invites readers – while selecting them – to discuss matters that shun both emergencies and frivolities of today’s social media.

This paper investigates the roles of focus, arguing that such a notion is too wide and can be applied to several phenomena. I show that focus needs to be further specified for (at least) another feature and is therefore made of smaller primitive traits. These can combine to create bundles of features, which give rise to the several types of foci we know. Moreover, these features are subject to parametrization and can thus account for cross-linguistic differences.

From the end of the 19th century, the French colonisation of Maghreb saw the birth of a cultural production deeply rooted in its historical-geographical context, characterised by a style and sometimes by contents that are essentially comic. These texts, which are often literary in nature, mostly illustrate the colonial world. They are written in Pataouète, the common language, the Patois of the Algerian French or, at least, they bear some resemblance to it. The remaining texts, which are the particular subject of this article, instead, consist of so-called ‘Sabir literature’, taking the form of texts describing the colonial Other, which is mainly Arabic. This ‘Sabir literature’ gives voice to the colonial Other in an idiom that is very different from French but that derives from it, also in its local form, although in what is, in essence, imprecise, sounding like caricature – the Sabir, being a French badly understood and badly spoken language by less-educated Arabic-speakers in their relationships with the French-speakers. This paper aims to give an account, as complete as possible, of these texts and of their essential features, while providing a general overview of the so-called literature in Sabir, which is a typical part of the Pieds-Noirs culture.

Border places are of particular interest when it comes to identifying the way in which groups of different nationalities perceive the neighbour, the Other. One of these areas is also Friuli Venezia Giulia, where other nationalities, among which also the Slovenes, have coexisted near their Italian majority for centuries. Since the end of the 19th century until today, the Slovenes of this region have frequently addressed their national minority position through literature. Through it they formed a specific image of themselves and of the neighbouring populations in every period. Taking into consideration some contemporary Slovenian novels written in Italy in the last twenty-six years, the paper aims to investigate their representation of the Other seen as different and external to the community. The questions therefore are: do Slovenes living in Italy perceive as the Other mostly Italians or the members of other nationalities? What are the main reasons for the identification of a subject as different from them? What sort of hierarchy is being established between the various national identities within the examined literary texts? With the help of the imagological method, this article will offer some tentative answers to the questions raised, by considering also the socio-political context.

This paper addresses a frustrating crux found in a passage of the textus receptus (the 1623 First Folio, the only substantive text for Errors). Editors have tried to make sense of the conundrum of this passage by applying emendations. Attention to the rhetorical strategies employed by the Author and to the surrounding context of discourse can throw some light on the intended meaning: equivocation is one of the most effective rhetorical devices available for comedy and rhetorical figures pertaining to the field of aequivocatio are at the grass-roots of this drama. Punning offers a solution to the hermeneutical puzzle of the passage by helping to unravel the crux: it participates in a compositional strategy that encompasses the entire play. Quibbling and double entendre, far from being superficial expedients to elicit humour, here must be understood as constituting a fundamental productive means to develop the play’s rationale and to flesh-out the personality of its characters.

In this paper I demonstrate that in Mòcheno, a German dialect spoken in Northern Italy, scrambling, i.e. the movement of any constituent above sentential adverbs and below the finite verb, is permitted like in Continental Germanic languages. Unlike in these languages, however, leftward movement is not triggered by specificity or scope-fixing (A-scrambling) or by the need to check any topic or contrastive/new-information focus discourse-features (A’-scrambling). By relying on information structure, the syntax of modal particles and the distribution of scrambling in sentences with fronted operators, I provide evidence that scrambling in Mòcheno triggers a verum focus reading on the truth value of the sentence and involves a type of focus movement to a FocusP in CP. That scrambling can be associated with verum focus is a unicum among Continental Germanic languages, which I show follows from a reanalyis of the properties of Germanic focus scrambling under the influence of Romance anaphoric anteposition.

Raymond Queneau’s Zazie dans le métro (1959) can be considered a behaviourist novel. Characters are barely outlined and look like puppets who spend their lives in a frantic rhapsody. However, the construction of the dialogic exchanges among characters is very refined ; this seems mostly aimed at a realistic effect, giving priority to the expressiveness of oral language. We have the impression that sometimes the primary narrator’s discourse is tainted by the characters’ speech ; the narrator does not only seem to describe events as they happen, but he also participates empathically in the narrative. At times, he seems to experience the same irrepressible urge for verbal communication of his characters. This paper explores the results of the encounter between the narrator and the characters’ discourses, particularly the stylistic devices creating an effect of increased realism. From time to time, this contamination generates an effect of ambiguity in the enunciative reference. Queneau was undoubtedly aware of this ambiguity, given his inclination to the structured shapes of literature, the so-called ‘framework’, which is an essential condition of his art making.

In 2001 the renowned American poet Dana Gioia brought to life a work in which the centuries-old myth of the vampire, the richness of the operatic phrase, and the vague echoes of the poet’s Italian heritage dialogued with the modern taste of the American public. The aim of this paper is to investigate the dialogue between past and future, which is innovatively expressed in both the content and form of Nosferatu. Inspired by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922), Gioia’s work merges the Gothic with Opera, thus renovating and giving new strength to the art of the Opera libretto. Moreover, Gioia’s vampire eludes Hollywood’s unforgettable stereotypes and is endowed with an emotional and psychological insight that the German movie lacked. Line after line, the poet develops the drama of the undead creature, whose humanity is enhanced by the controversial confrontation with the libretto’s female protagonist. No longer a victim, Gioia’s heroine recalls the omniscient figure of the prophetess, dear to both classical and Christian heritages. Further, in the play between the immortal past of the vampire and the visionary future of the prophetess, lies the dramatic present of the first Italian immigrants, the nightmare of misery, the hope for a better life, and the ever-present traces left by Catholicism.

The paper investigates the Shakespearean resonances in Alda Merini’s works. Shakespeare was one of Merini’s favourite ‘fellow travellers’ in her literary journey, seemingly because he exploited the enormous dramatic potential of madness. His plays can be read as a projection and an amplification of the poet’s emotions, while providing them with names, bodies and voices. In her turn Merini perceived significant affinities with several Shakespearean characters, and tended to identify with some of them, superimposing her life onto theirs: during her stay in the mental hospital, peopled by horrible figures reminding her of Macbeth’s witches, Merini identified with Juliet, who embodied her love fancies and her romantic dreams. I will also discuss in detail the texts which refer to two famous couples, namely Othello and Desdemona, Hamlet and Ophelia, who are the most recurrent Shakespearean figures in Merini’s corpus. These are not only universal symbols but also mirror and give voice to the poet’s emotions. Indeed, as I will show, Merini read and appropriated their stories through the filter of her painful personal experience.

Venice (Italy) is a popular destination for tourists of any kind; therefore, the goal of the material promoting the city is to present the city itself and its local culture. The present study conducts a qualitative analysis of websites that promote Venice to tourists using English as the preferred language of communication. The paper focuses on the so-called technique of ‘languaging’ (in studies on the language of tourism, defined as a term in a local language or dialect which is provided along with a translation or paraphrase in English). The analysis reveals that the authors of websites frequently use terms in the Venetian dialect but the translations or explanations provided fail, to a certain extent, to convey the most interesting cultural connotations contained in the terms themselves. The authors of the websites, thus, do not help fill the cultural gap between Venice and the tourists who, in turn, miss the opportunity to establish a real connection with the local culture.

In contrast to Modern German, which has almost completely lost the use of the subjunctive in relative clauses, Old High German exhibits indicative/subjunctive mood alternations. In this paper, I will present a pilot study on the interaction of mood in early relative clauses with morphosyntactic and information/discourse-structural factors which are discussed in the cited literature and are assumed to influence the use of the subjunctive in relative clauses. The survey is based on a corpus of Old High German texts from the 8th and 9th centuries. Furthermore, a syntactic analysis will be sketched in order to explain the licensing of the subjunctive in Old High German relative clauses and the loss of mood alternation in the later stages of the language.

Romance languages have complement clitic pronouns that replace the arguments of a verb. Only a sub-area of Romance, extending from France to Northern Italy, also has subject clitics connected to the syntactic subject of an inflected verb. Even though the subject clitic grammar of Northern Romance is extremely varied, a series of absolute and implicational generalizations tells us that the variation is within a single complex system. Inside this sub-area of Romance, the Occitan varieties of Western Piedmont and Southern France at first sight seem to represent another variation of the same system. The aim of this paper is to show that they are radically different from Northern Italian or Northern Romance varieties. The main pieces of evidence are the following: their forms cannot be traced back to corresponding Latin pronouns; the 1st sg. enclitic will be shown to be derived from the grammaticalisation of the complementiser /ke/ ‘that’; these elements are optional, violating the solid implicational generalisations on subject clitics of Northern Romance. Their optionality is consistent with the fact that they appear perform pragmatic functions, connected with [speaker] features. I will propose that Occitan dialects are in fact pro-drop languages with residues of V2 syntax in the form of pragmatic features to check in the left periphery. To meet these V2 requirements, Occitan languages have developed particles; due to the influence of Northern Romance varieties with which they have always been in contact, these particles have been disguised as subject clitics.

Since ancient times, red coral has been one of the most appreciated original items exported from the Mediterranean to India and East Asia, along the circuits of the silk and spice trade routes. Nevertheless, due to its rarity, as well as to a paucity or a lack of records, studies seem often to neglect this product on the move from the West to the East. Focusing mostly on some accounts from antiquity to early modern times, this paper gathers information and mentions from several sort of archival, artistic, and literary sources, in order to explain why coral was appreciated, how it was acknowledged, traded and employed by different civilizations, especially in East Asia.

In this paper I discuss Russian prepositional phrases introduced by axial part lexical prepositions (i.e. AxParts). Russian AxPart items are morphologically complex: they are formed by a functional preposition and a nominal element with different case markers, depending on the interpretation (stative or directional) of the locative expression. I analyze the internal structure of Russian AxPart items following the universal structure of locative expressions proposed by Cinque, focusing in particular on the impossibility of expressing an additional complement in directional AxPart PPs. I discuss, in addition, the nominal nature of the axial elements in relation to the hypothesis of the presence of a silent nominal element (PLACE) embedded in the syntactic structure of locative PPs.

The periods in which each new or refined form of artificial lighting have become dominant have presented their illumination as characteristic of the highest state of progress, as a significant stage of development that has lifted humanity out of a state of nature. Meanwhile, the everyday use of lighting has been complex, driven by practicality, expediency and materiality, not linear ‘progress’. This paper explores these uses, the reception and meanings attaching to artificial illumination during the nineteenth century, through the lens of Atkinson Grimshaw’s Reflections on the Thames (1880). In this painting, situated within a long history of nocturnes and landscapes, we also see an heterogenous interplay of reflected artificial (gas, oil, electric arc) light, each consumed simultaneously within metropolitan culture, itself seen as the apogee of civilisation for the time, all cut through by the tidal river Thames and (natural) moon light. In this painting, we see how a Victorian genre artist, reflecting on the Thames, created a narrative of London as an unsleeping, working Capital, framed by nature, dependent on its forces, illuminated, yet shady, multifaceted, effortful.

Language and communication barriers undermine everyday life for deaf people. In particular in higher education settings, these students often receive limited information and thus struggle to gain full access to knowledge. Considering these linguistic issues from several perspectives, this paper highlights some of the problems that arise in the everyday life of deaf students. Possible short- and long-term solutions to these barriers are presented and discussed. For example, simplified written texts ensure clarity and immediate access to complex and technical texts, but only provide one step toward linguistic autonomy. Linguistic mediation through sign language guarantees both direct access to content and personal involvement in interactive settings.

Laterza publishing house became one of the leading publishers in Italy between 1920 and 1945. Giovanni Laterza, its founder, in strict cooperation with Benedetto Croce, brought to Italy several foreign novels and philosophical essays. The idea lying behind this policy was to forge in the country a critical mass of ideal European readers, able to break the Italian cultural marginality and create new literary canons. This paper focuses, in particular, on the policy of Laterza publishing house, and analyses how responses to the fascist ambiguous ‘revision’ system changed depending on law, patronage, and material conditions in which the translators worked. After tracing a map of the whole corpus of foreign works (philosophical, historical and scientific) published by the Italian publisher, the focus moves to the five English literature translations issued during the regime (Milton’s Aereopagitica; Huxley’s The Olive Tree; Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson; Well’s A Short History of the Word; More’s Utopia), with particular attention paid to Huxley’s The Olive Tree translated in 1939 by Ada Prospero Gobetti. Analyzing the unpublished correspondence among the translators, Laterza and Croce, and through a close reading of Huxley’s book and its translation, it was possible to identify both the policy of the publisher and the different translation strategies adopted, that reflect respectively submission or resistance to the dominant thinking. This in turn made it possible to discuss more in general the role of ideology as an explicit (censorship) or implicit (self-censorship) component of the translation process.

If there is a literary genre which can stand as a symbol for the Victorian Age, this is the provincial novel. Just when faster means of transport were making it possible to reach even the remotest places in Britain, and the industrial revolution was making of the modern towns the very centre of human life, many novelists established themselves on the literary scene by focusing on peripheral, remote and often backward provincial regions. This seeming paradox is all the more striking if we consider that one of the most outstanding authors of Victorian provincial literature was Thomas Hardy, one who carried this concentration on localities to extremes. Indeed Hardy’s Wessex proves to be made up of microcosms, each asserting its own peculiarities. Yet, at the same time, Hardy also distanced himself from other provincial novelists by overtly claiming that concentrating on Wessex – that tiny corner of England – did not actually involve missing universal truths. The paper investigates into this seeming paradox, focusing on Hardy’s debt to the Romantic legacy of Walter Scott and William Wordsworth on the one hand, and on the parallelism between his method and the method of the rising science of anthropology on the other hand.

Critics of Mark Twain are well acquainted with what have been referred to in various instances as the author’s ambivalent, contradictory or dialectic attitudes. It is in Twain’s approach towards science, technology and the concept of progress itself that this ambivalence is particularly evident. These themes underlie some of Twain’s most famous novels such as The Gilded Age (1873), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889); however, it is in a series of lesser-known and unpublished sketches, short stories and novels that we find more explicit and creative examinations of the mixed blessings and failures of progress. This paper will analyze a selection of texts that include “Cannibalism in the Cars” (1867), “Sold to Satan” (1904) and Twain’s original manuscripts for The Mysterious Stranger, with the objective of garnering a more precise perspective on the author’s varying attitudes towards progress which have often been inserted into comfortable linear schemes based on biographical interpretation rather than textual data. Moreover, we will go beyond the convenience of simply presenting Twain’s ambiguity in an attempt to understand the actual point the author is making or at least to explain what lies behind his lack of partisanship in the specific cases of these texts.

In Romola (1862) George Eliot investigates the complex interplay between the female self and the surrounding cultural stifling milieu to explore the limitations and possibilities of femininity in Renaissance Florence. The author vests the eponymous heroine with an urgent desire to overthrow the socio-political structures founded on male patriarchal values, dominant in Florence and unfitting to accommodate women’s talents, thus echoing the debate about women’s place in mid-Victorian androcentric society. Romola’s aspiration to moral freedom, a vocation alternative to marriage and childbearing, and to an intellectual autonomy unmolested by a long-established patriarchal system, is crushed by the burden of family traditions, past obligations and social responsibilities. The purpose of this paper is twofold: to examine the evolution of the heroine’s character through her spiritual journey (which echoes Eliot’s own religious struggle) and to show her triumph over the egotism inherited from patriarchal figures by emerging into the self-denial which lies at the heart of Eliot’s agnostic ethical humanism. Entangled in the universal conflict between individual desire and moral responsibility, Romola stands as an intellectual woman capable to find a balance between dutiful obedience and resistance to the rigid morality outlined by the male social code, thus attaining her autonomous female identity as a fully-individualized human being, and not as a merely ‘Other’ in relation to men.

In this paper, I would like to discuss how Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s adventures in Wonderland (1865) can be considered to be a Bildungsroman. I will also affirm my idea that Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is actually the first novel of a trilogy which comprises also Through the Looking-Glass (1871) and Sylvie and Bruno (1889-1893). In this trilogy Wonderland represents the first fundamental stage of Alice’s formative journey. I will therefore analyse the world as seen through Alice’s eyes, observing her first journey as a constructive one which gives both Alice and the reader the opportunity to change and become more self-aware and responsible. Looking at the world through Alice’s eyes makes Wonderland appear absurd, with nonsense seeming to be its main characteristic: at the start of her journey Alice does not have the cognitive tools to understand this new world and so it appears nonsensical. Finally, I’ll look at the cognitive tools Carroll gives us to build a new perspective and possibly a new logic. These are: ‘relationalism’, ‘plural identities’ and finally, ‘conventionality’.

Most Sicilian dialects display a monoclausal construction with a functional verb (usually of motion), followed by the linking element a and a lexical verb called Inflected Construction by Cardinaletti, Giusti (2001, 2003). This construction shows a high degree of cross-linguistic variation. The aim of the paper is to propose the protocols in the sense of Giusti, Zegrean (2015) to conduct fieldwork in this area. Protocol Linguistics is a metamodel of linguistic research that can be shared by linguists of different theoretical persuasion, can be accessible to non-linguists, and is meant to interface with a number of disciplines and environments such as social sciences and political planning, neuro-psychology and language rehabilitation, pedagogy and language education. The protocols consist of simple table-charts with the horizontal axis listing the empirical environments to be searched, e.g. the languages to be compared, and the vertical axis listing (clusters of) properties, named features, to be valued as +/- according to whether they are present or absent in each environment. The features relevant to the investigation on the Inflected Construction rely on preliminary work by Di Caro (2015), which highlights a finer grained variation than the one presented in previous literature (a.o. Cardinaletti, Giusti 2001, 2003, and Cruschina 2013). In the spirit of the principles-and-parameters approach, the protocols for the Inflected Construction are clustered around two main dimensions, each involving clusters of properties: (i) the lexical restrictions on the functional and/or the lexical verb; (ii) the person, tense and mood restrictions of the verbal paradigm.