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Si presenta qui l’editio princeps di un’epigrafe tardo-ellenistica proveniente dal sito di Halaesa Archonidea (Tusa, prov. ME). Lo scarno testo superstite, disposto su due colonne, e riferibile su base paleografica al tardo II - inizio I sec. a.C., sembra attribuibile a un contratto di misthosis fondiaria, che a oggi parrebbe essere il secondo esempio dall’Occidente greco dopo le Tavole di Heraklea. Alcuni passaggi chiave dell’epigrafe in particolare lasciano identificare il documento con un ‘contratto minuto’ (col. A, l. 15: κ̣αὶ ἃ παρέ[λ]αβον), che a sua volta faceva riferimento a delle syngraphai (coll. A ll. 8-9; col. B, ll. 3-4: κατὰ τ]ὰς συγγραφάς), da interpretarsi probabilmente con un più generale “contratto quadro” alesino. Il testo conserva altresì alcune peculiarità linguistiche (l’hapax epigrafico μισθάριον, col. A, l. 11; due casi di imperativo eolico, col. A, ll. 13-14: ἐχόντον, ἀποδόντον) e tracce di un inedito sistema numerale acrofonico locale (col. B, l. 2). Ma soprattutto il documento, benché certamente da esse distinto, potrebbe essere in qualche misura connesso con le celebri Tabulae Halaesinae (IG XIV 352 + SEG IV 45), che all’incirca nello stesso periodo (tardo II - inizio I sec. a.C.) descrivevano dettagliatamente alcune decine di lotti demaniali (klaroi) destinati dalla polis di Halaesa all’affitto. This paper offers the editio princeps of one late Hellenistic Greek inscription from Halaesa Archonidea (Tusa, Prov. ME). The meagre text preserved, arranged in two columns and dated on paleographic grounds to the late II cent. B.C., can be attributed to one land misthosis contract, this being presumably the second example after the “Herakleia Tables” in the whole Greek West. Some key points make us recognize the present document as a detailed lease contract, which, in turn, referred to some syngraphai (coll. A l. 8-9; col. B, ll. 3-4: κατὰ τ]ὰς συγγραφάς), to be explained with one separate Halaesine standard contract. The text retains also some unique linguistic features (col. A, l.11: the epigraphic hapax μισθάριον, two occurrences of the rare Aeolic imperative, col. A l. 13: ἐχόντον, l. 14: ἀποδόντον) and some clues (col. B, l. 2) of one until now unknown local acrophonic numeral system. But above all, although different, the document could be somehow related to the well-known Tabulae Halaesinae (IG XIV 352 + SEG IV 45), which roughly in II-I cent. B.C. described in detail more than thirty-six public plots of land (klaroi), intended to be leased by the polis of Halaesa.

Il presente contributo si propone di esaminare le caratteristiche della ricezione testuale degli scritti e del pensiero dello storiografo latino Cornelio Tacito da parte degli anti-tacitisti spagnoli del tardo Rinascimento e del Barocco che, per motivi prevalentemente fideistici, espressero programmaticamente la propria avversità nei confronti della sua figura e della sua opera. Tale operazione è condotta attraverso la comparazione contenutistica, testuale e contestuale tra il pensiero tacitiano rapportato alla propria epoca e le rielaborazioni compiute dai suoi detrattori di età moderna. This paper aims to examine the characteristics of the textual reception of Cornelius Tacitus' thought and works by those Spanish anti-Tacitists of the Late Renaissance and Baroque who, compelled by chiefly religious reasons, programmatically expressed their hostility against him. The task has been performed through careful content, textual and contextual comparison between the Roman historian's thought, integrated in the social and cultural environment of his time, and the modifications to which it was subjected by his Early-Modern detractors.

Lo studio prende in esame il ruolo e l’importanza degli Eroi Eponimi delle dieci tribù attiche all’indomani della disfatta degli Ateniesi a Cheronea nel 338 a.C., soprattutto alla luce della relazione tra l’excursus su queste figure ancestrali, presente all’interno dell’epitaffio demostenico per i caduti in guerra, e la ricostruzione del monumento a essi dedicato nel cuore dell’agora ateniese durante l’epoca licurghea. Dall’analisi dell’orazione funeraria e da alcune riflessioni sull’ideologia licurghea si può evincere come, all’indomani di Cheronea, la polis attica cerchi di ricompattare la propria memoria e tradizione democratica anche tramite il revival degli Eponimi, figure fondanti della vita politica ateniese. This paper deals with the role and the importance of the Eponymous Heroes of the ten Attic tribes in the aftermath of the Athenian defeat at Chaeronea in 338 B.C. The present investigation focuses on the relation between the excursus about these ancestral figures, present in the Demosthenic epitaph dedicated to the war dead, and the reconstruction of the monument devoted to them in the hearth of the Athenian agora during the Lycurgan era. From the analysis of the funerary oration and other reflections about the Lycurgan ideology, it can be seen how, in the aftermath of Chaeronea, the Attic polis tries to reconstruct its own memory and democratic tradition, also through the revival of the Eponymous Heroes, fundamental figures of the Athenian political life.

Una stele frammentaria, la cui presenza è ricordata a Καστελλόριζο (antica Megiste) nel 1907, fu trasferita insieme ad altre iscrizioni a Mytilene (Lesbos) e di qui a Lemnos, dove è tuttora conservata presso il Museo Archeologico di Myrina. Il testo, che era noto solo da una approssimativa edizione del 1917, è qui pubblicato per la prima volta secondo i moderni canoni scientifici. Esso conserva un decreto onorario di età ellenistica per un benefattore locale del ginnasio. Il presente contributo intende inoltre ricostruire le vicende erranti della pietra e stabilire la sua provenienza originaria. Identifica in particolare la comunità committente con la polis di Antiphellos (Lycia), che accoglie una precedente iniziativa onoraria deliberata da un raggruppamento interno del locale ginnasio. Sottolinea inoltre la volontà della città di confermare gli onori e di assicurare la loro attuazione nel tempo attraverso il riferimento a specifici garanti. Propone infine di riconoscere nell’anonimo onorato un benefattore che potrebbe aver costituito una fondazione per i neoi o per altro gruppo ginnasiale. A fragmentary stele, which was recorded at Καστελλόριζο (ancient Megiste) in 1907, was transferred along with other inscriptions to Mytilene (Lesbos) and from there to Lemnos, where it is still preserved at the Archaeological Museum of Myrina. The text, which was so far only known from an unsatisfying edition of 1917, is for the first time published according to modern standards. It contains a Hellenistic honorary decree for a local benefactor of the gymnasium. The present paper further intends to reconstruct the wanderings of the stone and establish its original provenance. It identifies in particular the committing community with the polis of Antiphellos (Lycia), which ratifies a previous honorary initiative deliberated by an inner group of the local gymnasium. It also underlines the city’s commitment to confirm the honors and to ensure their implementation in the future by referring to specific guarantees. Finally, it proposes to recognize in the anonymous honorand a benefactor who could have constituted a foundation for the neoi or for another gymnasium group.

This paper studies the significance of humour in Roman oratory, a theme dear to Cicero, who claimed expertise in it, and central to book 2 of the De oratore. In a long passage of the work (§§ 216-290), Cicero offers a detailed and systematic account of inventio that fleshes out the sketch presented in the Rhetorica ad Herennium. I argue that Cicero treats this controversial topic in Roman oratory with a sensitivity to the broad range of differing viewpoints held by established orators (including his own teachers). He does so by expertly managing the fine distinction between innovation and tradition, between Greek theoretical works and anthologies of Latin jokes (some of which were compiled by members of illustrious gentes), between utilitas and humanitas. Il contributo intende approfondire l’importanza dell’umorismo nell’oratoria romana, un tema caro a Cicerone, che ne era esperto, e centrale nel II libro del De oratore. In un’ampia sezione dell’opera (§§ 216-290) l’autore offre un’esposizione dettagliata e sistematica a conclusione dell’inventio, superando largamente gli scarni spunti presenti nella Rhetorica ad Herennium. L’argomento, singolarmente controverso sul piano retorico nel mondo romano per questioni tecniche (ars) e di decorum, viene affrontato da Cicerone con abile dialettica tra diverse e mutevoli opinioni, attribuite ad autorevoli e arguti oratori e ai suoi maestri, ricercando un prudente equilibrio tra innovazione e tradizione, tra trattati greci teorici e raccolte di facezie latine (risalenti anche a membri delle gentes più illustri), tra utilitas e humanitas. La contribution vise à approfondir l’importance de l’humour dans l’art oratoire romain, un thème cher à Cicéron, qui en était un expert, et au centre du deuxième livre du De oratore. Dans une grande partie de l’ouvrage (§§ 216-290), l’auteur propose une exposition détaillée et systématique à la conclusion de l’inventio, dépassant de loin les maigres indices présents dans la Rhetorica ad Herennium. Le sujet, singulièrement controversé sur le plan rhétorique dans le monde romain pour les questions techniques (ars) et de decorum, est abordé par Cicéron avec une dialectique intelligente entre des opinions différentes et changeantes, attribuées aux orateurs influents et pleins d’esprit et à ses maîtres, à la recherche d’un équilibre prudent entre innovation et tradition, entre traités théoriques grecs et recueils de facéties latines (remontant aussi aux membres des plus illustres gentes), entre utilitas et humanitas.

The paper analyses one of the last voices of the Ciceronian oratory, the Pro Ligario. After a reconstruction of the context in which the oration was produced, the attention is focused on the reception of the text by Quintilian, who on several occasions in the Institutio oratoria shows particular interest for the multiple problems connected to it, identifying the peculiar characteristics. L’articolo prende in esame una delle ultime espressioni dell’oratoria di Cicerone, la Pro Ligario. Dopo aver ricostruito il contesto in cui l’orazione fu tenuta, l’attenzione si concentra sulla ricezione del testo da parte di Quintiliano, che in più passi dell’Institutio oratoria mostra un interesse particolare per i molteplici problemi connessi con l’orazione, identificandone i caratteri specifici.

The exploration of alternative foodscapes is a clear attempt at re-localizing food in contrast with agro-industrial globalization and its environmental, economic and social unsustainability. Art has dramatically contributed with speculations on what has been called “survival food”. This paper analyzes three case studies: “The Next Menu, a gastronomical art project designed to imagine a future supper and explore new or overlooked sources of nutrition to respond to climate change constraints; the “De-Extinction Dinner” by the Center for the Genomic Gastronomy, an experiment in cross-pollination of amateur science with multimedia art; Dana Sherwood’s work involving decadent cakes to feed non-human animals with the purpose to understand interspecies relations.

The everyday technological abundance and proliferation of media and visual objects have progressively modified our perception and signification processes, but also our existence. Our actions are now often a result of our ongoing relationship between our Being (and our intentions) and media devices through which we tell our stories as subjects-objects of an everyday epos that exists since it is co-constructed, lived and shared from – and into – media environments, resulting in an immediacy that makes a radical mediation, to equalize the ontological differences, possible. Today images are the main code of performative and representative expression of the Social Humanity. Images “exceed”, according to Mitchell, by appearing as objects but still maintaining also some potential existential declinations. In the most common form of global human transit, which is tourism, the image becomes a recognizable “sign” of the destination and, because of its immediacy, an object of the research made by the visitor's gaze, according to Urry. The reification of the place makes it simpler and reproducible and the image of the destination is the only one that remains beyond the tourist trip itself. Over and above Benjamin’s mechanical reproduction, within the reproducibility of the journey and place, the image becomes paradoxically an expressive limit and a return to the past. Tourists are “guilty” of being driven by a mimetic desire – from the days when the industrialist travelled to imitate the nobleman – and try hard to stand out from that mass of which they are part. Images produced by tourists confirm this flattening of the tourist experience. While tourists could extensively express their individuality through devices, they do nothing but reproduce known, lived and recognizable subjects, narrations and frames. This is the paradox of the image: the expression of the movement of travellers turns out to be their self-imposed cage as the image appears to be a social comfort-zone to escape an unconscious confusion between real and communicated, representation and mystification. This paper will analyse the phenomenon of the fake tourism spread for representing locations that have never been reached and trips that have been faked through media.

In this paper, I will use the tools of transmedia design to explore the media products of crossing places, which are before known to the users through their representation in narrative ecosystems. I consider Social Networks as the space in which places are rewritten from object to sign, according to the technology of the different platforms. First of all, I will apply the theoretical approach to the theme park, as a typical example of localized storytelling. Then I will identify two different meanings of the crossing places: the “intertextual places”, which are medial memory before being crossed, and the “metatextual places”, which are imaginary until they are geolocalized.

A new "line" of dictionaries is proposed, specifically aimed at translators, which abandons the monorematic approach of traditional dictionaries; admits a large number of multiword terms chosen from among the most translated disciplines (such as environmental protection) and raises those terms to the rank of headwords. Other important features of such dictionaries should be boosted consultation speed – to be obtained through a new entry structure - and a reduction in content, i.e. leaving aside words and word meanings already ‘covered’ by the expected linguistic competence of the professional users (translators) to whom they are intended. With reference to paper dictionaries, the space so gained could make them into practical reference tools, full of reliable and professionally relevant contents. With reference to electronic and online dictionaries, the additional challenge would be to adopt a natural language search system based on the real searches carried out by translators. The overall purpose is to have dictionaries that give reliable answers to a high percentage of the queries carried out by translators and prevent them from having to rely too much on non-lexicographic reference sources.

In this paper we introduce the main features of the KIParla corpus, a new resource for the study of spoken Italian. Among other specific features, KIParla provides access to a wide range of metadata that characterize both the participants and the settings in which the interactions take place. Furthermore, it is designed to be shared as a free resource tool through the NoSketch Engine interface and to be expanded as a monitor corpus.

This paper outlines and discusses the main findings and the main open issues related to the analysis of figurative language (in particular, metaphor and metonymy) used within the genre of advertising and social campaigns. The issues hereby addressed include: the interaction of linguistic and pictorial elements within these polisemiotic texts and their role in constructing metaphors; the problems related to theoretical models that tackle a single level of analysis, neglecting the ability of these images to evoke multiple layers of abstraction; the role played by metonymy in crossing such layers; the perceived complexity within these constructions; and finally, the identification of a specific type of metaphors, in which different senses are crossed, stimulating the viewer to construct a synesthetic metaphor. Within this complex scenario, it is hereby argued that a cross-disciplinary approach, informed by semiotic as well as by cognitive theories, is arguably more successful in explaining exhaustively the structure and functioning of metaphor in these images.

Lo studio prende in esame, alla luce soprattutto di una ricca documentazione epigrafica, l'attività della cancelleria reale in Macedonia sotto i due ultimi re Antigonidi, Filippo V e Perseo (221-168). L'arco di tempo coincide con quello del primo programma storiografico di Polibio e con la conquista romana dell'Oriente mediterraneo, fino appunto alla sconfitta macedone a Pidna. Più in particolare sono esaminate le lettere e i diagrammata riferibili con certezza o probabilità al periodo delle tre guerre romano-macedoniche e sono discussi gli ambiti (legislativo, politico, religioso, amministrativo) in cui maggiormente si coglie l'intervento dei re in comunicazioni scritte rivolte alle diverse comunità locali. Attraverso la valorizzazione di documenti epigrafici divenuti noti solo negli ultimi anni e il confronto con testi già noti, infine, si propone di riferire al regno di Perseo sia l'introduzione nelle città macedoni dei politarchi, sia parte della legislazione su esercito e attività dei ginnasi, che in passato si è riferita per lo più all'opera di Filippo. The paper deals with the activity of Macedonian royal chancery under the last two Antigonid kings, Philip V and Perseus (221-168), mainly on the basis of a rich epigraphic record. The period taken into consideration coincides with the one which Polybius dealt with according to the original plan of the Histories (the conclusion being the Macedonian defeat at Pydna). A particular attention is devoted to the letters and diagrammata which were certainly (or probably) issued during the period of the three wars against Rome. The topics (legislative, political, religious, administrative) mainly involved in these texts and the related communication between central power and local communities are here stressed. The analysis of some inscriptions which became fully known only recently and the revaluation of already known texts, moreover, allow us to date during the reign of Perseus both the introduction of the politarchs in the Macedonian cities and at least a part of the legislative texts on the army and on the activities of the gymnasia, which were usually attributed to Philip V in the past.

The paper’s aim is to demonstrate how, during the so-called conspiracy orchestrated by Clemens (Pseudo Agrippa) against Tiberius, strategies of communication were adapted to assimilate the destabilizing action to the Octavian’s rise. The purpose was to justify an illegal action with the exemplum of the Empire’s founder and probably to suggest a political evolution of the principate in contrast with Tiberius’ one. The recall of the Octavian’s revolutionary rise meant to stray from the political compromise signed by Augustus firstly, and then by his successor, with the conservative senatorial nobility. L’obbiettivo del contributo è quello di dimostrare come, durante la cosiddetta congiura orchestrata contro Tiberio da Clemente (lo pseudo Agrippa), furono adottate strategie di comunicazione atte ad assimilare la sua azione con l’ascesa di Ottaviano. Il fine era quello di giustificare un’azione illegale con l’exemplum del fondatore dell’impero e probabilmente suggerire un’evoluzione del principato in contrasto con quella proposta da Tiberio. Richiamare la rivoluzionaria ascesa di Ottaviano significava allontanarsi dal compromesso siglato da Augusto, prima, e dal successore, poi, con la nobilitas senatoria tradizionalista.

da parte dei Romani nei rapporti con le compagini elleniche dall’intervento di Flaminino in Grecia all’età di Cesare. In particolare sarà indagato, attraverso l’esame di alcuni testi significativi, il grado di abilità degli scriventi romani nell’adottare e reinterpretare i modelli ellenistici della comunicazione regia con le comunità greche adattandoli di volta in volta alle proprie finalità. Ne emerge un quadro variegato, all’interno del quale l’incontro tra il linguaggio diplomatico greco, che i mittenti delle epistole tentano in parte di riprodurre, e il lessico politico romano dà vita in quei testi ad un nuovo e ricco idioma - greco nella forma, romano nella sostanza - in grado di esprimere le diverse sfumature assunte dal potere romano in Oriente nella tarda età repubblicana. Nell’epistola romana in lingua greca si dovrà dunque riconoscere tanto uno strumento di imposizione dell’autorità del Senato e dei suoi rappresentanti sulle province orientali quanto un mezzo di espressione della benevolenza romana in Oriente o anche semplicemente un veicolo per comunicare soluzioni amministrative alle comunità interessate. This paper provides an in-depth study on the resort to letter-writing by the Romans in the diplomatic intercourses with the Greek communities from the exploits of Flamininus in Greece until the age of Caesar. Through the exam of very meaningful texts, it will be particularly tested the ability of Roman letter-writers to adopt and reinterpret the Hellenistic models of royal communication to the Greek cities and peoples, on each occasion accommodating those models for their own specific purposes. The result is a multi-coloured picture in which the contact between the Greek diplomatic language, that the Roman letter-writers tried partially to reproduce, and the Roman political lexicon generates a new and rich idiom – Greek in form, Roman in spirit (Sherk) – that suitably portrays the variable forms taken up by the Roman authority in the East during Late Republic. In the Roman epistle in Greek we should then recognize a tool for imposing the power of the Senate and its deputies on the Eastern provinces as well as a way of expressing Roman benevolence towards the Greeks or sometimes just a vehicle for the communication of administrative arrangements.

Il lavoro si propone di raccogliere e discutere le testimonianze antiche relative all'immagine letteraria dell'esercito persiano come di un discors exercitus, di una sterminata ma disorganizzata massa di armati, "orda disordinata simile a una folla minacciosa" (V.D. Hanson), composta di soldati di lingua, armamento e tattiche di combattimento assai diverse. A quest'immagine si contrappone costantemente quella, opposta, degli eserciti dei Greci e dei Macedoni, meno numerosi, ma in cui disciplina e ordine costituiscono le chiavi del successo. L'immagine stessa, e quella del confronto fra esercito persiano ed eserciti greco-macedoni sono molto comuni nelle fonti greche e latine a partire dal IV secolo a.C., ma negli autori più antichi non appare sempre usata nello stesso senso né con la stessa finalità: di contro, questa immagine ha una storia lunga e articolata, che in questo saggio si cerca di sbrogliare e di ricostruire nelle varie fasi. This paper aims at collecting and discussing the evidence concerning the literary image of the Persian army as a discors exercitus, composed by huge but badly organized "mob-like frightening hordes" (V.D. Hanson), made of soldiers of different languages, armed with a variety of weapons and trained in many different tactics: to this image is constantly opposed that of the smaller Greek and Macedonian armies, where discipline and order were the real key of their success. The image itself, and the comparison, are very popular in the Greek and Latin sources from the IVth century BC onwards, but in earlier authors they are not always used in the same sense and with the same aim: these contrasting images have instead a long and articulated history, which the author of the essay tries to disentangle and to put to the test.

The paper argues that, as the evidence currently stands, the text that most closely approximates the original at in Asconius 32.24 C is compluresque noti homines elisi sunt, inter quos †C. vibiennius† senator. L’articolo si propone di dimostrare che, allo stato attuale delle nostre conoscenze, in Asconio 32, 24 C la sistemazione del testo che si avvicina il più possibile all’originale è compluresque noti homines elisi sunt, inter quos †C. vibiennius† senator. L’article vise à démontrer que, dans l’état actuel de nos connaissances, dans Asc. 32, 24 C, la disposition du texte qui se rapproche le plus possible de l’original est compluresque noti homines elisi sunt, inter quos †C. vibiennius† senator.

The paper explores the different approaches taken by 20th and 21st century scholars to Cicero’s extant political speeches before the Roman people (contiones). These speeches offer a resource for Cicero’s views on the role of this political body in the Roman res publica of his time. This study focuses on accounting for the reasons for those differences and how these readings of the contiones underpin diverse portraits of Cicero as an orator and politician. This bibliographic review of contrasting interpretations of the body of contiones helps shed light on why different generations of Cicero scholars and historians of the Roman Republic have judged Cicero as a “consistent” or “inconsistent” orator and politician. This focused bibliographic evaluation leads to a more rounded understanding of Cicero’s personality as portrayed in recent scholarly history and the dimensions this personality has taken on over the period. L’article étudie les approches opposées adoptées par les chercheurs du 20e siècle et du début du 21e siècle, quant aux discours politiques de Cicéron devant le peuples romain (contiones). Ils contiennent les vues de Cicéron sur le rôle de ce corps politique dans la res publica de son temps. Je me concentre sur les raisons mêmes de ces différences et sur la description de Cicéron en tant qu’orateur et homme politique. L’étude bibliographique que j’offre pour les points de vue contrastés clarifie les facteurs qui ont contribué à ces points de vue et éclairent la question de la cohérence ou de l’incohérence de Cicéron en tant qu’orateur et homme politique romain. Tout cela nous mène finalement à une meilleure compréhension de la personnalité de Cicéron et de ses divers impacts dans diverses circonstances historiques.

The paper conducts a reading of Petrarch’s letters 24, 3 and 4 in which the author addresses Cicero as an ideal correspondent and which contain two contrasting portraits of the Latin orator in the wake of the discovery of a great part of Cicero’s epistolary corpus. I study the development of Petrarch’s moral and literary views on Cicero with a focus on the decidedly modern spirit with which Petrarch rediscovers and critiques this classical model – a model with which Petrarch engages with a novel awareness of its limits and its brilliance and through a dialogue, at once cultural and sentimentally loaded, with a past that is rich in reflections of universal significance, in the spirit of emulation, and autobiographical references. L’articolo analizza le epistole 24, 3 e 4 delle Familiari di Petrarca indirizzate idealmente a Cicerone e contenenti due ritratti contrastanti dell’oratore latino dopo la scoperta di gran parte del suo epistolario. L’evolversi di giudizi, morali e letterari, espressi da Petrarca è oggetto di indagine con attenzione al suo acuto spirito moderno nella critica e riscoperta del modello classico con nuova consapevolezza dei suoi limiti e della sua eccellenza, in un dialogo culturale e sentimentale con il passato ricco di riflessioni di validità universale, spirito di emulazione, riferimenti autobiografici. L’article analyse les épîtres 24, 3 et 4 des Familiares de Pétrarque, idéalement adressées à Cicéron et contenant deux portraits contrastés de l’orateur latin après la découverte d’une grande partie de sa correspondance. L’évolution des jugements, moraux et littéraires, exprimés par Pétrarque, fait l’objet d’une enquête attentive à son esprit moderne et aigu dans la critique et la redécouverte du modèle classique avec une nouvelle prise de conscience de ses limites et de son excellence, dans un dialogue culturel et sentimental avec le passé riche en réflexions de valeur universelle, esprit d’émulation, références autobiographiques.

Il saggio ricostruisce il pensiero di quattro Epicurei romani sulla medicina: Senocle di Delfi, Alessandro e Zopiro, che figurano nei libri 2-3 delle Questioni conviviali di Plutarco, e Lucrezio. La tesi generale che si sostiene è che questi personaggi hanno in comune il fatto di essere esperti conoscitori di medicina e, nello stesso tempo, filosofi che usano questo sapere con il fine etico di condurre gli esseri umani alla felicità e alla salute. Senocle ricorre forse alla dottrina medica di Asclepiade di Bitinia per spiegare il fenomeno dell’appetito e indirizzare alla sazietà. Alessandro guarda forse alla medicina per razionalizzare e confutare il comando orfico-pitagorico di astenersi dalle fave. Zopiro e Lucrezio presentano, infine, la riflessione di Epicuro sui piaceri sessuali, invitando a coltivarli con temperanza e una prassi igienica. The paper reconstructs the thought of four Roman Epicureans on the medicine: Xenocles of Delphi, Alexander, Zopyrus, who appear in books 2 and 3 of Plutarch’s Table Talk, and Lucretius. I argue that these characters are not only experts in medicine, but also share the common aim of making ethical use of this knowledge to lead humans towards happiness and good health. In turn, I explore the possibility that Xenocles draws on the medical doctrines of Asclepiades of Bithynia in order both to explain appetite and to exhort us to seek satiety; that Alexander uses medicine to explain and then reject the Orphic-Pythagorean injunction to abstain from beans; finally, that Zopyrus and Lucretius give an account of Epicurus’ reflection on sexual pleasure with the goal of encouraging the youth to seek it with moderation and with an hygienic regime.

Lo studio della tradizione del poema di Lucrezio ha sempre presentato difficoltà oggettive, dato il silenzio intorno alla sua opera. Ciò nonostante, com’è noto, sono molti i contributi che esaminano la storia dell’opera dal momento del suo ritrovamento nel Quattrocento e che si concentrano sul suo ruolo nella costruzione della Modernità. L’oggetto di questo contributo riguarda, invece, la prima influenza del De rerum natura all’interno della visione linguistico-filosofica di Cicerone e Orazio e vuole mettere in luce come, anche grazie alla trasmissione delle tematiche linguistiche da parte di questi ultimi, sia possibile ricostruire la diffusione e lo sviluppo, dalla prima Modernità in poi, del naturalismo linguistico epicureo-lucreziano. Per rintracciare tale dimensione, ancora poco studiata dalla critica, vengono indagate le opere retoriche di Cicerone (analisi preceduta da una necessaria introduzione sui rapporti tra l’Arpinate e la filosofia del Kepos) e parte della produzione poetica di Orazio, individuando due fondamentali motivi che dipendono dagli insegnamenti del Giardino: i) il problema del significato in relazione alla conoscenza della realtà e ii) la preminenza della natura sull’ars nei fatti di lingua. Attraverso lo studio della ricezione e della rielaborazione di tali tematiche è possibile aggiungere nuovi importanti tasselli, non solo alla storia delle idee linguistiche, ma anche al mosaico che ricostruisce la tradizione del poema di Lucrezio e della filosofia epicurea. Critical studies about the tradition of Lucretius’ poem have always been problematic, because of the silence around his work. Nonetheless, researchers have shown an increased interest in the history of the De rerum natura – right from its discovery in the Fifteenth century – as well as in its role in the making of Modernity. This paper focuses on the first influence of the De rerum natura in both Cicero’s and Horace’s linguistic-philosophical views, while attempting to show that it is indeed possible to retrace the circulation and the development of the Epicurean-Lucretian linguistic naturalism, thanks to the transmission of linguistic themes by these authors. This essay seeks to investigate this paradigm by analysing both the rhetorical works of Cicero and part of the poetic production of Horace. We point out two fundamental patterns of epicurean teachings: i) the problem of meaning in relation to the knowledge of reality and ii) the primacy of natura over ars in language facts. Through the study of the reception and re-elaboration of these themes, it is possible to gain some insight not only into the history of linguistic ideas, but also into the tradition of Lucretius’s poem and Epicurean philosophy.

Biography—unlike fiction—is a referential genre (Lejeune 1994, 39-40), it constantly refers to a kind of truth or reality that lies outside the textual level. Photographs in biographies function as powerful referring devices, because, as Roland Barthes (1980) put it, the essence of the photograph is “ça-a-été” (120). Regardless of this evidential character, photographs do not usually stand for themselves in biographies. They need description and textual explanation and are, thus, reduced to a merely illustrative function. This paper analyses photographs in four biographies on Sylvia Plath, who is the subject of more than 20 different literary portraits. It shows that there is a strong emphasis on Plath’s private life on the one hand, and a lack of Plath’s craft and public life on the other. By using Marita Sturken’s (1999) concept of “cultural memory” (178), this article argues that a strict differentiation between public and private cannot help us read and understand the photographs in Plath’s biographies.

This paper analyses how, through a transposition of photographic methods to literary composition, Edouard Levé (1965-2007) reconfigures the literary genre of the portrait, and situates his work at an unstable threshold from which he explores the border between the visible and the invisible, the knowable and the unknowable, existence and essence. The photographic archive that lends its shape to the text implies an externalization of the definition of identity, which thwarts any ontological discourse that would explain subjective essence as the source of identity and reality. Identity becomes a panoptic collection of the self, which points to the invisible mystery of identity and meaning beneath the surface of the visible.

Henry James’s role in directing Alvin Langdon Coburn concerning the subjects of the photos for the New York Edition is well known. Not all the frontispieces, however, follow the detailed instructions of the writer. The paper explores the reasons of the shift from the original idea to the final result, and redefines the role of the photographer in the choice of subjects and compositions.

This paper aims to place an interpretation on some aspects of the Brechtian Kriegsfibel, as rendered in the two most important Italian editions of the text. The Kriegsfibel is a collection of “photo-epigrams” realized by Brecht during his exile and then published in 1955. In this work the topic of Second World War is discussed in the dialectic between photography and poetry. On the one hand, this operation aims to deconstruct the epistemological status of photography as Apparat able to reproduce the reality tout court; on the other, it questions the perception of reality in its historical, geographic and social aspects. In this way, the topicality of war photography is projected, through the epigram, in millennial History and, at the same time, the narrative of History activates in the reader the creation of meaning and, therefore, the concrete action in the present. In the light of this analysis, a study of Kriegsfibel’s Italian translations is proposed, i.e. the Abicí della guerra by Fertonani (1972), more literal and classical, and the one by Solmi (1975), freer and more actualising. The focus of discussion is on the second translation, which was proposed as an accompanying booklet for an audio-visual didactical experiment to take place in schools. This is a significant operation because it vivifies the didactic element and develops the performative character of Brechtian investigation, latent in the textual (and therefore visual) dimension of the original edition.

Combining images and words when relating to a city has a long history; in Istanbul’s case, it has its roots in the Orientalist tradition and in the great journeys to the “East.” For the Istanbul of the twenty-first century, the most renowned combination of photography and literature is Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul: Memories and the City (2003), a portrait of the writer as a young artist accompanied with black-and-white photographs of Istanbul. Pamuk’s use of the photographs of Ara Güler draws from the tradition of travel writing and autobiography, documenting both the lost city and, conversely, endowing the melancholy of the narrative with a reality effect that is difficult to trace in writing. This paper discusses Pamuk’s use of photography in the memoir to address how his work supplies a heterogeneous archive of memories which both preserves and transforms the entangled pasts and presents of the city.

The paper focuses on the images in W.G. Sebald’s Vertigo, based on an iconographic interest. Absence in those images doesn’t come as abstraction, but by way of ostensive figuration. The deceased appear both allegorically and in person in their landscapes of death. The story of Vertigo follows Stendahl, Kafka and the narrator himself on their journeys through upper Italy. In Limone, the narrator tells his landlady that he is writing, as it appears to him more and more, a detective story. By coincidence, and against his will, he becomes involved: in Verona he meets a person named Carlo Cadavero, and on three occasions sees a scene with two men carrying a corpse on a stretcher, before the reader learns that it is Kafka’s Hunter Gracchus on his aimless and endless voyage through the deeper regions of death. After this disclosure the reader meets the restless hunter twice again in Wertach of all scenes, a tiny village in the Allgäu and—as part of the book's third chapter – the narrator’s place of birth. At first glance, the images function as devices of the stories, in which they appear. When looked at again, they can alter and seem to go through various transitions; they are both a riddle and a disguise, somewhere in a precarious state between objectness and rupture: a hidden reference to Leonardo Sciascia’s multi-layered detective stories hints at their strategy of montage. Intermediality here is more than a mix of genres; the images have their own critical impact, while the story meanders around them—seemingly untouched by their resistance—in long laconic sentences.

The science-fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft is famed for his apocalyptic oeuvre. His work is deeply marked by racialist science and colonial history, linking them as structural constants that produce the outbreaks of horror in his stories. The horror is repeatedly represented as a dysgenic devolution with exterminatory implications. Yet similar treatments of racialized fear are commonly expressed in many non-fiction texts and biopolitical agendas, particularly in colonial contexts, and this conjunction also occurs in real events, including the historical apocalypse of the Holocaust. This paper will discuss Lovecraft’s apocalyptic fiction as a structural elaboration of the consequences of colonialism, racism, and scientific rationalism that reveals, despite its fantastic irrationality, a fundamental truth about extermination and modernity.

It is possible to argue that literature, per se, embodies various frameworks of information. Moreover, every time authors blend them together in the narration, they eventually provide a text whose words also function as a stimulus to readers’ imagination. Images, whether in the form of the mental pictures produced in our minds during the act of reading or of photographs, work in tandem to convey meaning and make intersections between literature and photography achievable. In this paper I will provide some evidence of the intersections between Anglophone postcolonial literature and photography. The postcard pinned up on the wall above Caryl Phillips’s desk is the source of his play The Shelter (1984) that involves the subjects of that picture: a white woman and a black man. In Andrea Levy’s novel Small Island (2004) and in its adapted television drama (2009) photographs give a material form to the memory of individuals’ existence. In Teju Cole’s novella Every Day Is for the Thief (2007) the unnamed narrator depicts his journey to Lagos—his place of birth—through the intermixing of words with black and white pictures.

Poetry and Music. The reasons of rhythm. This paper aims at exploring the theme of Poetry and Music though the whole work of L.S. Senghor as described by various authors. A general account of the reading aspects of poetry in relationship with its functions is given in reference to a well-known dichotomy suggested by Senghor in terms of raison-oeil vs. raison-étreinte. What we call “Music of Poetry” depends on several construction’s dimensions whose origins may be found in different ways to express meanings. In this view, the real variables affecting the rhythm of poetry reading may be related to what Meschonnic defines as signification and signifiance. Rhythms, refrains, text switchings are responsible of a different encoding level where human factors overtake syntactic constraints. Moreover, reading styles result from historical reasons and cultural contaminations throughout the world and should not be described from a strict acoustic point of view. In the same way, not necessarily through mystic experiences, human beings should rethink how to catch a meaning by according more importance to expression and humanitarian feelings. An example is discussed in reference to the Élegie pour Aynina Fall whose text is published in an Italian translation.

This article argues in favor of online archives of recorded poetry. While poetry has always been recited, the possibility of recording the voices of poets provides poetry with a new medium. Sound-recording technologies have existed for over a century and the recordings accumulated are numerous and extremely heterogeneous, both in terms of carriers and sources. But too little has been made, at least in France, of these vast resources some of which will be lost if they are not soon digitized. This disregard has had historical and generic consequences. It has distorted the recent history of the genre and restrictedour view of the poem. The paper begins by considering how sound recordings modify our conception of what a poem is. In the United States, where the revival of the poetry reading dates back to the mid-1950s, the creation of online archives of poetry from the 2000s has been changing how poetry is researched, taught and encountered. North-American scholars have suggested some of the uses to be made of recorded poetry but European scholars are beginning and must continue to contribute other approaches based on their own poetic and scholarly traditions. The bulk of the article presents and contextualizes some of these uses. It ends by briefly presenting Archives sonores de la poésie,a scholarly project begun in 2017 for an online archive of French and francophone poetry.

“Fishes leapt out from the blue water because of his sweet music”. Music, poetry and soul in Orpheus’ myth. Through the analysis of different sources, this paper highlights the main events in Orpheus’ myth: the heroes’ birth, the power of his singing on plants and animals, the teaching of Dionysus’ mysteries, the descent into the Hades and his death. These elements are now analysed in light of the power of poetry and music on human soul. This deep meaning of Orpheus’ myth explains its lasting presence in ancient Greek culture.

In this paper we present SPARSAR, a system for English poetry recital. The system is parasitic on TextToSpeech (TTS) systems available both online and on Macintosh computers. It creates prosodic parameters and phonetic transcriptions on any input text to be used by the TTS in order to normalize and improve current systems which are statistically based. In order to show TTS inability to produce semantically coherent and expressive readings Italian texts will be used at first and critical points indicated and discussed. Then SPARSAR architecture will be introduced and its three layers presented in detail. The ability of the system to generate appropriate prosodic parameters will be discussed in relation to a poem by Sylvia Plath, Edge. The peculiarity of this poem is its richness in enjambments, which are not captured at all by statistically based TTS. Eventually, latest work on Elisabethan poetry will be presented and a Sonnet by Shakespeare will be transcribed and annotated with prosodic parameters’ values by the system; in particular, it will be shown how the lack of a specific component to account for contractions and rhyming violations makes best commercial TTS systems even unable to pronounce words correctly.

The tension between referentiality and fictionality, or fictionalization, has historically been at the center of a debate concerning the function and, more importantly maybe, the reception, of three tools: the paratext, the photographical medium, and the literary genre of the graphic novel. In different contexts and from different points of view, these three elements have aroused reactions and questions about the definition of the boundaries between reality and fiction on one side, and renewed the longstanding debate over the ability of mimetic arts of being a truthful way of knowledge, on the other. By using the idea of framing as a way to define the borders between, at the same time, text and context, reality and fiction, what is seen and what is shown, the paper aims at analyzing the strategies employed in Rutu Modan’s graphic novel Ha-nekes (2013) in addressing these polarities. Some of the implications in the use of the notion of framing will be especially developed in relation to what Jan Baetens and Hugo Frey defined as “the ability of the graphic novel to work on the borderlines of first-person narrative, history-from-below, and oral history as well as to introduce fiction with historical meaning (and vice versa)” and Marianne Hirsch’s definition and use of “postmemory.”

The aim of the paper is to analyze the narrative and photographic thresholds of Leggenda privata by Michele Mari (2017). The first case is a rhetorical artifice, a horror-gothic-fantastic narrative threshold, that Mari creates to distinguish the present of writing from the past of memories, intended, as I will try to demonstrate, to problematize the crucial questions of autobiography: incipit and explicit of the narration, literature and bios, fiction and non-fiction. Mari adds another expedient to this one: the inclusion of family photographs, selected from his personal archive, and that, for the variety of their authors, reveal another threshold, that between the writer and the photographer. A main topic of the theory on the autobiographical phototext is thus proposed, that is the hypothetical identity of the author of the photos and that of the narration, and above all their mutual relationship, played in terms of extraneousness, coincidence or partial overlap. The two thresholds serve to highlight the critical aspects of autobiographical writing and to redefine its scope in an autofictional field, where the frontiers between factual and fictional, on the one hand, and between writing and literary theory, on the other, are destined to dissolve.

This paper proposes an exploration of various points of intersection between poetry, thought and contemporary photography by means of a ‘parallactic’ analysis of the volume El truco preferido de Satán, a compilation by Spanish poet Jenaro Talens that features a selection of fragments from Walter Benjamin’s unfinished magnum opus, The Arcades Project, which have been paired up with photographs by Alberto García-Alix, arguably the most renowned artistic chronicler of the Movida Madrileña in the 1980s. The resulting relationship of intermediality and supplementarity is a complex one, with moments of proximity, but also of extraneation. In order to capture these nuances and to elevate the obtained insights to a more general level, the notion of parallax, particularly in one of Slavoj Žižek’s specific formulations, serves as this essay’s methodological framework, as it sets out to understand García-Alix’s photographs as the elusive, spectral, parallactic supplement that discovers what would otherwise remain hidden in Benjamin’s fragments.

This paper offers a preliminary investigation of the interrelation between literature, photography, and public memory under the conditions of authoritarian and neoliberal state control. Focusing on a fictionalized photograph of the 1953 workers’ uprising in East Germany in Uwe Johnson’s novel The Third Book about Achim (1967), I explore the performative capacity of photo-literary spaces to open up, and disrupt, institutionalized productions of public memory. Whereas official memorial technologies tend to close down alternative interpretations of history, this essay shows how small-scale, clandestine, or itinerant photographs embedded in literary archives animate historical impasses and possibilities, which persist to be responded to by future readers. More specifically, drawing on affect theory and political philosophy, I aim to rehabilitate photography’s indexicality as a performative register that enables human proximities across the boundaries of time and space.

In the theory of photography we can find several primarily literary or rhetorical categories. These are terms such as: narration, theme, composition, style, as well as some stylistic means such as: metaphor, comparison, symbol, gradation and others. The same categories will be found in many other areas of art, both visual and verbal. In that case both literature and photography are various forms of communication. The common purpose of them is to tell the audience the fascinating story, to delight, to make moved or to amuse them. The article will be an attempt to answer the question: “What history do photographs tell us?” This is also an attempt to transfer the literary category, “narration” into the visual plane. Of course, this is possible with the assumption that literary and “photographic” narrations use different materials, but have a common essence and purpose—to tell a story that will be interesting and credible to the recipient. In the paper will be used methods of visual rhetoric which is evolving now. This discipline just merges the verbal sphere (in antiquity it was the theory of politic and literary prose) and visual. This is the field which analyses the effect of the message—including the photo on the recipient. It will be an attempt to analyse the narration of photographs by famous photographers like Dorothea Lange, Joe Rosenthal, Marc Riboud, Robert Capa, Charles C. Ebbets, and Kevin Carter.

The paper concentrates on visual aspects in narratives that depict catastrophes. Departing from a cultural analytic standpoint and drawing on philosophy of photography and the image, the essay reflects upon the metaphorical function of images that stem from photographs of specific catastrophic events and are used in new catastrophic contexts. At the center of the essay are analyses of three Scandinavian narratives: a graphic novel, a documentary movie and a novel.

In this paper I will try to show how photography informs Geoff Dyer’s novel and essay writing, not only by affecting its contents, but mainly by playing a part in the structures and modes of his works, both on the narrative and non-narrative level. Taking the lead from Dyer’s early essay on John Berger, Ways of Telling (1986), I will try to show in what way Berger’s photographic theory shapes Dyer’s most famous novels, The Colour of Memory (1989) and But Beautiful (1991). I will then first follow the steps Dyer trod in perfecting his knowledge of photography up to his producing a substantial and innovative work on the history and criticism of American photography, The Ongoing Moment (2005); then show how, in one of his most recent works, White Sands (2016), he managed to create a form of essay in which his foremost passions, photography and jazz, become an essential feature of the text, just like he did in But Beautiful, yet, this time, without relying on themes and contents.

The paper deals with Francesco Valentini (1789-1862), a linguistic and cultural mediator originally from Rome and active in early 19th century’s Berlin. After retracing his biography, it presents his activities as a language teacher, from which several didactic publications emerged, his contribution to the Italian Questione della Lingua as an external observer and his reflections on the emerging history of the Italian and German language. The most important part of his oeuvre lies in the field of lexicography: the Gran Dizionario grammatico-pratico italiano-tedesco, tedesco-italiano (1831-1836, 4 vols.) can be considered a precursor of modern German-Italian dictionaries.

Question and answer portals allow users to post and answer questions on a number of subjects, among which languages, and constitute a perfect embodiment of the tenets of social media. Although these have been the subject of a rather vast literature in the field of Second Language Acquisition, Question and Answer (Q&A) portals have so far been scarcely considered by these studies. This paper aims to contribute to fill this gap and lay groundwork in this area by working out a taxonomy of questions, in order to find out which language-related topics are dealt with in such venues. The authors collected a data set of 800 questions from the Languages section of the Italian version of the Yahoo! Answer portal and defined a taxonomy of question types and categories. The study highlights that the majority of such questions concern linguistic support, thus confirming that Q&A portals can be a source of informal language learning and deserve the attention of research in this field.

This paper will attempt to explain the reasons why it is possible to see Luigi Pirandello’s Il fu Mattia Pascal as the subtext of Branislav Nušić’s last play Pokojnik (The Deceased). The novel and the play have many common motifs and they also have a similar composition. Apart from their similar motifs, there are also many intertextual links between the novel and the play. What makes the intertextual links between them very complex is the fact that Luigi Pirandello and Branislav Nušić often used similar mechanisms and stylistic devices in their work, both put emphasis on humour where as their poetics were very different.

Known as Mickey Mouse in English, Topolino has been so relevant to Italians, both young and old, that one of the most popular Fiat car models back in the 1950s, a shaping status symbol for the upcoming post-war bourgeoisie, was named after him. The icon developed an aesthetic, from cartoons to films to advertising, which rapidly annihilated age, gender and class boundaries, with a bit of frowning from conservative teachers. Foreigners, however, are astonished to discover that Topolino is not just tolerated but welcomed in most Italian homes – thoroughly nationalised and largely naturalised. The difference lies in the verbal dimension, which in the English-speaking world is not appreciated by most adults. Why do intellectual, and even elitist Italian adults perceive the creature as simpatico, and why instead do educated Brits and Americans tend to consider his language as a model which you would not want your child to grow up with? There are national discourses of education impacting not so much on the reception of the semiotics of cartoons, nor on their proposed political/social models but on lexically, syntactically and above all “socially inappropriate” language use. This resistant Gordian knot tying up the “doing” of class with discourses of parenting, education and language pragmatics will be undone in this paper by showing how the Italian Topolino, analysed in a translation class, reveals a degree of linguistic sophistication/creativity unknown in the English genre and text-type.

Despite the conspicuous number of studies on the acquisition of L2 segmental patterns, research on L2 prosody is scarce and mostly deals with L2 English. In this paper we characterise the rhythmic patterns of L1 English learners of L2 Italian. We analysed read speech of 24 learners and compared them with data of L1 Italian and L1 English and compute several rhythm metrics. The results partially support the hypothesis that learners produce intermediate rhythmic patterns between the L1 and the target language. However, non-normalized rhythm metrics illustrate a different pattern, whereby L1 English learners of Italian seem to overshoot some rhythm characteristics. Such results are explained on the basis of the interference of speech rate and point to the need to use normalized metrics for studying rhythmic patterns of L2 speech. Finally, we did not find significant effects of variables of L2 acquisition (years of study, length of stay in Italy, competence in other Romance languages) on values of rhythm metrics.

Riassunto Questo lavoro si propone di valutare l’impatto dell’emotività sulla decisione politica di Cicerone nel 49: seguire Pompeo a Brindisi dopo aver ripetutamente mediato tra lui e Cesare. A tal fine si è scelto di percorrere la pista di indagine lessicale, utilizzando come parole-scandaglio amor e temeritas, data la loro interrelazione, piuttosto significativa, nella lettera ad Attico 9, 10. Dopo un breve excursus sulla loro base semantica, all’interno della più ampia riflessione filosofica sulle emozioni, si conduce un confronto tra i sospetti di manipolazione nella pratica ciceroniana dell’amicizia e alcune tracce di autenticità nell’amor erga Pompeium che lo stesso lessico rivela. Abstract This paper aims to evaluate the impact of emotionality on the political decision taken by Cicero in 49: follow Pompey at Brundisium after having repeatedly mediated between him and Caesar. To this end, it was decided to follow the lexical investigation path, using as key-words amor and temeritas which are closely connected in the letter to Atticus 9, 10. After a brief excursus on their semantic base, within the broader philosophical reflection on emotions, a comparison is made between the suspicions of manipulation in Cicero’s practice of friendship and some traces of authenticity in amor erga Pompeium that the same lexicon reveals.

The tituli present in Cicero’s oration on behalf of Marcus Fonteius (Font. 20) indicate the omission, in the text of the published oration, of the refutation of three charges. The present article analyses questions raised by the presence of these tituli, arguing in favour of the hypothesis that they were later additions by a copyist and not attributable to Cicero. Among the key elements of the oration I investigate in the paper are: the extremely fragmentary state in which the text of the Pro Fonteio has been handed down; the interruption of the refutation of the crimen vinarium; the abrupt opening of the speech immediately after the tituli. I extend my reading also to elements external to the text, to inclde: Pliny’s letter 1,20, 6-7 and recent studies on the credibility of that testimony; the tituli in the Pro Murena; the general practice of the omission of refutation of charges in Ciceronian orations; and, lastly, a passage in Ammianus Marcellinus (15.2.4) relating to the crimen vinarium, one of the charges identified by the titulus in Font. 20. I tituli presenti nell’orazione di Cicerone in difesa di Marco Fonteio (Font. 20) indicano l’omissione, nel testo dell’orazione pubblicata, della confutazione di tre capi d’accusa. Il presente articolo si propone di analizzare la questione relativa alla natura di questi tituli, con l’obiettivo di mostrare la maggiore plausibilità dell’ipotesi di un’aggiunta posteriore dei tituli da parte di un copista, rispetto all’ipotesi della loro attribuzione allo stesso Cicerone; la prima presuppone l’assunzione di una lacuna nel testo che precede i tituli. A questo proposito, vengono analizzati, nel contributo, alcuni elementi interni all’orazione: lo stato estremamente frammentario e lacunoso in cui il testo della Pro Fonteio ci è stato tramandato; l’interruzione della confutazione relativa al crimen vinarium; la brusca apertura del testo immediatamente successivo ai tituli. Inoltre, vengono considerati alcuni aspetti esterni al testo: il contenuto dell’epistola pliniana 1, 20, 6-7 e i recenti studi sulla credibilità di questa testimonianza; i tituli presenti nella Pro Murena; la pratica generale dell’omissione della confutazione delle accuse nelle orazioni ciceroniane; infine, un passo di Ammiano Marcellino (15, 12, 4) relativo al crimen vinarium, uno dei capi d’imputazione indicato sotto forma di titulus in Font. 20. Les tituli présents dans la plaidoirie de Cicéron en défense de Marcus Fonteius (Font. 20) indiquent l’omission, dans le texte publié du discours, de la réfutation de trois chefs d’accusation. L’article se propose donc d’analyser la question de la nature de ces tituli, dans le but de démontrer l’hypothèse la plus probable: l’ajout ultérieur des tituli par un copiste, par rapport à l’hypothèse de l’attribution des tituli à Cicéron lui-même. La première hypothèse présuppose l’existence d’une lacune dans le texte qui précède les tituli. De ce point de vue sont alors analysés, dans l’article, certains éléments internes à la plaidoirie: l’état extrêmement fragmentaire et incomplet de la transmission du texte du Pro Fonteio; l’interruption de la réfutation liée au crimen vinarium; l’ouverture brusque du texte qui suit immédiatement les tituli. Certains aspects extérieurs au texte sont de plus pris en compte: le contenu de la lettre de Pline 1, 20, 6-7 et les études récentes sur la crédibilité de ce témoignage; les tituli présents dans le Pro Murena; la pratique générale de l’omission de la réfutation des accusations dans les discours cicéroniens; enfin, un passage d’Ammien Marcellin (15, 12, 4) concernant le crimen vinarium, l’un des motifs d’accusation indiqués sous la forme de titulus dans Font. 20.

This paper seeks to examine the existential significance of the description of place in Cicero’s works. Descriptions of the locations in which philosophical dialogues are set serve more than an ornamental function, adding an essential element to the discourse. The presence of loci amoeni in the dialogues’ frames constitutes a generic sphragis for the philosophical dialogue, as these loci are imbued with an atmosphere that identifies them as lived spaces. In view of the lack of ancient perspectives on the perception of space, my reading draws on recent phenomenological theories to investigate this theme. The possibility of deploying this modern lens to interpret the ancient material is granted by the transhistorical nature of the object of our study, as characterised in the phenomenological literature: place is not a cultural product, subject to the change, but something universal that concerns an essential aspect of human life. Il contributo mira a mettere in luce il valore esistenziale che può assumere la descrizione di un luogo nell’opera ciceroniana. Le descrizioni dei luoghi in cui sono ambientati i dialoghi filosofici non sono meramente ornamentali, ma aggiungono qualcosa di essenziale al discorso. La presenza dei loci amoeni nelle cornici non solo costituisce una sphragis di genere per il dialogo filosofico, poiché essi possiedono anche un’atmosfera che li connota come spazi vissuti. Pur nell’assenza di una riflessione antica sulla percezione dello spazio, tale aspetto può essere indagato attraverso l’apporto di riflessioni recenti di stampo fenomenologico. La possibilità di impiegare strumenti moderni per leggere l’antico è data dal carattere stesso dell’oggetto di indagine: non un prodotto culturale, soggetto al mutamento del tempo, ma un universale che concerne un aspetto essenziale della vita umana. Cet article vise à mettre en lumière la valeur existentielle qui peut prendre la description d’un lieu dans l’oeuvre cicéronienne. Les descriptions des lieux où se déroulent les dialogues philosophiques n’ont pas une valeur simplement ornementale, mais elles apportent quelque chose d’essentiel au discours: le locus amoenus n’est pas employé seulement comme une vraie sphragis pour le genre du dialogue philosophique, mais il est aussi porteur d’une atmosphère qui lui confère un caractère d’espace vécu. En dépit de l’absence d’une réflexion antique sur la perception de l’espace, cet aspect peut être analysé grâce aux modernes réflexions nées de la phénoménologie. L’emploi de catégories modernes pour lire les classiques est justifié par l’objet même de la recherche: non pas un produit culturel, sujet à l’évolution, mais un universel qui concerne un aspect essentiel de la vie humaine.

This paper looks at the way in which Holocaust narratives explore the entity of the family as space of memory repository and, more specifically, as time-space of trans-generational transmission of traumatic memories. It focuses on Michael Chabon’s novel Moonglow as main case study and, to some extent, Art Spiegelman’s MAUS as illustrative and visual model of these mechanisms. This analysis will dwell on families of Holocaust survivors as epitome of families having to deal and come to grips with a traumatic past; a bulky heritage that permeates the everyday life of all the members, not only of those who directly experienced the tragic event. How do traumatized individuals – often suffering from PTSD, “post-traumatic stress disorder,” provoked by their involvement (in several and differing forms) in the Holocaust – relate to their kin and, especially, to their offspring? In this context, to what extent are family dynamics affected, twisted, and eventually turned dysfunctional? In what terms is the present (as well as the future) of a household shaped by, negotiated in the light of its past? These subjects will be investigated against the background of the category of “postmemory” elaborated in the 1990s by Marianne Hirsch and systematized in her seminal The Generation of Postmemory, Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust (2012).

As the nuclear, middle-class American family reached its apotheosis in what I call "the Long 1950s", an almost mythical period of post-war national prosperity, it became the bedrock of the Cold War consensus, charged with political and symbolic values that were often at odds with its realities. This paper first analyzes the forces at play in shaping the myth of family as "happy home corporation" in America, which included media pressure, changing social, demographic and economic conditions as well regressive views of gender and sexual roles, especially as emerging from bestselling marriage and child-care manuals. It then looks at the way in which dissenting evidence from those Long 1950s, especially in the area of sexual behaviors as well as juvenile rebellion, showed the American family caught in a state of flux, which was at odds with the imperatives of the Cold War consensus.