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Roman Jakobson (1896-1982) is not currently a highly cited author in the field of literary studies. Along with other inescapable names of the heyday of structuralism, he has fallen into relative oblivion. Although he undoubtedly continues to be recognized as one of the giants of the Human Sciences during the 20th century, his theoretical conceptions and methodological proposals find limited applicability and have been subjected to severe objections by leading contemporary scholars. However, there is ground to believe that this neglect arises from the fact that his entire output has been reduced to the essentialist positions of his later North American period. In this paper, we contend that Jakobson´s ideas belonging to the earlier periods of Russian formalism and Czech structuralism have been all to often overlooked, and might have a revitalizing and stimulating impact on contemporary disciplinary discussions.

In questo contributo saranno passati in rassegna alcuni enigmi della tradizione letteraria greca che coinvolgono, in varia misura, la sfera della sessualità. Sarà tracciata una distinzione tra indovinelli che chiedono di essere effettivamente risolti e indovinelli che svelano la soluzione contestualmente alla loro enunciazione. In tale contesto, saranno posti in rilievo i punti di contatto tra le esigenze della scena comica e alcuni epigrammi erotici e scoptici che mutuano la forma grifotica senza proporre davvero la soluzione di un enigma, a ulteriore testimonianza della tendenza del genere epigrammatico a incorporare elementi desunti dalla commedia. Il riconoscimento di alcune analogie formali tra gli esempi analizzati indurrà ad accostare alla tradizione del γρῖφοςun testo poco noto, adesp. AP11.272, che della formulazione enigmatica si serve per stigmatizzare i cinedi, in linea con la tendenza, ben documentata in letteratura greco-latina, a definire l’omosessualità attraverso la negazione e la contraddizione logica. Saranno infine espresse alcune considerazioni di ordine generale sul rapporto tra enigma ed epigramma e sui criteri scelti dagli antologizzatori per operare una distinzione tra i due generi. The aim of this paper is to analyse some ancient Greek riddles variously involving the sexual sphere. A distinction between riddles that actually require to be solved and others that reveal their solution while being posed will be drawn. In such a context, attention will be paid to the points of contacts between comedy and some erotic and scoptic epigrams in the form of a riddle, in order to contribute to a better appreciation of the tendency of the epigrammatic genre to incorporate comic elements. The identification of formal analogies among the examples taken into account will also allow to analyse under the light of the riddling tradition an anonymous scoptic epigram, AP11.272, whose targets are passive homosexuals. The paper will be concluded by some observations on the relationship between riddle and epigram, and on the criteria adopted by anthologists in order to distinguish them.

Il contributo si propone di analizzare alcuni delle problematiche che nascono nella traduzione dei testi teatrali attraverso l’analisi di Translations (1980) opera del celebre commediografo irlandese Brian Friel, e della sua traduzione italiana (1996). Il testo teatrale e la relativa traduzione in italiano si prestano all’analisi di numerose questioni centrali che riguardano la traduzione teatrale: da quello meramente linguistico del passaggio dall’irlandese all’inglese a quello dell’intraducibilità culturale che diventa segno e atto scenico. Ci si propone di analizzare come tali questioni emergano nella traduzione in italiano e quale sia il ruolo del traduttore nel mediare tali concetti nello spazio teatrale. The paper aims at investigating pivotal issues concerning theatre translation through the analysis of Translations (1980) by Brian Friel and its Italian translation Traduzioni(1996). With its core themes on matters such as the passage from Gaelic into English in 19th century Ireland and cultural untranslability, the well-known play Translations encapsulates decisive matters concerning the translation of drama and plays. The paper thus explores how such controversial questions emerge in the Italian translation with specific reference to the naming process.

The paper investigates from a literary perspective the question of the ‘missed encounter’ between two crucial authors of 20th century: Samuel Beckett and Paul Celan. Although both living in Paris for the most part of their adult life, sharing acquaintances and friendships, Beckett and Celan never met in person. A last chance presented in March 1970, as the poet and translator Franz Wurm, a mutual friend, invited Celan to come along and meet Beckett. The meeting never took place; few weeks thereafter, Celan drowned unobserved in the Seine. In this paper, I propose a retrospective reading of the ‘missed’, or ‘failed’ encounter between Beckett and Celan within a psychoanalytic framework. I will analyse it as a negative event, re-elaborating thus an expression used by André Green in his interpretation of Henry James’ The Beast in the Jungle (1903). What Green calls negative event does not provide a patho-biographical category. On the contrary, it bridges the reverberations of the psychic work on absence with the creative process of writing and the dynamics of sublimation. Shifting the attention from the bare biographical data to the textual dimension of such ‘missed encounter’, I aim to show how the writings of the two authors may be read as an articulation of an après-coup of a non-encounter which, instead of taking place in ‘real life’, opens new margins of representation of an alterity within the ‘life of writing’. As such, writing becomes—between poetry and psychoanalysis—that ‘thirdness’ harbouring the very possibility of an encounter beyond phenomenological categories, bearing testimony for an unknown transgenerational reader.

Che cosa significa leggere un classico? Quest’articolo distingue due modi, o due vie. Per i contestualisti è sufficiente collocare l’opera nella sua epoca storica, e sottolineare eventualmente la novità che quell’opera ha introdotto. Per la teoria dell’interpretazione, un classico vive nel «tempo grande» (Bachtin), cioè oltrepassa i confini della sua epoca. In questo senso, i grandi scrittori sarebbero ‘universali’. Per l’autore di quest’articolo sarebbe più corretto riconoscere la densità semantica dell’opera d’arte, cioè l’insieme delle sue virtualità. Ma per riconoscere e indagare le virtualità di un classico occorre far riferimento alla teoria, o meglio alle teorie. Nel caso di Le Rouge et le Noir, ci si può limitare ad analisi parziali, che, nella loro consapevole limitatezza, sono legittime. Tut-tavia, chiunque pretenda di offrire un punto di vista complessivo su questo romanzo di Stendhal non può (o meglio non dovrebbe) ignorare, per esempio, le teorie del desi-derio. Le Rouge et le Noir rappresenta un momento fondamentale per la nascita del realismo moderno («serio», come lo ha chiamato Auerbach): ma si può ridurre la rappresentazione della realtà, che esso offre, quasi unicamente al contesto storico-sociale? La verità (l’âpre vérité) che Stendhal promette ai suoi lettori nell’esergo del romanzo è la verità di quegli esseri flessibili che noi siamo: è la verità delle diverse possibilità, o versioni, dell’amore. Non si può leggere un classico senza incontrare il desiderio di essere. What does ‘reading the classics’ mean? This paper identifies a twofold approach to this act. Contextualist critics believe that setting the text within its historical context and shedding light on its innovative aspects suffice to understand it. According to the theory of interpretation, classics embody Bachtin’s «great time», exceeding the limits of their epoch. Great writers would be therefore universal figure. For the author of this paper, a correct approach to literary works acknowledges the density of texts, that is to say the combination of virtual components. In order to investigate classics’ ‘virtuality’, one has to refer to theory, or rather theories. Dealing with Le Rouge et le Noir, critics can provide partial analyses that, in being consciously limited, are certainly legit. However, whoever might want to offer a complete view of Pascal’s novel cannot – or rather should not – ignore, for instance, theories of desire. Le Rouge et le Noir stands out as a fundamental step towards the birth of modern realism («serious», as Auerbach named it). Nonetheless, is it possible to reduce the portrayal of reality it offers to, almost exclusively, its socio-historical context? The truth (l’âpre vérité) Stendhal promises to his readers in the novel’s exergue is the truth about us as flexible beings. In other words, it is the truth about the several possibilities, or potentialities, intrinsic to love. One cannot read classics without discovering the desire to be.

This paper focuses on the ‘history of medicine’ outlined by the author of the Hippocratic treatise On Ancient Medicine, in order to reflect on the relationship between medicine and narrative in Classical Greece. At the outset of the work, the author provides an account of the beginnings of his discipline, conceiving of medicine’s history as a continuum of research and findings that unravel the nature of the human body and the cause of diseases. As this paper shows, the physician-narrator assigns to his craft a crucial role in fostering the birth and progress of human civilization. The rhetorical goals of the historical account are, as I argue, attained through a subtle narrative strategy. In fact, the narrator locates the origins of medicine within a teleological framework, marked by strong emphasis on the heuristic method that characterizes the past, the present, and the future of medical knowledge at once.

Che cosa significa studiare i bestseller? L’articolo si propone di rispondere alla domanda fornendo un modello teorico basato sulla comparazione testuale, sul riconoscimento di elementi costanti del discorso e sull’individuazione di uno stile cognitivo comune. Nell’articolo vengono condotte due analisi: la prima su un campione di otto romanzi di successo che raccontano vicende di solitudine; la seconda su quattro romanzi di successo che narrano storie di coppie esemplari. The paper proposes a theoretical model for bestseller research in the field of the textual analysis. It focuses on the comparision of semantic, syntactic and pragmatic constants, and the application of cognitive concepts. The paper examines two samples of novels telling about loneliness and couple stories respectively.

This paper discusses the legacy of Nikolai Antsiferov (1889–1958), a Russian historian who suggested a unique approach to urban studies in which literature played the key role. In the first section of this paper, the genesis of Antsiferov’s conceptions of the study of urban history and the image of the city are outlined. The second section provides an analysis of his ideas on the literary image of St. Petersburg and the theory of literary-themed guided tours, which were articulated in his works of the 1920s. The finalsection of the article sheds light on the reception and legacy of Antsiferov’s intellectual ideas in the modern humanities and assesses its significance in the modern context of interdisciplinarity.

Questo articolo esamina l'intreccio di identità e scrittura nel romanzo nabokoviano The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941) da una prospettiva psicoanalitica, seguendo in particolare l'insegnamento di Freud e Lacan sul concetto di desiderio, significante e sublimazione artistica. L'attenzione principale sarà dedicata al rapporto tra i fratellastri, V. (il narratore) e Sebastian. Dopo aver dimostrato che Sebastian Knight ha assunto il ruolo di oggetto del desiderio per chi lo ha conosciuto intimamente (soprattutto V.), muovendo i personaggi secondo ciascun modo d'essere, si passerà al trauma della sua morte e all'elaborazione del lutto da parte del narratore, grazie alla creazione letteraria (la biografia fittizia che leggiamo); il paragrafo conclusivo analizza i cosiddetti 'inganni' del significante, episodi chiave in cui il narratore prende contatto con la verità del desiderio. Dato l'ineludibile interrogativo sulla paternità fittizia della Real Life (se l'autore fosse Sebastian Knight?) e la questione del 'tocco artistico' di V., in questa argomentazione non verranno trascurati gli aspetti metaletterari dell'opera. This paper examines, from a psychoanalytic standpoint, the intersection between identity and writing in the novel The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941) by Vladimir Nabokov. In particular, in the wake of Freud and Lacan, the following contribution will take the notions of desire, signifier, and the process of sublimation involved in artistic creation as interpretative devices. The main focus of the analysis will be the relationship between the two half-brothers of the novel, V (the narrator) and Sebastian. First, I will show that Sebastian Knight holds the role of the object of desire for the characters who have established a close relationship with him and, in particular, for V. Secondly, the paper will be devoted to the analysis of the trauma experienced by the characters because of Sebastian's death, with a particular focus on the narrator's mourning through writing (the fictional biography we read in the novel); in the end, I will give evidence of the so-called signifier’s fallacy, crucial episodes in which the narrator can experience an insight into the truth of desire. Because of the not negligible question of the fictional paternity of The Real Life and the equally essential matter of V’s ‘stylistic touch’, metaliterary aspects of the novel will also be part of the following reading of the text.

The paper is focused around two biographical themes. Theme one is history of demolishing Leningrad school of dramatic theory developed in the State Institute of History of Art (GIII) in the 1920s. In 1931, the GIII was closed by a Sovnarkom resolution and transformed into Len- ingrad division of the State Academy of Art Studies (LOGAIS) established by the same resolu- tion. Theme two is description of the ‘academic traumatism’, traumatic behavior and its bio- graphical effects caused by destruction of a whole scientific trend during the anti-formalism campaign of the early 1930s. Based on archival documents (from the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art), shorthand notes and reports on discussions of the 1930s, we analyze behav- ioral tactics of initiators, participants and victims of the longstanding stigmatization and catalog absolutory, denunciative and repentant narratives. In particular, this paper analyzes the un- published letter to the editors of Rabochiy i Teatr journal written by Alexander Slonimsky, one of the key players in development and obliteration of dramatic theory associated primarily with Alexei Gvozdev’s group and with transformation and dissolution of the leading humanities in- stitutes. The text of the letter appears to be engrained in the complicated mosaic of measures aimed to discredit Meyerhold’s theater practice and Gvozdev as the leader of the scientific school. Deliberate misinterpretation and corruption of self-descriptions along with reconstruc- tion of biographies are some of the most crucial factors that affected reception of cultural pro- jects and their creators in the 1930s and later.

The end goal of this paper is to shed light on the changes in the lyrical subject self-identification logics that were characteristic of Russian poetry of the ‘modernist’ era. We are going to focus our attention exclusively on the poems with a lexically expressed I, which build the nucleus of the poetic fraction of literary texts and allow to get a clear idea about the mechanism of self-naming that we regard as fundamental for self-identification of the lyrical I. The paper discriminates between the two methods of lyrical subject identification/self-identification: referring and attributing. Based on this, we suggest determining four basic functional incarnations of the lyrical subject in Russian poetry of the 18th–19th centuries, which are in part terminological reconsiderations of the conventional Russian philology categories. These incarnations are: 1) ‘anonymous’ lyrical I referring directly to the real author; 2) lyrical I referring to the author through the prism of in-text heteronymic or metonymic transcoding; 2) lyrical character (lyrical hero) referring to the author through the prism of metaphoric transcoding; 3) role character (role hero) with zero reference to the author. The revolution that affected the strategies of lyrical self-identification in Russian poetry of the Silver Age manifested itself in some fundamental shifts. First of all, kaleidoscopic multiplication of lyrical I’s, both through the lyrics of specific poets and even within individual poems. Second, blurred boundaries between different incarnations of the lyrical subject that had been more or less clearly contrasted in poetry of the 19th century. Third, theatralization and problematization (to the extent of open conflicts) of the relationship between the author and his/her lyrical ‘doubles’.

Il saggio riassume brevemente la proposta fatta nel 1963 secondo cui la «competenza poetica» è la base per creare e valutare la poesia. Il fatto che questa competenza si basi sulla competenza linguistica, ma ne sia al contempo distinta, è esemplificato da uno sguardo ravvicinato alla struttura segmentale, soprasegmentale, morfo-sintattica, lessicale e concettuale del poema di Hölderlin A Zimmer», rivelando una struttura sorprendentemente complessa ed equilibrata dei quattro versi, apparentemente semplici, che compongono il poema. La seconda parte del saggio discute il problema se i giudizi riguardo alla poesia debbano essere studiati come fondati sulla relazione tra specifiche proprietà dei poemi e delle persone. Infine si solleva il problema se l’arte letteraria sia davvero basata su una specifica competenza poetica, o se essa dia forma a una generica abilità estetica applicata a oggetti linguistici. Quest’ultima è costruita come una domanda sì speculativa, ma al tempo stesso anche empirica.The paper briefly summarizes the proposal made in 1965 that "Poetic Competence" is the basis for creating and evaluating poetry. That this competence lives on, but is different from linguistic competence is exemplified by a close look at the segmental and supra-segmental, morpho-syntactic, lexical, and conceptual structure of Hölderlin's poem An Zimmern, revealing a surprisingly complex and balanced structure of the apparently simple four lines. The second part of the paper discusses the question whether judgments about poetry are to be studied as based on the relation between specific properties of poems and persons. Finally the problem is raised, whether literary art is based on a specific Poetic Competence, or instantiates a general aesthetic ability applied to linguistic objects. This is construed as a speculative, but still empirical question.

In the face of the theories that dismiss digital arts for being facilitated by the capitalist system, this paper argues that a critical awareness on the dangers of new technologies does not necessarily lead to the condemnation of technological arts. Indeed, the evidence suggests that digital technologies are an excellent medium through which literature can voice a nuanced and critical consideration about the world in which it appears. The analysis focuses on Spanish-Argentinian writer Belén Gache’s transmedia project Kublai Moon (2013-2019) in order to demonstrate that hypothesis. Firstly, it is shown that the novel reflects on the compatibility between humans and machine, in its content as well as in its forms. Secondly, it is contended that the axiological judgments on literature must be based on updated criteria when it comes to evaluating digital works.

L’obiettivo di questo articolo è analizzare le modalità in cui la dimensione del gioco incontra quella del sesso nelle rappresentazioni letterarie dell’erotismo in alcune opere di David Foster Wallace, Michel Houellebecq e Walter Siti. Nello specifico si sottolineerà come la rappresentazione dei giochi sessuali e, in particolare, del sesso sadomaso sia utilizzata dai tre autori per condurre un discorso parallelo sulla volontà di potenza e di possesso come risposta a una diffusa incapacità di amare dei loro personaggi. The aim of this paper is to analyze the ways in which sex and games interplay in the literary works of David Foster Wallace, Michel Houellebecq and Walter Siti. In particular I will focus on the representation of sexual games highlighting the discourse on the desire for power and control through which the characters try to cope with the loss of love and meaning in the contemporary world.

This paper sets out to re-approach the famous leptêacrostich in Aratus’ Phaenomena (783-87) by confronting it with other early Greek acrostichs and the discourse of technê and sophia,which has been shown to play an important role in a gamut of Greek literary texts, including texts very much relevant for the study of Aratus’ acrostich. In particular, there is a tantalizing connection between the acrostich in Aratus’ poem that poeticized Eudoxus’ astronomical work and the so-called Ars Eudoxi, a (pseudo-)Eudoxian acrostich sphragisfrom a second-century BC papyrus.

Il gioco del mondo, diffuso in Italia e in parecchi altri paesi anche extra-europei con denominazioni diverse, è uno dei giochi infantili che maggiormente ha attratto l’attenzione degli studi etnografici, per i suoi rimandi al rito e al mito, connessi alle specifiche modalità del percorso d’andata e ritorno entro uno schema tracciato a terra. Attraverso considerazioni d’ordine lessicale e storico, s’intende evidenziare e giustificare la natura labirintica del gioco, ad oggi solo sporadicamente ipotizzata. In appendice, una testimonianza della scrittrice Carla Muschio. The Mondo(Italian word for Hopscotch) is one of the most known children’s playground games. In Italy and across the globe, this game is called by several different names, even in the same language and nation. Since it is connected to the rite and the myth, being a sort of initiation path represented into a scheme drawn on the ground, it has been the object of more than one ethnographic research. By analyzing some lexical and historical evidences, this paper aims to stress and motivate the labyrinthic nature of the Mondo game, which has been rarely proposed since now. As an appendix, a testimony by the writer Carla Muschio.

Nonostante sia rimasto nell’ombra a lungo,La Regenta(1884-85) di Leopoldo Alas ‘Clarín’ è oggi considerato uno dei romanzi capolavoro della letteratura spagnola della fine dell’Ottocento. Il processo del suo riconoscimento come classico moderno, sebbene ancora ‘relativo’, si è avviato a partire dagli anni cinquanta del ventesimo secolo e non si è più arrestato. La vitalità de La Regentain epoca contemporanea è attestata anche dalle tante riscritture che ha originato. L’articolo ne traccia una panoramica per poi soffermarsi sull’analisi dell’adattamento a graphic novel(1999-2001) di Isaac del Rivero e sulla presenza nel web di siti dedicati all’autore e all’opera. Although it dwelt for a long time in the shadows, today La Regenta(1884-85) by Leopoldo Alas ‘Clarín’ is considered a masterpiece among late-nineteenth-century Spanish novels. Its recognition as a modern classic, though still “limited,” began in the Fifties of the twentieth century and has not stopped since. La Regenta’s significance for the contemporary period is demonstrated by its many rewritings. This paper provides a review of these before analyzing in greater detail its adaptation as a graphic novel (1999-2001) by Isaac del Rivero, as well as the presence on the internet of websites devoted to the novel and its author.

Le strategie stilistico-formali di Kafka fanno segno a stati mentali e rappresentazioni della realtà apparentemente incompatibili e inconciliabili; come tali esse lavorano in maniera inquietante sul lettore immettendolo in un cosmo incongruo e inaspettato, dove le leggi della fisica classica paiono non avere corso. Questa peculiare posizione delle tecniche narrative kafkiane viene qui esplorata in connessione con la meccanica quantistica e la «serie complementare consapevole» freudiana. Prendendo le mosse da un apologo ad andamento paradossale, scritto nel 1917 e pubblicato postumo da Max Brod, il saggio esamina i dispositivi retorici e stilistici come corrispettivo delle indagini quantistiche su misurazione, entanglement e doppia fenditura. L’analisi dei fenomeni microscopici e dell’impercettibilmente piccolo nella letteratura di Kafka mette a nudo una processualità che sovverte la Wirklichkeitdel mondo pratico-operativo secondo logiche che sfuggono ai normali processi rappresentativi. Le strategie retoriche sono messe a confronto con l’idea di complementarità della meccanica quantistica che mina l'esistenza di strutture asseverate secondo criteri oggettivi. Meccanica quantistica e serie complementare consapevole freudiana lavorano su idee e rappresentazioni reciprocamente esclusive. Le strategie stilistiche, le scelte retoriche di Kafka sono espressione di questa relazione di dualità. La Serie Complementare consapevole freudiana così come le ricerche bioniane sulla figurabilità psichica e il principio di indeterminazione mantengono la medesima posizione nei confronti della Verità, uno dei soggetti preferiti della fabulatiokafkiana nonché uno dei postulati a tutt’oggi più scandalosi, controversi e discussi della meccanica quantistica. Kafka’s formal strategies of writing sustain seemingly incompatible mental states; as such they do work uncanny, i.e. disquieting, incongruous and foolish all in one. We explore here this quality of Kafka’s narrative techniques, explored in connection with Quantum Mechanics and Freudian Conscious Complementary Series (1938). Starting from a paradoxical apologue of 1917 – posthumously published by Max Brod – this article investigates Kafka’s rhetorical and stylistic devices as a corresponding momentum, a different way of keeping in touch with the imperceptibly small and with invisible phenomena of microscopic as well as unconscious processes in comparison with Wirklichkeitand ordinary matter. Kafka’s rhetorical strategies are consequently compared to the idea of complementarity as well as to the observer effectwhich seems to undermine the existence of an objective world. In a counter-intuitive twist, Kafka’s writing strategies foreshadow quantum superposition and entanglement, where both quantum mechanics and Freudian complementary series (1938) hold onto two mutually exclusive ideas and representations at the same time (the double-slit experiment). The present paper argues that Kafka’s stylistic strategies in writing are expression of these duality relations. The Freudian complementary series (1938) as well as Bionian psychoanalytic investigations of the Uncertainty Principle maintain the same position as for Truth, one of Kafka’s favourite subjects to meditate and to write upon and one of the most discussed postulates of quantum mechanics.

In Tempo e romanzo (1946), Pouillon sviluppa una originale teoria del romanzo pre-strutturalistica basata su esistenzialismo, psicologia e antropologia. Secondo questa teoria, il romanzo è l’unica forma di conoscenza capace di una comprensione veritiera della coscienza umana nello specifico dell’esperienza del tempo data all’umanità: la contingenza. Questo articolo è il primo studio italiano integralmente dedicato a questo intellettuale. In Temps et roman (1946), Pouillon develops an original pre-structuralistic theory of the novel based on existentialism, psychology and anthropology. According to this theory, the novel is the only form of knowledge capable of a faithful comprehension of human consciousness in the specific experience of time given to mankind: contingency. This paper is the first Italian study completely devoted to this intellectual.

This paper presents the results of a transdisciplinary research conducted by scholars working in the humanities and experimental psychologists in order to find an interface between the needs of a qualitative approach (mainly based on the evaluation of stylistic features) and those of a quantitative analysis, in order to find useful features for testing different reading behaviors and for new hermeneutical enquiries. The results of our research, which was conducted in two Labs (Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of Emotion at the FU Berlin and the NewHums – Neurocognitive and Human Studies at the University of Catania), consistently differ from previous ones, as they focus on the whole multi-layered foregrounded texture of a poem and try to evaluate predictable differences in reading, re-reading behaviour and meaning-making processes. We present the FAM, targeting foregrounding elements in three main categories: the phonological, morpho-syntactic, and rhetoric. To identify those elements, four different text levels were taken into account, the sublexical level of phonemes and syllables, the lexical level of single words, the interlexical level of word combinations across longer distance (e.g. two lines), and the supralexical level of whole stanzas or an entire poem. In contrast to previous quantitative analyses on short, isolated sentences and texts, mostly expository in nature (‘textoids’), or on single words or segments, the text is considered as a whole, marked by density fields that work as milestones along a reading route.

The role of prayers in the themes of Anna Karenina is considered. It is noted that Leo Tolstoy typology of characters is based on their attitude to prayers and praying. The paper analyzes origins and textual parallels of Levin’s prayers on the background of Christian revival in Russia during Alexander II’s reign, as well as certain aspects of Tolstoy prayerology (i.e. theology and theory of prayer, concept of prayer).

This paper aims to discuss the phenomenon of Lolita’s hypertexts in the light of the issues of trauma and the unspeakable, adopting the framework offered by psychiatry and psychoanalysis on pedophilia. In the first chapter I will be particularly concerned with three revisionary texts, namely Kim Morrissey’s Poems for Men Who Dream of Lolita, Christophe Tison’s Le Journal de Lolita and Emily Prager’s Roger Fishbite, whereas the second one will provide a close analysis of another revisionary text, Diario di Lo, written by Pia Pera.

Con la dicitura “revisionismo cognitivo”, intendo un processo di rilettura della storia culturale alla luce delle recenti acquisizioni degli studi cognitivi, sia metodologiche che conoscitive. Una carica revisionistica è presente nella maggior parte degli orientamenti cognitivi, soprattutto quelli connessi con gli studi narrativi o più specificamente letterari, tesa sia a integrare le conoscenze pregresse mostrando lati nuovi della storia culturale e del potenziale comunicativo della letteratura, sia a smascherare atteggiamenti della critica ritenuti fallaci alla luce delle nuove conoscenze. Nel presente lavoro metto a confronto il revisionismo storico e quello cognitivo rispetto allo studio del neorealismo novecentesco dell’Italia meridionale. Nella prima parte illustro il caso studio: la critica agli intellettuali che orbitavano intorno alla rivista «Sud» nel capitolo finale di Il mare non bagna Napoli. Nella seconda parte, descrivo l’operazione di revisionismo storico realizzata con la pubblicazione delle lettere di Anna Maria Ortese a Pasquale Prunas, direttore della rivista, e descrivo la stretta relazione tra la poetica di Ortese e quella di «Sud» alla luce di in confronto col realismo socialista proposto dal PCI. Nella terza parte, propongo un approccio revisionistico di tipo cognitivo, utilizzando come premessa generale l’ipotesi secondo la quale la lettura di narrativa incrementa la ToM (Hutto, Zunshine, Kidd-Castano), e analizzando il realismo visionario di Ortese sulla base degli indici di coinvolgimento fisico del narratore nell’ambiente, sulla scorta della teoria conosciuta come embodied mind. Lo studio condotto mette in evidenza alcuni limiti del revisionismo storico, e della literary politics, nella valutazione del realismo come pratica politica, ed enfatizza il ruolo che le metodologie cognitive possono svolgere nel processo revisionistico dei materiali letterari, grazie alla loro capacità di analizzare la poetica indipendentemente dalle intenzioni comunicative dichiarate o apparenti. With the term "cognitive revisionism", I mean a process of re-reading cultural history in light of recent acquisitions of cognitive studies. A revisionist approach is present in most cognitive schools, especially those related to narrative or more specifically literary studies, aimed to integrating past knowledge by showing new sides in cultural history, as well as by exposing critical attitudes considered fallacious in the light of new knowledge. In this paper, I compare historical and cognitive revisionism in the study of the neorealism in the twentieth century of southern Italy. In the first part I illustrate the case study: criticism of intellectuals who orbited around the magazine "South" by Anna Maria Ortese. In the second part, I describe the operation of historic revisionism made with the publication of the letters by Anna Maria Ortese to Pasquale Prunas, editor of the magazine, and describe the close relationship between Ortese's poetry and that of "South", in the light of comparison With the socialist realism proposed by the PCI. In the third part, I propose a cognitive revisionistic approach, using hypothesis of relation between reading and increasing of ToM (Hutto, Zunshine, Kidd-Castano) as a premise, and analyzing the visionary realism of Ortese on the basis of the physical involvement of the narrator in the environment (embodied mind). The study underlined some limitations of historical revisionism and literary politics in evaluating realism as a political practice, and emphasizes the role that cognitive methodologies can play in the revisionist process of literary materials, thanks to their ability to analyze poetics without taking into account the declared or apparent communication intentions.

Questo articolo non si pone un obiettivo meramente filologico, quanto piuttosto quello di mostrare come la Medea di Euripide sia un perfetto esempio di costruzione del personaggio come identità divisa, non tanto, e comunque non solo, per le proprietà anche contrastanti che definiscono l’eroina, quanto piuttosto divisa modalmente, in modi d’essere, quello della coincidenza e quello della non-coincidenza. La ferita narcisistica, determinata dall’abbandono da parte dell’amato Giasone e dall’essere stata bandita da Corinto, porta Medea all’oltrepassamento dei limiti: la sua identità è definita dalla relazione tra due estremi che non si escludono ma si annodano. Medea si trova ad oscillare tra un vertice inferiore e un vertice superiore, tra incandescenza pulsionale e intelligenza strategica. Il grande paradosso del personaggio di Medea consiste nel fatto che la decisione di rimanere fedele a se stessa e al proprio desiderio di vendetta viene a coin-cidere con la scelta terribile e necessaria dell’infanticidio, una scelta che comporta inevitabilmente l’annientamento di una parte di sé, la sua identità materna. The aim of this paper is not purely philological, but rather to show that Euripides’ Medea is a perfect example of the character’s construction as divided subject, not only for the conflicting properties that define the heroin. We have to move on from identity to modes of identity: the mode of coincidence and the mode of non-coincidence. The narcissistic injury, due to the abandonment by the beloved Giasone and the being banished from Corinto, leads Medea to surpass the limits of her own subjectivity. Her identity is defined by the relationship among two extremes which, though opposite, do not exclude each other, but intertwine with one another. Medea oscillates between a superior extreme and an inferior extreme, between pulsional force and strategic intelligence. The great Medea’s paradox lays in the decision to be faithful to herself and to her own desire for revenge comes to coincide with the terrible and necessary choice of the infanticide, a choice that inevitably involves the annihilation of a part of herself, her maternal identity.

Attraverso l’analisi di due recenti romanzi (Il Romanzo della Nazione di Maurizio Maggiani, 2015 e Here I am di Jonathan Safran Foer, 2017), il contributo si propone di istituire un dialogo teorico fra due distinte categorie formali (il “modo” epico e il “genere “del romanzo di famiglia). È possibile, nell’epoca “ipermoderna” in cui viviamo, configurare una narrazione nazionale, mettendo in scena per via allegorica una soggettività collettiva, attraverso un genere così privato e catafratto, per definizione posto al di qua della Storia? Che specie di canto (o di controcanto) sortisce da un innesto in apparenza così incongruo? Through the analysis of two recent novels (Il Romanzo della Nazione by Maurizio Maggiani, 2015, and Here I am by Jonathan Safran Foer, 2017), this paper aims to establish a theoretical dialogue between two different formal categories (the epic mode and the family novel genre). In the “hypermodern” era we live in today, is it possible to build a national narrative, representing allegorically a collective subjectivity, through a genre which is so private and confined, put before history by definition? What kind of ‘melody’ (and ‘countermelody’) results from such an apparently incongruous graft?

Dans cet article on s’interroge sur le statut d’Une histoire d’amour et de ténèbres, d’Amos Oz, un « roman de la mémoire familiale » dans lequel l’entreprise de remémoration et de reconstitution du passé, victoire sur le silence et les non-dits de l’enfance, est en même temps une façon de s’en débarrasser. This paper interrogates the generic status of Amos Oz’ A Tale of Love and Darkness, a « Family Memoir », in which the task of remembering and reconstructing the past, overcoming the silence and the childhood’s unsaid, is, at the same time, a way to remove it.

Scopo del presente saggio è offrire una succinta ancorché accurata analisi del romanzo brodiano, piccola perla letteraria scarsamente nota al di fuori delle ristrette cerchie di specialisti, e al contempo spiegare le ragioni della scelta di David Reubeni, pseudomessia ebreo del XVI secolo destinato ad oscura fama, quale protagonista della narrazione. Il contributo si propone, in particolare, sulla scorta dell’indagine critica di alcuni dei passi più rilevanti dell’opera, di evidenziare come il contesto storico-culturale in cui il romanzo vide la luce – la città di Praga all’indomani del crollo dell’impero asburgico e l’animato dibattito in seno al movimento sionista – possa fornire una probante chiave ermeneutica utile a decodificarne il segreto messaggio. It is the aim of the present essay to offer a brief albeit accurate analysis of Max Brod’s novel, a little literary gem scarcely read outside of narrow circles of specialists, as well as to explain the reasons behind the choice of David Reubeni, an almost entirely forgotten Jewish pseudo-Messiah of the XVI century, as the main character. By closely examining some of the novel’s most salient passages, this paper particularly intends to show how the historical and cultural context in which it was composed – the city of Prague in the wake of the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire, the heated debate within the Zionist movement – can provide us with a persuasive key to understanding its hidden message.

In this paper I want to trace briefly how Franz Kafka reacted to some salient cultural features of his time. I will select segments of his writings which I believe reflect his view, or even his characterization of the three main historical periods he lived through: pre-World War I, the war years 1914 to 1918, and five and one half of the postwar years. Of course, this is by no means a complete, thorough discussion of those periods and his works that I mention.

This paper proposes a semiotic model for research in the field of Italian literature on the theme of work for the years 1995-2015. Focusing on Greimas’ theory of semiotic squares and on the actantial model, I focused on three basic relationships within the labour market: the contrast between stories in the context of the factory and the office, between local and global settings, and between the inclusion and exclusion of the worker-figure. I obtained a general structure of the story comprising a sequence of six events: admission, convocation, trauma (or loosening of work relationships), suspension, rescue (true or false), and inertia.

This paper analyses and compares the variety of text types in the first verse translations of Dante’s Commedia: the Catalan translation by Andreu Febrer (1429), the Spanish translation by Pedro Fernández de Villegas (printed in 1515), and an anonymous French translation preserved in a manuscript dating from between 1491 and 1530. All these translations are the first verse translations of the work into their respective languages.

L’articolo si propone di definire un genere ibrido del romanzo novecentesco e contemporaneo che si pone al confine tra la saga familiare e le molteplici forme di scrittura del sé. Si tratta delle ‘memorie di famiglia’, o romanzi familiari di stampo autobiografico, intese come narrazioni delle vicende di una famiglia filtrate attraverso il punto di vista di uno dei suoi membri. Un romanzo che si pone come una sorta di modello in tal senso è Lessico famigliare (1963) di Natalia Ginzburg, qui posto a confronto con un corpus ristretto di testi che ne condividono alcune caratteristiche contenutistiche e formali: Le Labyrinthe du monde (1974-88) di Marguerite Yourcenar, Harmonia Caelestis (2000) di Péter Estrházy, e Die Box. Dunkelkammergeschichten (2008) di Günter Grass, Les Années (2008) di Annie Ernaux. Un’attenzione particolare verrà rivolta a una precisa porzione testuale: si tratta della scena della famiglia riunita a tavola. Il rituale del pasto domestico, quotidiano o festivo, si presenta come significativo terreno di incontro e di scontro tra le generazioni e come momento privilegiato della vita comunitaria nel quale ogni lessico familiare prende forma. The paper aims to define a hybrid genre of twentieth and twenty-first century novel that lie on the border between the family saga novel and the various forms of writing of the Self. This is the ‘family memoir’, or ‘autobiographical family novel’, i.e. a family story filtered by the point of view of one of its members. A novel that may be considered as a model in this sense is Natalia Ginzburg’s Lessico famigliare (1963), that is compared here with a small corpus of texts sharing whit it some thematic and formal characteristics: Marguerite Yourcenar’s Le Labyrinthe du monde (1974-88), Péter Esterházy’s Harmonia Caelestis (2000), Günter Grass’ Die Box. Dunkelkammergeschichten (2008), Annie Ernaux’s Les Années (2008). Particular attention will be given to a specific scene: the family dinner. The ritual of everyday and festive family meals represents a meaningful common ground of interaction and contrasts between generations and as the specific moment of community life when ‘family sayings’ take shape.

Nel luglio 1920 gli incontri con Jakob Rabinowitz, scrittore e agricoltore in Palestina, affascinarono a tal punto Kafka da toglierli il sonno. Questo contributo fa luce su un episodio sconosciuto nel quale si delineano due dimensioni opposte, e secondo Rabinowitz sostanzialmente incompatibili, della scrittura e dell’identità ebraica. In July 1920 Jakob Rabinowitz’s narratives of his life as a writer and farmer in Palestine fascinated Franz Kafka so much that it cost him «half a night thinking of them». This paper attempts to throw light on a hitherto unknown episode in Kafka’s life in which two different paths of literature and Jewish identity delineate themselves, two paths which, according to Rabinowitz, exclude each other: the abstract-calculating path of the western Jewish writers and the path bound to the sanctity of «Reality» of future Hebrew literature in Palestine.

Abstract Qual è il senso del ricorso alla rima in poesia? Qual è la sua funzione generale, la sua ragion d’essere? Scopo dell’articolo è proporre una soluzione a questa domanda ancora senza risposta, colmando una grave lacuna negli studi di metrica e teoria letteraria. Rilevata l’insufficienza, in tal senso, non solo delle funzioni comunemente attribuite alla rima, ma anche di una spiegazione storica più seria (la rima come compenso al livello troppo basso di artificialità del sistema metrico accentuativo rispetto a quello classico), la risposta è individuata analizzando, a livello teorico, il processo di pensiero innescato dalla rima. Costringendo il poeta ad inserire una parola in genere poco pertinente al contesto, la rima richiede di rendere pertinente quella parola attraverso uno slittamento del discorso verso il metaforico, verso l’immagine lontana, analogica, ricercata, sfruttando tutte le risorse del parlar figurato. Questo suo meccanismo fondamentale (cui si dà qui il nome di «funzione figurale») fornisce una spiegazione davvero generale dell’artificio formale della rima nel connetterlo direttamente alla natura profonda dell’atto creativo e alla dimensione analogica e metaforica che è l’essenza stessa del linguaggio poetico. What is the meaning of the use of rhyme in poetry? What is its general function, its raison d’être? The aim of this paper is to propose a solution to this unanswered question, filling a remarkable gap in the studies in metrics and literary theory. Detected the failure, in this sense, not only of the functions commonly attributed to rhyme, but also of a more serious historical explanation (rhyme as compensation to the low level of artificiality of the accentual metric system compared to the classic), the answer is found through the theoretical analysis of the thought process triggered by rhyme. Forcing the poet to use a word often scarcely relevant to the context, rhyme requires to make it relevant through a shift to the symbolic language, towards a remote, metaphorical, sophisticated imagery, by means of all resources of figurative speech. This essential process (called here «figural function») provides a very general explanation of the device of rhyme, linking it directly to the depth of the creative act and to the analogical and metaphorical dimension where the essence of poetic language lies.

In this paper, Remo Ceserani reflects upon the notions of canon and anthology in relation to the institutions behind them. After a short premise in which the traditional role of Church and school in the process of canonization is taken into account, the discussion moves to the present age, focusing on the idea of canon that lies at the basis of both North-American and Italian anthologies. In the former case, Ceserani highlights how the emergence of world literature has led to revise the structure of anthologies; in the latter case, the author argues that the canon mutuated from the work of Francesco De Sanctis still functions as the main source for many anthologies. He then concludes by stating that a thematical approach could constitute an alternative structuring criterion for a scholastic anthology.

This paper aims to highlight some interesting convergences between the theory of the meaning-construction of the literary text proposed by Iser in The Act of Reading and Pierre Hadot’s work on the hermeneutics of the text in ancient philosophy. As we know, Hadot interprets the specificities of the ancient philosophical text as functional to guide the mind of the reader in a path that does not only have a cognitive purpose, but rather a spiritual one. The concept of «spiritual excercise», central to Hadot’s work, presents similarities ­– that are potentially very productive – to the model of the use of the literary text in Iser. Moreover, it is apt to show the extraordinary theoretical importance of a series of details, which are seemingly quite technical. In particular, a dialogue between the two approaches of Iser and Hadot allows posing in a new way a question that literary theory typically marginalizes: that of the pragmatics of the literary text.

Wolfgang Iser ha sostenuto la necessità di abbandonare l’ermeneutica per abbracciare un’erotica dell’arte. Liberandosi dell’ontologia del significato, bisognerà interrogarsi sui fenomeni messi in atto dall’incontro tra testo e lettore, incontro di due indeterminatezze che è trattato con un vocabolario dell’intersoggettività. Quello descritto da Iser è un dispositivo di desiderio che attiva una riconfigurazione dell’identità in forza di una mediazione narrativa, dispositivo che in questo contributo si propone d’integrare con la teoria del desiderio mimetico di René Girard. La teoria girardiana può essere letta alla luce dei risvolti estetici della rivalità mimetica, che conducono l’essere umano a porsi sulla scena del mondo come agente creativo, proprio in quanto necessitante del riflesso di un’alterità in risposta a un’esigenza di completezza. La lettura incrociata di questi due autori potrà mostrare un’altra via della mimesi, da intendersi né come rappresentazione né come tendenza all’imitazione, ma come strategia di soggettivazione estetica. Wolfgang Iser argues in favour of disavowing hermeneutics for embracing an erotic of art. Phenomena involved in the encounter between the text and the reader – that is a dialogue between two indeterminacies falling within an intersubjective semantics – should be investigated, by rejecting the ontology of meaning. Iser describes a ‘dispositive’ of desire that brings about a redrawing of the identity by means of a narrative mediation. The paper aims to integrate this dispositive with Girard’s mimetic theory. Girard’s theory of desire may be restated by taking into account the esthetical implications of mimetic rivalry. The ontological lack of the subject and his demand for completeness through the assimilation of the other make the human subject a creative agent. A cross-reading of the two theorists’ contributions will reveal an alternative way to conceive mimesis. It will be described neither as representation nor as imitation, but rather as a strategy of esthetical subjectivation.

In the wake of fin-de-siècle discoveries in the field of endocrinology, bodily glands and the hormones they produced featured prominently in the literary works, visual arts, and popular culture of early twentieth-century Europe. Experimental surgery promised rejuvenation and intellectual vitality through gland transplantation and grafting, while phenomena of all sorts began to be associated to hormone production in causal links—from bodily rhythms to behavioral patterns, from the pace of history to the trajectory of nations. Italo Svevo was fascinated by Basedow and Graves’s discoveries on the thyroid, a gland that was supposed to determine the speed and promptness of one’s body according to the amount of hormones it produced—hypothyroidism, or scarcity of hormones, would entail lethargic behavior and slow movements, while hyperthyroidism, or the abundant production of hormones, would lead to excessive activity and consumption. Through the analysis of an early short story by Svevo, “Doctor Menghi’s Drug” (ca. 1904), this paper addresses how the activity of the thyroid affects not only bodily rhythms, but also narrative time—intended as both the time of the story (diegetic time) and the pace of storytelling—and it explores how metabolic processes act as constraints for literary creativity by complicating narrative time and raising questions of narrative agency.

L’articolo propone una riflessione sul pensiero di Lacan che porta ad un suo radicale ripensamento. Tesi centrale è la necessità di reinventare il Simbolico, ispirandosi alla letteratura ed in particolare a ciò che la letteratura mostra relativamente alle virtualità del linguaggio e della condizione umana. La flessibilità costituisce il concetto chiave di questa elaborazione. Soltanto a partire da una concezione non semplicistica del Simbolico, sostiene l’autore, si potrà comprendere la teoria dei registri intesa come teoria di un soggetto flessibile. This paper proposes a deep reflection on Lacan’s thought, leading to its radical reassessment. Its central argument is the necessity to reinvent the notion of Symbolic through the tool of literature. Flexibility in particular is the key concept to proceed towards the rethinking of the Symbolic realm hereby proposed. The author argues in fact that only a non-simplified understanding of the Symbolic allows to understand Lacan’s theory of the three registers as the theory of a flexible subject.

Alla malattia la letteratura si è sempre interessata, tanto da farne un vero e proprio topos. Tuttavia, mai come nel corso del Novecento l'esperienza del patologico sembra aver creato un connubio così stretto con l'autobiografia. Raccontare la propria vita o riscriverla alla luce della malattia è diventata una pratica letteraria – e non solo – largamente diffusa, tanto da essere identificata con un neologismo creato appositamente per definirla, ovvero «patografia». Cercheremo pertanto di individuare le origini, le influenze e i tratti distintivi di questa categoria testuale, che si ipotizza costituire un nuovo genere. Il confronto tra le opere di Annie Ernaux, Christa Wolf e Hervé Guibert permetterà infine di rilevare i contributi originali e quelli ampiamente condivisi nella concettualizzazione e nella narrazione di ciò che significa essere malati. Illness has always been easy to find in literature and indeed it has become a real topos. However, it is only in the XXth century that the illness experience has become an essential part of autobiography. Writing his own life or rewriting it after facing the disease is assumed to be nowadays a – not only - literary practice which has reached a great popularity; this is also proved by the neologism «pathography», that was coined to identify this kind of texts. Hence, we may be talking about a new genre, whose origins, influences and peculiar features will be tracked down in this paper. Finally, a comparison between the works of Annie Ernaux, Christa Wolf and Hervé Guibert will allow us to discern the original perspectives from those largely shared in the narration and conceptualization of the illness experience.

Il presente contributo si propone di analizzare la rappresentazione del tema psichiatrico all’interno dell’opera di Ottiero Ottieri, focalizzandosi in particolare su tre opere pubblicate negli anni Settanta: Il pensiero perverso (1971), Il campo di concentrazione (1972) e La corda corta (1978). Finalità di questa analisi sarà quella di portare alla luce l’evidente frattura tra la concezione ottieriana della psichiatria e la visione politico-ideologica dominante che, nello stesso periodo, animava il dibattito pubblico sulla scienza psichiatrica acceso dalla rivoluzione basagliana. Allo stesso tempo, l’esame del tema psichiatrico nell’opera di Ottieri – in particolare, l’approccio medico-scientifico all’argomento in questione – verrà identificato come elemento cruciale per spiegare la posizione di outsider che lo scrittore ha occupato all’interno della scena letteraria e culturale italiana. The paper hereby presented examines the representation of the theme of psychiatry in Ottiero Ottieri’s oeuvre, focusing in particular on three works published along the Seventies: Il pensiero perverso (1971), Il campo di concentrazione (1972) and La corda corta (1978). First, I will consider to which extent Ottieri’s approach to psychiatry in literature takes a radical distance from the anti-psychiatric perspective, challenging an idea of psychical illness as social deviance and of cure as repressive practice. At the same time, I will bring to light the weight that Ottieri’s medical and scientific approach to the field of psychiatry had on making the writer play the role of an outsider within the Italian literary and cultural arena.

The paper traces the very different contours of Soviet discourses of Arctic in the Stalinists 1930s with their narrative transformation of Arctic space into integral part of national Soviet space. The goal is to see how the Arctic narrative developed and evolved throughout the last 30/40 years of the Soviet era. The research is based on analysis of 3000 literary texts, articles, memoirs and letters, published and archived. The results confirm the presence of ‘Arctic discourse’ in the Soviet society and is supported by various sources. The Arctic issue became permanent in cultural and political practices of the time in the late 1920s and had a series of climaxes in the 1930s–1940s. Its popularity peaked in the mid-1950s and then dropped dramatically. The cultural and literary background of such change is explored through the narrative definitions.

This paper proposes a hypothesis on the first novel of Boccacio’s Decameron and, in particular, on its protagonist. It proceeds then by reflecting upon Boccaccio’s axiological system, focusing on the oeuvre’s narrative structure.

Este artículo expone la noción de plagio por anticipado desarrollada por el crítico francés Pierre Bayard, así como sus precedentes, y la sitúa en el marco de una teoría narrativa de la experiencia humana y una teoría hermenéutica de la lectura entendida a través de los fenómenos de la retroprospección y la retroacción. This paper expounds the notion of plagiarism by anticipation, put forward by the French critic Pierre Bayard, as well as its precedents, and situates it within the framework of a narrative theory of human experience and a hermeneutic theory of reading based on the phenomena of prospective hindsight and retroaction

In April 1968, concurrent with the early stages of the student movement in Europe, the young Arte Povera artist Giovanni Anselmo installed his first solo exhibition at a Turin gallery. The sculptures shown there were not static objects, but rather demonstrations of invisible concepts like relativity. What emerged in Anselmo‘s first solo show and developed over the ensuing decade was a tactical resistance to the crystallization of his works into a single image or static object. This paper argues that this approach was also central to a critical understanding of the roles of the artist and the viewer during a time of great political foment in Italy and throughout Europe. I explore the relationship of Anselmo‘s sculptural interests to the currency of phenomenology in Northern Italy, the theorization of Arte Povera, in which he figures as a central protagonist, as well as to the socio-political challenges of the 1970s in Italy. Between 1967 and 1978, Anselmo endeavored to reveal tense fullness in empty spaces and to discover latent energy in seemingly inert materials by activating the viewer‘s ability to recognize them as small indications of a dynamic macrocosm. In the context of 1968 and the ensuing Anni di piombo, such macrocosmic glimpses might occasion a broadened worldview, in which the closed perceptual dialectic of self versus world could expand to include other, previously invisible, possibilities. From this expanded point of view prompted by Anselmo‘s presentation of energies, one can begin to understand, and even undermine, man-made ‗invisible‘ systems like government and class. By doing this through the form of the work rather than its explicit content, Anselmo models the notion of an artist using form as social commitment. This mode of working has resonance for many artists today, who may struggle with reconciling their material practices with political allegiances in an increasingly co-opted art market.

This article presents some reflections on the concepts, terminology, and epistemological grounds of narrative theory. Our remarks are focused on the proposals advanced at the first RRN conference and they concern in particular two issues: the theoretical difference between classical and postclassical narratology and the paradigms of the contemporary debate. In the first part of the paper we focus on the definitional task of narrative theory; in the second part we describe the epistemology of and the theories built on two opposite paradigms: the mimetic and the constructivist. Our conclusions highlight the continuity and the break points between contemporary theories, soliciting narratologists to answer to the many questions raised.

What is Tradition? We usually (and wrongly) think it coincides with History. It would be better to think of Traditions, that is various experiences that co-exist in history and can be picked up to build on one’s system of values to be passed on to future generations. Our knowledge is actually based on traditions, and literature makes no exception. In this paper the author shows how one tradition, i.e. the comic-humoristic one, has marked European culture and literature. Its extraordinary genealogy has been written down by Gerard de Nerval: from Apuleius through Petronius, Swift, Diderot, Voltaire, up to Lawrence Sterne. Nevertheless, in the course of time, the comic-humoristic tradition has been able to attract many other novelists, poets and artists who have brilliantly enriched our cultural experience. It is possible to go back to the nineteenth century and track down many lines of the comic-humoristic tradition acting in European cultures, in order to show their dynamics, their interactions and their influence even at the outset of children’s literature.

In this article we propose the translation of William Franke’s paper On the Poetic Truth that is Higher than History: Porphyry and the Philosophical Criticism of Literature, in which the American scholar presents the hermeneutic method of the ancient commentators of Homer, with particular reference to the critic practice applied by the Neoplatonic Porphyry in his De Antro Nympharum. With this treatment Franke proposes and hopes for the return to an interpretive method, called philosophical or speculative, also for contemporary criticism.In questo articolo è presentata la traduzione del saggio di William Franke Sulla verità poetica che è superiore alla Storia: Porfirio e la critica filosofica della letteratura, in cui lo studioso americano presenta il metodo ermeneutico degli antichi commentatori di Omero, con particolare riferimento alla critica praticata dal neoplatonico Porfirio, proponendo e auspicando il ritorno ad una modalità interpretativa, detta filosofica o speculativa, anche per la critica contemporanea.

Below are the videos of the interview recorded the 21st May 2011 in Fribourg (CH), in occasion of the first RRN conference. Conversation with Meir Sternberg. Part 1 of 8 - Narratology: classical and postclassical studies. Part 2 of 8 - The development of an original theoretical framework. Part 3 of 8 - Sternberg and Genette: different ways for the same problems. Part 4 of 8 - «There are no forms except in terms of functions». Part 5 of 8 - A life writing articles: so many papers and just four books. Part 6 of 8 - Two arguments against mimetical approaches to narrative. Part 7 of 8 - «Narrative is not given, it is a construct». Part 8 of 8 - The proteus principle. the many-to-many correspondence between forms and functions.