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The paper aims to explore the practical aspects of the Safavid envoys’ travels to Venice in the sixteenth and the first part of the seventeenth centuries. In particular, it will reconstruct the itineraries of the journeys of the Safavid delegates to Venice, analyse the challenges and difficulties of long-distance travel experienced by them and the impact of the Ottoman factor on both the Safavid and Venetian envoys’ travel planning and trajectories. The paper reveals that the first Safavid trade mission to Venice was sent in 1597 and not in 1600, as previously known in the historiography. We will shed light on the social status of the Safavid envoys and clarify the role and duties of the garak-yaraqs (purveyors) of the Safavid Royal Household among them. We will examine the impact of the overall character of the Safavid-Ottoman relations both on the size of the missions and the intensity of the diplomatic and trade contacts between the Republic of Venice and the Safavid Empire.

The aim of this paper is to shed light on locally constructed sculptural representations of donors and devotees from Butkara I in Swat valley – one of the earliest Buddhist sites in the Greater Gandhara region. The discovery of several sculptures and architectural elements depicting elaborately adorned male and female figures with distinctly individualizing facial features, and bearing varied Buddhist offerings, not only throws into relief the artistic phenomenon of portraiture in early Gandharan Buddhist art but also exemplifies the visual and material enactment of donative ritual and practice. The appropriation of a transcultural and widely legible visual vocabulary for constructing these essentially Buddhist figures underscores the complex cross-cultural interactions and encounters underpinning Gandharan art and Buddhist practice in the early centuries of the Common Era. The paper argues that, in addition to relic establishment and donative inscriptions, the ruling aristocrats used donor portraits for the material and metaphorical embodiment of their presence and piety within the Buddhist monastic space. Moreover, these images likely served as public performances for effectively navigating the broader political and socio-cultural currents. Speaking to diverse communities in the multicultural matrix of Gandhara, these donor portraits highlight the participation of visual imagery in constructing new forms of ritual and practice predicated upon the intertwined notions of power, patronage, and religiosity.

This paper aims to examine the life, experiences, and limitation of Ch’oe Yŏngsuk, a notable New Woman figure subjected to colonial restrictions in Korea during the early 20th century, with empirical resources, including newly discovered archives from the Swedish National Archive and the Sigtunastiftelsen archive. While Korean women were able to receive a modern education from the late 19th century, Ch’oe studied in Shanghai and then went to Sweden in 1926 to study sociology, becoming the first Korean woman to receive a bachelor’s degree in Economics. After her studies, she traveled extensively and met influential people. Despite her notable achievements, Ch’oe could not find a proper job and died in poverty a few months after her return. This paper seeks to shed light on her life during her stay in Sweden and her activities in the independence and feminist movements there. The relationship between her ‘failure’ after returning home and the constraints of the time, given spatially/periodically and gender-wise, will also be examined. It is also worth noting that her case is a symbolic example of the social constraints that elite women had to face at the time. Her contrasting activities and evaluations in Sweden and Korea show how constrained and suppressed a woman’s life is by the time and space in which it positions.

The aim of this paper is to analyse morphosyntactic structures in the language of kyōgen – a traditional form of Japanese comic theatre developed in the fourteenth century – from a sociolinguistic perspective, i.e. by highlighting differences in usage across various categories of characters, using the Corpus of Historical Japanese (CHJ). This paper will focus on the use of the particles ga and no with nominative and attributive functions and on the decline of kakari-musubi with koso in Toraakirabon (1642). The analysis will reveal that linguistic characterization is rendered not only through the lexicon, but also, as in the case of female characters, through a particular use of morphosyntactic structures, which appears less influenced by linguistic innovations.

This paper seeks to analyse the role of technology and memory in Kawakami Hiromi’s novel Ōkina torini sarawarenaiyō. Set thousands of years in the future, in a world that has been subjected to several catastrophes, the novel highlights the interconnections between humanity and technology in order to defamiliarize ideas of human centrality and exceptionalism. Kawakami’s characters are forced to face the cyclical possibility of human extinction, which turns into a recurring threat rather than an abstract and discrete event. In this narrative time chronically affected by crises, the definition of what it means to be human is constantly challenged and renegotiated, allowing for the development of non-anthropocentric forms of existence. This paper will demonstrate how, in a world in which the human species is chronically experiencing the threat of extinction, technologies – such as AI entities, clones and factories – allow the renegotiation of ideas of human centrality and singularity, effectively suggesting possibilities for survival outside of a humanist and anthropocentric framework.

The paper aims to explore the practical aspects of the Safavid envoys’ travels to Venice in the sixteenth and the first part of the seventeenth centuries. In particular, it will reconstruct the itineraries of the journeys of the Safavid delegates to Venice, analyse the challenges and difficulties of long-distance travel experienced by them and the impact of the Ottoman factor on both the Safavid and Venetian envoys’ travel planning and trajectories. The paper reveals that the first Safavid trade mission to Venice was sent in 1597 and not in 1600, as previously known in the historiography. We will shed light on the social status of the Safavid envoys and clarify the role and duties of the garak-yaraqs (purveyors) of the Safavid Royal Household among them. We will examine the impact of the overall character of the Safavid-Ottoman relations both on the size of the missions and the intensity of the diplomatic and trade contacts between the Republic of Venice and the Safavid Empire.

The aim of this paper is to shed light on locally constructed sculptural representations of donors and devotees from Butkara I in Swat valley – one of the earliest Buddhist sites in the Greater Gandhara region. The discovery of several sculptures and architectural elements depicting elaborately adorned male and female figures with distinctly individualizing facial features, and bearing varied Buddhist offerings, not only throws into relief the artistic phenomenon of portraiture in early Gandharan Buddhist art but also exemplifies the visual and material enactment of donative ritual and practice. The appropriation of a transcultural and widely legible visual vocabulary for constructing these essentially Buddhist figures underscores the complex cross-cultural interactions and encounters underpinning Gandharan art and Buddhist practice in the early centuries of the Common Era. The paper argues that, in addition to relic establishment and donative inscriptions, the ruling aristocrats used donor portraits for the material and metaphorical embodiment of their presence and piety within the Buddhist monastic space. Moreover, these images likely served as public performances for effectively navigating the broader political and socio-cultural currents. Speaking to diverse communities in the multicultural matrix of Gandhara, these donor portraits highlight the participation of visual imagery in constructing new forms of ritual and practice predicated upon the intertwined notions of power, patronage, and religiosity.

This paper aims to examine the life, experiences, and limitation of Ch’oe Yŏngsuk, a notable New Woman figure subjected to colonial restrictions in Korea during the early 20th century, with empirical resources, including newly discovered archives from the Swedish National Archive and the Sigtunastiftelsen archive. While Korean women were able to receive a modern education from the late 19th century, Ch’oe studied in Shanghai and then went to Sweden in 1926 to study sociology, becoming the first Korean woman to receive a bachelor’s degree in Economics. After her studies, she traveled extensively and met influential people. Despite her notable achievements, Ch’oe could not find a proper job and died in poverty a few months after her return. This paper seeks to shed light on her life during her stay in Sweden and her activities in the independence and feminist movements there. The relationship between her ‘failure’ after returning home and the constraints of the time, given spatially/periodically and gender-wise, will also be examined. It is also worth noting that her case is a symbolic example of the social constraints that elite women had to face at the time. Her contrasting activities and evaluations in Sweden and Korea show how constrained and suppressed a woman’s life is by the time and space in which it positions.

This paper seeks to analyse the role of technology and memory in Kawakami Hiromi’s novel Ōkina torini sarawarenaiyō. Set thousands of years in the future, in a world that has been subjected to several catastrophes, the novel highlights the interconnections between humanity and technology in order to defamiliarize ideas of human centrality and exceptionalism. Kawakami’s characters are forced to face the cyclical possibility of human extinction, which turns into a recurring threat rather than an abstract and discrete event. In this narrative time chronically affected by crises, the definition of what it means to be human is constantly challenged and renegotiated, allowing for the development of non-anthropocentric forms of existence. This paper will demonstrate how, in a world in which the human species is chronically experiencing the threat of extinction, technologies – such as AI entities, clones and factories – allow the renegotiation of ideas of human centrality and singularity, effectively suggesting possibilities for survival outside of a humanist and anthropocentric framework.

The aim of this paper is to analyse morphosyntactic structures in the language of kyōgen – a traditional form of Japanese comic theatre developed in the fourteenth century – from a sociolinguistic perspective, i.e. by highlighting differences in usage across various categories of characters, using the Corpus of Historical Japanese (CHJ). This paper will focus on the use of the particles ga and no with nominative and attributive functions and on the decline of kakari-musubi with koso in Toraakirabon (1642). The analysis will reveal that linguistic characterization is rendered not only through the lexicon, but also, as in the case of female characters, through a particular use of morphosyntactic structures, which appears less influenced by linguistic innovations.

This paper presents the experience of the design of a didactic activity for the translation of a Japanese video game in Italian, carried out in 2020 during the first year of the Japanese language course of the Master’s Degree Programme in Language and Civilisation of Asia and Mediterranean Africa at Ca’ Foscari University. The described protocol allows the design of video game translation sessions as a teaching activity, overcoming some typical technical and organisational problems. One important issue this paper addresses involves the possibility of reviewing the translation within the game, which is fundamental to understanding how to translate texts for this medium. The paper will also give an overview of the translation issues that students encountered during the activity and of how they solved them. Finally, the results of a survey will show whether the implemented protocol and classroom activity were satisfactory for the students and how they can be improved.

This paper aims to present the first preliminary results of The Changing Body and the Care Experience in Visual Arts in a Comparative and Cross-cultural Perspective Between Western and Mediterranean Art, a research project focused on the perception and representation of care in the MENA region (i.e. the Middle East and North Africa). In modern and contemporary artistic productions from the area, a reflection on the perception and visual representation of care must necessarily set out from the depiction of the body and illness, which plays a crucial role in any discourse on caring. The purpose of this paper is therefore to offer an initial overview of the visual representation of caring, and of the way in which it is understood in North Africa and Middle East, through the comparative analysis of some case studies.

This paper presents a text-based comparison between some elements of Indian Buddhism that are extant in Pāli, Sanskrit, and Chinese sources with some Tàijíquán 太極拳 principles drawn from the Tàijíquán jīng 太極拳經 ‘Classics of Tàijíquán’ in addition to some similar textual materials from both Tàijíquán 太極拳 and Qìgōng 氣功 traditions. Buddhist accounts in which body and mind’s interactions generate a perception of lightness (Pāli: lahu; Sanskrit: laghu/raghu; Chinese: qīng 輕) will be compared with descriptive and prescriptive Tàijíquán 太極拳 accounts in which the movement of the energy (qì 氣) in the body similarly produces a state of lightness (qīng 輕). The paper will also discuss some theoretical presuppositions to the act of comparison, starting with the reflections expressed by Jonathan Z. Smith.

The article sheds light on Chinese as a Second Language Learner Corpus Research, emphasising advances and lacks in this field. First, the paper describes the potential of learner corpora in the investigation of learner language. Second, it provides an overview of Chinese learner corpus-based research and reviews existing L2 Chinese learner corpora. The paper highlights the lack of L2 Chinese learner corpora collecting data from Italian learners. Therefore, it emphasises the importance of compiling corpora to conduct studies on the acquisition of L2 Chinese by learners whose L1s are other than English or Asian languages.

Fujiwara no Teika was a pivotal figure in classical Japanese poetry not only because of the many high-level poems he wrote or of the imperial anthologies he edited, but also because of his poetic treatises. In this paper, I will examine two of them: Kindai shūka (Superior Poems of Recent Times, 1209) and Eiga taigai (Fundamentals of Poetic Composition, after 1221). They both present a theoretical introduction followed by a selection of outstanding poems to be taken as examples by those who want to learn how to compose waka. The key feature of the anthology parts is to be found in the organisation of the poems, since they follow an order that respects the principles of association and of progression typical of the anthologies and of the sequences of the time. In this paper, I will compare these two treatises, with a focus on their similarities and differences. I will also try to understand, in the absence of explanatory notes by the author himself, what motivations might have induced the poet to modify what was stated in the introductory part and to reorganise the selection of the poems.

This paper aims to present the first preliminary results of The Changing Body and the Care Experience in Visual Arts in a Comparative and Cross-cultural Perspective Between Western and Mediterranean Art, a research project focused on the perception and representation of care in the MENA region (i.e. the Middle East and North Africa). In modern and contemporary artistic productions from the area, a reflection on the perception and visual representation of care must necessarily set out from the depiction of the body and illness, which plays a crucial role in any discourse on caring. The purpose of this paper is therefore to offer an initial overview of the visual representation of caring, and of the way in which it is understood in North Africa and Middle East, through the comparative analysis of some case studies.

Fujiwara no Teika was a pivotal figure in classical Japanese poetry not only because of the many high-level poems he wrote or of the imperial anthologies he edited, but also because of his poetic treatises. In this paper, I will examine two of them: Kindai shūka (Superior Poems of Recent Times, 1209) and Eiga taigai (Fundamentals of Poetic Composition, after 1221). They both present a theoretical introduction followed by a selection of outstanding poems to be taken as examples by those who want to learn how to compose waka. The key feature of the anthology parts is to be found in the organisation of the poems, since they follow an order that respects the principles of association and of progression typical of the anthologies and of the sequences of the time. In this paper, I will compare these two treatises, with a focus on their similarities and differences. I will also try to understand, in the absence of explanatory notes by the author himself, what motivations might have induced the poet to modify what was stated in the introductory part and to reorganise the selection of the poems.

This paper presents a text-based comparison between some elements of Indian Buddhism that are extant in Pāli, Sanskrit, and Chinese sources with some Tàijíquán 太極拳 principles drawn from the Tàijíquán jīng 太極拳經 ‘Classics of Tàijíquán’ in addition to some similar textual materials from both Tàijíquán 太極拳 and Qìgōng 氣功 traditions. Buddhist accounts in which body and mind’s interactions generate a perception of lightness (Pāli: lahu; Sanskrit: laghu/raghu; Chinese: qīng 輕) will be compared with descriptive and prescriptive Tàijíquán 太極拳 accounts in which the movement of the energy (qì 氣) in the body similarly produces a state of lightness (qīng 輕). The paper will also discuss some theoretical presuppositions to the act of comparison, starting with the reflections expressed by Jonathan Z. Smith.

The article sheds light on Chinese as a Second Language Learner Corpus Research, emphasising advances and lacks in this field. First, the paper describes the potential of learner corpora in the investigation of learner language. Second, it provides an overview of Chinese learner corpus-based research and reviews existing L2 Chinese learner corpora. The paper highlights the lack of L2 Chinese learner corpora collecting data from Italian learners. Therefore, it emphasises the importance of compiling corpora to conduct studies on the acquisition of L2 Chinese by learners whose L1s are other than English or Asian languages.

This paper presents the experience of the design of a didactic activity for the translation of a Japanese video game in Italian, carried out in 2020 during the first year of the Japanese language course of the Master’s Degree Programme in Language and Civilisation of Asia and Mediterranean Africa at Ca’ Foscari University. The described protocol allows the design of video game translation sessions as a teaching activity, overcoming some typical technical and organisational problems. One important issue this paper addresses involves the possibility of reviewing the translation within the game, which is fundamental to understanding how to translate texts for this medium. The paper will also give an overview of the translation issues that students encountered during the activity and of how they solved them. Finally, the results of a survey will show whether the implemented protocol and classroom activity were satisfactory for the students and how they can be improved.

This paper is part of a larger project on how Livy represents the Elder Cato, from his entrance into the text in Book 29 to his last witticism preserved in the summary of Book 50, the longest biographical arc in this first third of Livy’s text. It views Cato through the lens of his relationship with objects, and with Livy’s narrative as an object as well. This paper focuses on one episode in the life of Livy’s Cato, the debate over the repeal of the Lex Oppia, and builds on previous scholars’ work to unite three arguments: 1) Livy weaves together textual space and Roman topography so as to emphasise the simultaneous marginality and centrality of this debate; 2) Livy’s Cato and Valerius fill Rome’s urban topography with images of things so as to draw attention via women’s bodies to the relationship between luxury and Rome’s imperium; 3) Livy uses this episode to make an argument about his own historical writing and its active relationship to the expansion of empire. This project focusing on Livy’s Cato is itself part of an even larger reexamination of how we read, and might read, Livy.

The paper focuses on several historical and textual problems that afflict the opening part of Nepos’ biography written by the Athenian general Conon. In the first chapter, the paper will underscore the encomiastic purposes that characterise this life. Then, the paper will analyse the use of the words praetor and praefectus made by Nepos in the Liber. This analysis is strictly connected to a textual problem that characterises the clause praefectus classis magnas mari gessit (Con. 1.1): here the paper suggests that the text of the manuscript tradition could be saved through textual and historical data. In the third and final section, the paper will try to explain which kind of honos, according to Nepos, Conon received after his military achievements on land and sea.

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.

This paper aims at showing how stylistics and ecocriticism, both being strongly ‘centripetal’ and ‘interdisciplinary’ fields, can cooperate in the exploration of a literary text. This is the case of a short story written by the Chinese-American writer Ha Jin. Also thanks to the help of the digital analysis, the paper mainly focuses on the stylistic analysis of the personal pronouns and of the narrator’s point of view to show the stinging and subversive irony which pervades the narration of the vicissitudes of a Chinese TV film crew who is asked to shoot a scene where a muscular hero has to fight bare-handed against a real Siberian tiger. The analysis also aims to show how the story becomes the opportunity for the writer to depict the narrow frame of mind of the blind dictatorship of his homeland and its deplorable consequences on both humans and animals. Thus, the whole exploration, in the end, reveals the ecocritical lens through which Ha Jin narrates the story.

This paper aims at showing how stylistics and ecocriticism, both being strongly ‘centripetal’ and ‘interdisciplinary’ fields, can cooperate in the exploration of a literary text. This is the case of a short story written by the Chinese-American writer Ha Jin. Also thanks to the help of the digital analysis, the paper mainly focuses on the stylistic analysis of the personal pronouns and of the narrator’s point of view to show the stinging and subversive irony which pervades the narration of the vicissitudes of a Chinese TV film crew who is asked to shoot a scene where a muscular hero has to fight bare-handed against a real Siberian tiger. The analysis also aims to show how the story becomes the opportunity for the writer to depict the narrow frame of mind of the blind dictatorship of his homeland and its deplorable consequences on both humans and animals. Thus, the whole exploration, in the end, reveals the ecocritical lens through which Ha Jin narrates the story.

The paper aims to highlight the centrality of a late process of metamorphosis, which has unequivocally conditioned the image of the basilisk, radically transforming its appearance from a simple snake to a monster with the body of a rooster and a snake’s tail. The basilisk described in the classical sources corresponded to a small snake but was characterized by an extraordinary poisonous power. With the passage to the Middle Ages and the influence of Christianity, the basilisk took on new monstrous meanings, transforming its iconography into a rooster-snake hybrid, based on theories that believed it was generated from a rooster’s egg. The Renaissance and Early Modern Age inherited the medieval basilisk, which continued to be prominently depicted in emblematic literature; in parallel, however, the new scientific literature began to exclude excessively legendary meanings, preferring to return to descriptions of the classical era and thus depict the basilisk as a snake.

The paper discusses early modern reconstructions of a first-century Roman arch preserved in the eastern Adriatic town of Zadar, at the time part of Venetian Dalmatia. Its reconstructions of the 1430s and the 1570s are contextualized within complex cultural and historical references. The Quattrocento renovation is associated with the reinterpretation of civic imagery through authentication of its classical roots, while that of the late Cinquecento is inscribed within the broader political and cultural context of contemporary Venetian promotion of Romanitas.

In Euripides’ fragmentary Hypsipyle (frag. 752‑69 K.) the seer Amphiaraus plays many and crucial roles: he first unwittingly causes Hypsipyle’s troubles, then becomes her saviour and prevents her execution; he also acts as a messenger of Opheltes’ death; finally, he is responsible for the recognition between Hypsipyle and her two sons. In Greek tragedy there is not another character who plays so many and so important roles in the same drama: Hypsipyle’s Amphiaraus is absolutely one of a kind, a product of Euripides’ late and experimental period of activity as a dramatist. This paper aims to analyse each of the roles played by the seer in this tragedy to evaluate the uniqueness and complexity of his dramaturgical function.

The paper offers textual notes, including new conjectures, on the scholia on the Alcestis of Euripides (Hyp. Alc. (a), schol. Alc. 1, 54, 55, 56, 59, 65‑7, 70‑1, 75‑6) and presents the first edition of an unpublished note on Eur. Alc. 65.

The drawings preserved in the collection of the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe di Palazzo Rosso in Genoa include three sketches concerning the involvement of Francesco Gandolfi (1824‑73) in the pictorial decoration of Genoa’s first railway station between 1859 and 1860. Except for the medallion under the entrance porch, these frescoes have been considered lost since the early 20th century. This research is grounded in the stylistic and cultural homogeneity that these drawings express, as well as in the remarkable evidence they provide about an iconographic scheme intended for a novel public space in the 19th-century city. The aim of this paper is also to outline the artistic and social environment of Genoa at the time when it became the first commercial centre of the Kingdom.

This paper investigates for the first time the restoration work carried out on the refectory of the monastery of San Michele in Bosco in Bologna, which was supervised by Alfonso Rubbiani between 1892 and 1895. In spite of the vast literature on the ‘restorer’, this work has so far been scarcely considered both because of the chronology of the building (mid-16th century) as well as because it did not entail radical changes. Indeed, the limited size of the room and the numerous documentary traces – carefully tracked by Rubbiani and his patron, the lawyer Giuseppe Bacchelli – were addressing the operation philologically. The discovery of unpublished archival evidence contributed to a more appropriate understanding of the overall work; in particular, it is possible to note how the initial intentions of the architect and the commissioner, which were based on erudite investigations that involved intellectuals and politicians of the time, did not, unfortunately, come to fruition.

This paper aims to investigate the intriguing phenomenon of costumed parties held in Rome between 1880 and 1900 through the study of photographic material. In particular, the essay focuses on two main iconographic aspects: the carnival masquerades, conceived in most cases by the painter and antiquarian Attilio Simonetti and interpreted by some members of the International Artistic Association; and the tableaux vivants, the so-called living pictures, which were figurative compositions usually set up in the patrician residences, including that of the counts Giuseppe and Luigi Primoli, who were an active part in their creation. A crucial role was also played by Henri Le Lieure, a professional photographer of French origin who was responsible for much of the visual documentation of the time.

This paper aims to analyse Elena Ferrante’s use of the metaphor of playing with dolls in her novel, La figlia oscura (The Lost Daughter). With a view of shedding a light on this issue, the first part of the paper will review the prominent essays of Sigmund Freud, Ernst Jentsch, Walter Benjamin, Rainer Maria Rilke and Charles Baudelaire that question the nature of playing with dolls in terms of psychology with various focuses. These essays generally agree on the fact that playing with dolls is a strong threshold to come to terms with the self, as well as on the fact that this coming to terms with the self is by nature not guaranteed. The second part will examine Elena Ferrante’s dealing with the problem of playing with dolls and her character’s journey to death and a possible psychological resurrection.

The aim of this paper is to take issue with the opinion that, in sociology, the concept of ‘society’ was equated with the nation-state. Firstly, a diachronic analysis of the term ‘society’, as used by the general public, shall be attempted: ‘society as a whole’ and ‘the social’. Secondly, the article shall illustrate that sociology has developed its own analytical concept of society within the space between the two lay terms. Thirdly, the fact that the process of globalisation yet again problematizes the distinction between ‘society as a whole’ and ‘the social’ shall be shown. The conclusion of the paper is that, by yet again, becoming aware of the three dimensions of the concept of ‘society’, we can provide cues for a theoretical reconstruction of the sociological concept of ‘society’ that will contribute to research on ‘society’ in the age of globalisation.

The aim of this paper is to take issue with the opinion that, in sociology, the concept of ‘society’ was equated with the nation-state. Firstly, a diachronic analysis of the term ‘society’, as used by the general public, shall be attempted: ‘society as a whole’ and ‘the social’. Secondly, the article shall illustrate that sociology has developed its own analytical concept of society within the space between the two lay terms. Thirdly, the fact that the process of globalisation yet again problematizes the distinction between ‘society as a whole’ and ‘the social’ shall be shown. The conclusion of the paper is that, by yet again, becoming aware of the three dimensions of the concept of ‘society’, we can provide cues for a theoretical reconstruction of the sociological concept of ‘society’ that will contribute to research on ‘society’ in the age of globalisation.

This paper aims to analyse Elena Ferrante’s use of the metaphor of playing with dolls in her novel, La figlia oscura (The Lost Daughter). With a view of shedding a light on this issue, the first part of the paper will review the prominent essays of Sigmund Freud, Ernst Jentsch, Walter Benjamin, Rainer Maria Rilke and Charles Baudelaire that question the nature of playing with dolls in terms of psychology with various focuses. These essays generally agree on the fact that playing with dolls is a strong threshold to come to terms with the self, as well as on the fact that this coming to terms with the self is by nature not guaranteed. The second part will examine Elena Ferrante’s dealing with the problem of playing with dolls and her character’s journey to death and a possible psychological resurrection.

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.