Search

Images of socio-political, economic, and environmental catastrophes constantly hit our imaginary: wars and humanitarian disasters provoke anxieties and mental and physical diseases. So, the boundary between realism and dystopia has become even more brittle, also in literature. The present essay intends to examine the dystopian traits of some contemporary novels – Generosity by Richard Powers, Solar by Ian McEwan, Margaret Drabble’s Pure Gold Baby, The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid, and Richard Flanagan’s The Living Sea of Waking Dreams – which cannot be properly considered as dystopian or realistic texts. Each novel is set in times and spaces that are weirdly familiar, where alienating presents and futures develop in-between human emotions and the satisfaction of the consumer in a mercified society. The essay will investigate if contemporary novels can resist and narrate the contrasting feelings deriving from the idea that everything can happen, everywhere and to anyone, in a world where also the most astonishing and baleful warnings of the dystopian fiction are becoming real.

In a sequence dedicated to the London World’s Fair in his collage film The Power of Emotion (1983), Alexander Kluge talks about how the suppression of prudent proletarian emotion by the aesthetic staging and emotionalisation of exchange value corrupted the departure of industrial modernity into happiness and affluence. Correspondent to the mode of the opera, which originated concurrently with the "parliament of objects" as the "power plant of emotions", the fairytale-like beginning of the collage with the Great Exhibition in London in 1851 is followed by the Crystal Palace fire in 1937, with which the Reichstag fire of 1935 is associated. What is crucial is the portrayal of the workers Kluge’s montages feature as the 'real' builders of the Crystal Palace and of societal prosperity. The artisanal sensitivity with which bolt and nut are connected in such a way that the construction is stable represents a social utopia, which in view of its loss requires a response at the artistic level that is appropriate to the wartime destruction. The technological construction of aesthetic semblance has to be laid bare, the artistic form has to become iconoclastic.

Linguistic personology has remained a popular linguistic direction in Russia for more than thirty years. This discipline studies a native speaker or a linguistic personality with their own worldview, mentality, language fluency, linguistic creativity, and ability to understand someone else’s speech. The famous Russian philologist Vladimir V. Kolesov (1934–2019) was a prominent figure in Russian linguistics. However, in his last publication, he criticized both the term linguistic personality and the entire linguistic personology. Although specialists overlooked this criticism, it is important for linguistic personology. This article reveals the philosophical and methodological foundations of V. V. Kolesov’s criticism, as well as interprets the arguments he published in 2009-2021. First, the authors traced the development of anti-personological trends in V. V. Kolesov’s lifetime publications. Second, they identified the prerequisites for the criticism of the theory of linguistic personality. Third, they analyzed the posthumous publication of The Conceptual Field of Russian Consciousness as a synthesis that reinterpreted the previous criticism. The methods of contextual analysis, reconstruction, philological hermeneutics, and comparison made it possible to obtain two theoretical models that explain V. V. Kolesov’s conclusions about linguistic personology. The authors believe that the last thirty years of V. V. Kolesov’s scientific work was a gradual slide towards recognizing linguistic personality as an important tool in describing mentality.

While street names have been present in major German cities since the High Middle Ages, they did not find their way into German narrative literature until the late 17th century. In Christian Reuter's picaresque novel Schelmuffsky (1696) familiar Hamburg street names are utilized to authenticate the protagonist's extraordinary adventures. Similarly, E.T.A. Hoffmann initiates his fantastical tales against the backdrop of real streets in Berlin, Dresden, or Frankfurt, establishing a template for much of fantastical literature. However, he also pioneers a novel usage of real street names to denote socio-economic status among his characters. The introduction of invented street names into literary discourse occurred relatively late. These names, imbued with semantic or phonosymbolic significance, offer nuanced insights into the inhabitants' socio-economic backgrounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is part of a study dedicated to the many senses in which Iris Murdoch appeals to reality and realism within her philosophical reflection. In particular, the epistemological significance of her thesis that a good ethical theory must seek to be realist, in the sense of being faithful to the complexities of the reality of moral life, is explored here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to propose a theory of pluralistic realism, i.e. a theory that presents an idea of reality that embraces multiplicity both at an ontological and epistemological level. The basic ideal of this theory is that reality is inexhaustibly multifaceted and that, therefore, the ways in which human beings can account for it are diverse and multiple. This idea of reality also implies an idea of plural truth, i.e. as an openness and acceptance of diversity and difference which can act as an antidote to the resurgence of fundamentalisms and totalitarian visions of reality based on the refusal of diversity, on the lack of ethical recognition-political-social difference and on the tendency to believe that one's own reality and therefore one's culture, one's nation, one's country are objectively superior to other realities, nations, countries, cultures. In proposing the reasons for this theory we will try to integrate Mario De Caro's philosophical proposal of a «liberalized naturalism» or «pluralistic realism» with the phenomenological perspective of Vincenzo Costa based on the idea that reality is determined on the basis of the experience of the human subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Philological Review (00151807) is the property of University of Belgrade, Faculty of Philology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this essay, some theoretical semiotic issues concerning immersive technologies are presented and discussed. In particular, the somatic and corporeal dimensions of the construction of the user-visual hybrid, the problematic of point of view and realism, and the narrativity inscribed in immersive technologies will be discussed. The objective is twofold: tracing the semiotic perspective on the real/virtual relationship and questioning certain rhetoric of immersivity that underlies precise ideologies circulating in the contemporary imagery.

Socialist literature and art are constructed on the basis of Marxist philosophy. The “people character” of socialist literature and art is based on the fact that Marxist philosophy abandons individualism and focuses on a wider population’s freedom and happiness. Therefore, socialist literature and art take people rather than individuals as the subject of expression. Realism, the basic principle of socialist literary and artistic creation, is based on the materialism of Marxist philosophy. The “typical environment and typical characters” proposed by Marxist classic writers for socialist literary and artistic creation are the method and principle formed by applying the philosophical concepts of the organic combination of the objective world and human subjectivity, and the organic combination of nature and social history to the concrete literary and artistic creation in Marxist theory. Marxist philosophy regards sensibility and aesthetics as important elements for literature and art to play a practical role. It believes that sensibility and aesthetics are not limited to the subjective world of people, but have the possibility of connecting with the external objective world. Therefore, socialist literature and art must pay attention to aesthetics.

ABSTRACT In this paper, I argue that Hume’s commitment to mind-independent objects is based on two types of realism or system of realities: (a) a naïve realism based on an unjustified vulgar belief which identifies perceptions and objects, and (b) a representational realism or philosophical system of double-existence. Firstly, I emphasize that the philosophical question “Whether there be body or not” cannot be considered a full case of unmitigated skepticism, because Hume accepts a mitigated skepticism compatible with both vulgar and representational realism. Furthermore, I argue that, while the vulgar belief in bodies is based on an unjustified assent, the double-existence theory is based on both an unjustified assent and a rationally justified assent (that corrects the former). Considering all these points, I conclude that Hume’s mitigated skepticism allows and requires a belief in or supposition of continued and distinct existences, and that this must, as a practical matter, take vulgar and philosophical forms at different times.

Copyright of Enthymema is the property of Enthymema, International Journal of Literary Criticism, Literary Theory & Philosophy of Literature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Critical Hermeneutics: Biannual Journal of Philosophy is the property of Universita degli Studi di Cagliari and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Critical Hermeneutics: Biannual Journal of Philosophy is the property of Universita degli Studi di Cagliari and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The (Im)political Don Quijote. Usages and abuses of the Cervantes’ knight-errant along Twentieth and postmodern imaginery. The legacy of Cervantes’ masterpiece has been very influential on literary and narratological imaginary. And the Miguel de Cervantes’ fictional character has disseminated elements of criticism over time with respect to several of the mechanistic dichotomies of the genesis of modernity. During Nineteenth and Twentieth century we could observe the progressive enlargement of its influence on an alternative kind of imaginery, that is to say the political one. This article aims to analyze the political reflections and, especially, the impolitical ones around the «antihero» knight-errant and «subtle hidalgo». From the first political interpretation made by French Enlightment to the central season of the crisis of Spanish culture and civilization (Unamuno, Ortega y Gasset, Castro), until the contemporary postmodernism and the rediscovery of Don Quijote’s relativism.

This paper aims to analyse the notion of familiarity in Dewey’s pragmatism in order to show its important role as a tool for human beings to interpret the reality, manage it, and act within it. Starting from an examination of Deweyan transactional realism, the discourse focuses on familiarity and its related terms (such as “familiar,” “to familiarize,” but also opposites such as “unknown” or “strange”) in Dewey’s thought, to finally come to highlight its fundamental hermeneutic role. This might be useful to account for a subject of Deweyan thought not so deeply highlighted by scholarship and, at the same time, to show pragmatism’s closeness to hermeneutics regarding the relation between the human being and the real.

In the early 1930s, when the project of scientific modernization was in full swing in Chinese Buddhist circles, Dharma Master Taixu wrote a series of essays on “Realism” (Xianshi zhuyi 現實主義, 1928–1931). These represent one of the profoundest series of writings documenting his understanding of the link between science and Buddhist epistemology/ontology, and consequently also on the role of his notion of scientific Buddhism for modern times. Aside from his meditations on the relationship between science and Buddhism, in this important series of essays Taixu also provided his more or less critical accounts on modern philosophical currents in contemporary China, including Russell’s “New Realism” and materialism. This paper aims to provide a concise reading of the above-mentioned writings by Taixu, in order to cast some new light on the understanding of Western modern philosophy in Chinese Buddhist modernism of the Republican Era, on the one hand, and to highlight the main theoretical features of Taixu’s notion of scientific Buddhism, on the other. Aside from that, I also aim to present some new insights into the otherwise overlooked aspects of the broader intellectual sphere of Chinese Buddhism of the Republican Era. As regards the broader historical and intellectual context of Taixu’s writings, the analysis provided in this article will be regarded within the framework constructed in my forthcoming article on Taixu’s philosophy in the journal Buddhist Studies Review.

This paper aims to understand how the first phase of exit from the pandemic has changed the temporality of everyday life and produced an affective atmosphere characterized by a positive attitude towards the future. I will start by analyzing the link between utopia and everyday life: on the one hand, as a privileged area of prefigurative practices in the different versions of utopian realism, and on the other, as trapped in the present in the theories of presentification. I will then examine some emblematic cases of a 'need for the future' that emerged in the first exit from the pandemic in the spring-summer 2021. Finally, starting from the affective and temporally complex nature of the present as conceptualized by Berlant (Berlant, 2011; Berlant, 2008) and Coleman (Coleman, 2020b; Coleman, 2020a), I will try to account for the push toward the future that the partial exit from the pandemic has perhaps brought out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution is aimed at shedding light on how the concept of utopia is closely linked, both in terms of content and method, to the gender perspective and, more specifically, to feminist reflection. We do so by dwelling on some of the most influential voices that have contributed to the recent rediscovery of utopia as a sociological method and mobilizing force for critiquing and reacting to advanced capitalism and existing arrangements of gender relations.The article closes with some reflections on how utopian realism can enable us to overcome the fear of change in gender relations and counter the risk of "retrotopias". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay investigates Walter Pater’s reception of Dante. From his juvenile production to his later writings, Pater’s oeuvre is interspersed with references, quotations, or allusions to Dante, and often directly discusses important aspects of the poet and his works. Pater strongly sensualises Dante’s idea of love, which he sees as functional to his own exploration of sensoriality. In this sense, his reading of Dante emphasises the features of Dante’s realism (and symbolism) that are closer to his own poetics, interpreting them as emblematic of his artistic ideal of the fusion of matter and spirit. Moreover, Pater views Dante as instrumental in some of the cultural-historical phenomena – the Renaissance, Romanticism, modernity – which are pivotal for his aestheticist conception of history.

L'anno scorso ero a Roma col fotografo Bas Princen pochi giorni prima che inaugurasse la Biennale di Architettura dove egli esponeva una serie di grandi fotografie stampate su gesso nel padiglione del Kazakhstan allestito per l'occasione dallo studio Christ & Gantenbein. Le fotografie, che ritraevano dettagli delle Mahalla, le tradizionali case kazake, erano state prodotte in Spagna con una speciale stampa su supporti di gesso, per natura fragili, montati su telai di alluminio per evitare deformazioni e rotture.

In international social science’s debate on power and rulership, Max Weber occupies a dominant position. There is hardly a study on power or rulership that does not refer to him, be it critical or affirmative. The sustainable success of Weber’s concept of power is based not least on the fact that he took up contemporary Nietzschean voluntaristic ideas and combined them with an action-related perspective. In doing so, he revolutionized the theory of power. This goes particularly for his category of “chance”, with which he indicated power as a gradual and quantifiable phenomenon. The effect of this approach was so striking that it is still the most influential concept of power, shaping theorists like Hannah Arendt, Raymond Aron, and Heinrich Popitz. Furthermore, Weber moved the concept of rulership, as an institutionalised and reinforced form of power, into the focus of social sciences, providing a large-scale sociology of rule, which exposes the various types and motives of obedience. At the same time, however, the reception of the conceptual pair of power and rulership reveals a paradoxical phenomenon, since the two concepts are received worldwide, while they are still often used arbitrarily and regularly mixed up.

The Roman asàrotos òikos (“Unswept Floor/Room”) mosaics, which were discovered in Italy and in Tunisia, and date from the end of the first to the sixth century AD, showcase a seemingly popular theme: scraps of food that had fallen (or were thrown) under the table during the banquet, colourfully displayed, appealing and appetising to the eyes. These mosaics are, in fact, Roman variations on a famous prototype created by Sosus in Hellenistic Pergamon, which was never discovered. The Roman mosaics reveal a unique tension between the display of impersonal, mundane reality in an illusory manner and the use of irony and disguised symbolism. The depiction of everyday life and elements that carry various symbolic meanings in trompe-l’œil prompts an interpretive reading of the artwork. The use of visual deception not only forms the ground for contemplative thought, but also enriches the reading by adding more layers of veiled meanings that need to be recognised and decoded by the viewers. This particular combination of aesthetics and iconography forms complex allegorical content. This article focuses on the asàrotos òikos mosaics which were discovered in Italy, and their particular combination of a popular theme, symbolism and illusionism.

In 1905 Lask interprets Hegel's system as a theoretical work outlining a profoundly illuminist and liberal perspective and developing in an original way the critical and secular elements of Kant's philosophy. According to Lask, Hegel's system drew a clear difference between the simply existing (bloss Bestehenden) and the truly real (wahrhaft Wirklichen), yet it was far from being a philosophy of the Restoration. First of all, the present essay defines the origin of Lask's interpretative suggestion in Kuno Fischer and Friedrich Engels. Secondly, it carefully investigates the true meaning of the Hegelian concept of Wirklichkeit and highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the theses of Engels, Lask, and Kuno Fischer. These authors inherited from Hegel the defense of this perspective - developed also by the Italian Hegelianism of Spaventa, Croce, and Gentile - while moving away from many of the most characteristic theses of his gnoseology and ontology. Overall, Hegelian realism is judged compatible with the delineation of an authentically critical and liberal perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Giovanni Verga's short story Libertà has often been read as a historical source, and its alleged alterations of the historical events of 1860, the bloody revolt in the town of Bronte, on Mount Etna, and the repression carried out by Garibaldi's troops led by Nino Bixio (the 'facts of Bronte') have been noted, even sharply, with the authority of Leonardo Sciascia. We propose here an interpretation of this short story as a literary "monument", and not as a "document", noting the immanent tension towards a "truth content" to which Verga's realism aspires, with its narrative proxy, the renunciation of authorial judgement, the multiplicity of points of view, the friction that derives from their juxtaposition in the narrative also with respect to the perspectives of the readers, who are necessarily called upon to assume responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Here and Then. Anthropology of Corrado Alvaro's writing ----- Abstract --- The paper explores the potential documentary and communicative dimension of the literary text. Starting from the analysis of some of Corrado Alvaro's works concerning Calabria, his homeland, the author tries to deal with the main points of the, especially postmodern, debate that contraposed anthropologists and literary criticists. Some characteristic oppositions of Corrado Alvaro's writing - magic realism/realism, particular/universal -, as well as his peculiar way of declining the place/memory relationship, make the author’s writing also interesting for the anthropologist.

Jacques Réda is a french flâneur who explores the city of Paris since the 1970’s. In this article, we would like to show that, somehow, we can compare his poetic works to a geographical study, understanding this expression in a disciplinary way. Wherever poetry is initially far from being compatible with any scientific purpose, researchers have promoted these last years the encounter between literary studies and geography. Réda’s works can illustrate this trend as his writings contain a important spatial dimension. His poetry is indeed strongly realistic, and borrows its realism from a cartographic imaginary. Furthermore, we can compare the area he walks to the « terrain » of a scientist who would make some « relevés topographiques », as Réda says. Finally, the inspiration of the poet come from a geographical conception of the art of writing, placing geography at the heart the artistic process.

I address in the following pages the decisive question of "after Rawls", of the legacy of his work and (brutally said) of what will happen to the Rawlsian paradigm. I devote Section 2 to the moralism-realism opposition in political theory. I then discuss - in Section 3- a complex trend in contemporary philosophy constituted by the postmodern climate and by what I call the new metaphysics. This trend tends, together with the political crisis of liberal-democracy, to make the traditional conception of normativity impossible. This is followed, in Section 4, by an argument that both philosophical-political approaches discussed here, the moralistic and the realist, ultimately need some conception of normativity. But, it is said in Section 5, in light of contemporary criticism, such a conception has to be different from the top-down conception of the past. The last Section 6 is finally devoted to some inconclusive conclusions about the future of political theory and the possibility of reformulating within it a conception of the normative bottom up. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metamorphosis as it is represented by some pre-historical artists seems problematic for our occidental point of view. In fact, it seems to be strongly against identity and law of non-contradiction. Becoming in general is also viewed as an error or exception by our classic point of view. This very claim can conduct to theories of non-classical logic. Deleuze and Guattari in their monumental work had tried to offer enormous contributions in order to comprehend the becoming phenomenon. Through a pre-historical representations analysis, with also an intrusion in contemporary art's field, I want to confront with possible metamorphosis representations remain theoretically founded in the deleuzian proposal in dialogue with phenomenological inquiry. New principle of individuation and analysis of expression provide new looks to arisen problems with classical logic and metamorphosis representations, which will be acceptable and comprehensible as art shows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite being one of the lesser known Serapion Brothers, Nikolaj Nikitin had a brilliant early career. He was acclaimed by M. Gorkij and the critic A. Voronskij as a very promising writer, able to convey the spirit of the post-revolutionary period, also in light of his personal experience as a volunteer in the Red Army. The first phase of his literary production dates from 1922 to 1924. In the texts of this period the thematic focus is mainly on the experience of the revolution, while, stylistically, they are characterized by a highly evocative and musical language that reveals the influence of A. Belyj's Simfonii. The article focuses on the long story (povest') Noč', edited and redacted three times during 1923, more than any of Nikitin's novels. Being the most redacted and revised piece of Nikitin's long fiction, the povest' offers the possibility to investigate the relationship between the author and Voronskij who, more than anyone else, had a great impact on the young writer. The povest' focuses on the battle between two trains, one white (called "L.G. Kornilov") and one red (the "N. 14-7, Béla Kun"). In the first edition, the result of the battle is not conveyed to the reader; the only outcome is destruction and pain, and this caused a very negative and passionate reaction from critics and readers. The comparison of the three redactions of the povest' shows the direction of the revisions, which started from a merely stylistic point of view and then moved to a more ideological layer, clarifying the result of the battle (now undoubtedly assigned to the Red Army) and highlighting the stichijnyj but deeply legitimate character of the Revolution itself. Starting from 1924, Nikitin will no longer participate in the meetings of the Serapion Brothers, and his poetics and chosen topics will change as well, moving in the stylistic and ideological direction that will be formalized in 1934 under the name of Socialist Realism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Postmodernism has shaped up to be the intellectual and creative interface of late capitalism, supported by a cultural logic imbued with «senses of the end of this or that» (F. Jameson): the end of history, of ideologies, of art, of the novel, of criticism, etc. However if the novel has never ceased to thrive, becoming global, it was the postmodern episteme that quickly turned towards its end, progressively reabsorbed into a wider episteme, where the before and after the end of modern history have resumed their dialogue using a new creole language, whose vocabulary asks to be finally compiled and systematized. The novel that springs from this new episteme oscillates between the postmodern anti-narrative fluidity, which deconstructed regimes, identities, genres and cultures depriving them of the traditional patterns of realism, and the attempt to relocate that fluidity within new narrative patterns, which try to mediate between the disenchanting derealization of the postmodern and the enchanted realism of the modern. This essay reconstructs the affirmation of the category of metamodern to fully describe this momentous attempt of mediation enacted by the novel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Critical Hermeneutics: Biannual Journal of Philosophy is the property of Universita degli Studi di Cagliari and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Critical Hermeneutics: Biannual Journal of Philosophy is the property of Universita degli Studi di Cagliari and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, raises an interesting philosophical issue, namely, how can one be in touch with past things if they no longer exist? It provides us with a way to address this issue by outlining an ontological view according to which past things still exist within a four-dimensional world. Although one cannot be in touch with past things by means of ordinary perception, one can do so by combining perception and memory. In this sense, In Search of Lost Time helps us to reconcile a four-dimensionalist ontology according to which things have both spatial and temporal parts with a realist phenomenology according to which experience gives us access to things as they are. In so doing, Proust’s masterpiece allows us to shed some light on what it means for a subject of experience to exist in a four-dimensional world.

Some of Corrado Alvaro's works, especially those regarding Calabria, are often evaluated not only for their literary value, but also for their documentary value. The article summarizes some points of the post-modern debate on ethnographic writing and moves in that area of compatibility which anthropologists and literary critics converse. The different contrasts that seem to constantly characterize Alvaro's works - country/world, metahistory/history, magical realism/realism - once composed and read in their entirety, reveal a specific structure which is implied in most of his literature. The landscape, in particular, is the element that makes everything coherent, and allows us to understand some specific dynamics of Alvaro's memory.

At first glance, T. S. Eliot and Sherwood Anderson do not seem to have much in common when their works are considered. Eliot is known primarily for his poetry and Anderson for his short stories. The former is often considered an English author and the latter an American one. The first is one of the most recognizable names of Modernism, and the second is often considered a realist. Eliot is known for the complexity and inaccessibility of his poetry and Anderson’s works appear much simpler in comparison. Eliot is famous for his urban imagery and Anderson for his rural setting. However, there is one theme they have in common: the exploration of an individual’s inability of self-expression in his surroundings, where the expression is affected by materialistic, artistic, sexual or other issues with accompanying repressions. This desire for self-expression or self-realization contrasts with the mores of one’s society and their failed attempts to express themselves bring along depression, frustration, repression and alienation, something that both Eliot and Anderson knew well, because they also struggled with some of the issues of their protagonists. An important notion here is that the exploration of this inability seems to suggest its universality or ubiquity, regardless if the individual is living in a big city or a small rural community. Upon closer analysis of these themes, the differences start to fade and other connections appear, such as Eliot’s use of the caricature or grotesque to heighten certain states of mind, something that Anderson also does; indeed, the first story in his work Winesburg, Ohio is called Book of the Grotesque, but with a more sympathetic and less ironic flavour. Evening and night are very important times for both authors, as that is when an individual’s introspection, mostly unconscious, is intensified. Social critique is very prominent and the compatibility of public and private lives is also explored.

Che fare del ‘realismo’ in un’epoca come la nostra, segnata da profonde mutazioni dei modelli culturali e del­l’orizzonte di senso? Che fare dei codici del realismo, dopo che sono stati emendati dai naturalismi, cancellati dal vortice modernista, straniati nelle lingue del postmoderno? Il saggio passa in rassegna alcuni recenti e importanti contributi saggistici intorno a questa categoria estetica sempre più decisiva ai fini di una morfologia storica comparata. Esso prova inoltre a verificare la tenuta teorica della nozione nell’attuale paesaggio letterario italiano, in specie di ambito narrativo.What can we do with “realism” in a time like ours, when deep changes of cultural models and meaning horizons are taking place? What can we do with the codes of realism, after their revision by naturalism, cancellation by the modernist vortex, and estrangement in the languages of postmodernity? The essay reviews some recent, important contributions about this aesthetic category, which proves increasingly important in view of a historical and comparative morphology, and tries to assess its theoretical soundness in today’s Italian literary—and mainly narrative—landscape.

Beyond its oft-praised "realism", The Wire (HBO, 2002-2008) – precisely because of its closeness to non-fiction – explores the modalities and functionalities of fiction and investigates what fiction is and what fiction can do. The series above all reflects on the ethical stakes of fiction-making. In the game it establishes with its non-fiction antecedents, and in its meta-narrative story arc in season 5, the show reflects on the fictional process and on the different media which filter reality to try and represent it. This article analyzes how The Wire explores the moral implications of fiction-making and the different meanings of the term, from fiction as counter-fact, or counter-truth, to fiction as experimentation. Through the case study of the final season, we see how the series plays out its ambivalence toward fictional codes and advocates a mode of critical fictional representation as an alternative to the current, devious modes of safety policy and journalism. This article demonstrates how, by delegating fiction-making to characters as it does, more particularly in season 5, The Wire inscribes itself in what Jacques Rancière calls "fictional democracy".

If the aesthetics of realism held an inferior position in Chinese painting traditions, why were such techniques utilized to describe architectural antiquity in the 1930s? Curiously, Chinese painting tradition emphasizes the brush stroke, and movement or gesture of the line as a register of one’s artistic abilities. Realistic representation was often downplayed and minimized as a mode of aesthetic expression, as uniform straight lines displayed a skill or technique anyone could master. Yet, ruled-line painting (jiehua) is one exception, thought to be the only formalized painting technique to convey extreme detail, and line work, involving the use of instruments such as plumb lines, rulers and compasses. These “sharp-edge” techniques were acceptable to portray architecture, with qualities of accuracy and detailed subject matter –such versions of the Up the River During the Qing Ming Festival painting. When Chinese architects educated in the US and Japan returned home in the 1930s, why did they recast China’s ancient architectural sites into the pictorial format of construction documents? Ancient architecture was systematically surveyed, scaled, measured, and recomposed with strict straight lines into sets of orthographic drawings labeled with notes. How was this pictorial format, one that largely excludes the expression of one’s individual mark, chosen to capture monuments of the past before possible obliteration from war? Undoubtedly, the “Four Outstanding” architect-scholars were immersed in concurrent debates, and skilled in drawing as a method for the study of both design and historic architecture (as current scholarship maintains the import of the Ecole des Beaux Arts methods from the University of Pennsylvania to China took place through these individuals). But to what extent have the traditions of jiehua (ruled-line painting) been overlooked, or helpful for the collective project of careful reformulation, recovery, and reinterpretation of China’s architectural past in a pictorial format? Why were orthographic projection techniques seen as: 1) particularly appropriate to conveying the past’s unique architectural achievements to future generations, and 2) as a desirable format with “objective” or non-gestural qualities? In turn, how did the use of such representational techniques, reframe understandings of the built environment in China more generally?

The essay revisits the debate about the autonomy or heteronomy of art in a theoretical perspective. The departure point is the famous controversy between Togliatti and Vittorini about the role of intellectuals and the purpose of art in relation with the positions of Italian architects involved in post-war reconstruction – namely, Ernesto Rogers – their ethical and moral concerns, their civil commitment. Such debate affects architecture in a particular way, given how this art is more directly connected than others with society and reality, with the transformations of the means of production and of technology. After so many years, this debate provides an opportunity for meditation around some key issues for architectural design, such as its civil role and purposes, and the relationships among the disciplines, and between art and technology.

The conceptual scheme of the 'DIKAS pyramid', presented in two previous articles published in this journal, explains the reciprocal relationships between the concepts of data, information, knowledge, awareness and self-awareness. This scheme has significant consonances with some contemporary philosophical theories (structural realism in its ontic, epistemic and informational variants, as well as the relational interpretation of quantum mechanics proposed by Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli) and with certain aspects of some philosophical systems of the past (the one of the Indian Buddhist monk Nāgārjuna, who lived in the second century AD and those of English philosophers Bradley, Green, McTaggart, Royce and Whitehead, all of whom lived between the mid-nineteenth and the mid-twentieth centuries AD). All these systems and theories, despite their considerable divergences, are united by a greater centrality attributed to dynamic relationships, structures, processes and events compared to the one which is usually attributed, both by common sense and by philosophical and scientific theories, to static objects, individuals, entities and 'things'. The comparison between these conceptions and DIKAS makes some aspects of the latter conceptual scheme even more plausible and understandable, including, in particular: the processual nature of the information, the relative (but not necessarily subjective) nature of knowledge and the possibility of a complete naturalization (on an informational basis) of consciousness, which overcomes the apparent irreconcilability between objectivity and subjectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on the role of De Roberto in the shift from an objective to a subjective narrative in the late 19th century literature and shows his concern with the evolution of the concept of realism, which he draws on Maupassant's view of the relativity of truth. The study investigates the implementation of De Roberto's theoretical insights in a metanarrative dimension in Donato del Piano, where the main character struggles with the impossibility of finding a full correspondence between his feelings and ideas and the words to voice them, thus also anticipating Pirandello's thought. Another element of modernity is De Roberto's perception of the unknowable nature of the Self, that he draws on Egger's La Parole Intérieure. By comparing some of the outstanding authors in the context of Positivism (Maupassant, Taine, Egger), the study shows that De Roberto goes beyond simple forms of methodological eclecticism as well as forerunning one of the major issues critical to the 20th century reflection over the crisis of subjectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Nasleđe is the property of University of Kragujevac, Faculty of Philology & Arts and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Pasolini, after his encounter with Contini, moves from his Friulian poetry, which did not engage particularly with Dante’s poetics, to acknowledging in Dante’s plurilingualism and in the literary uses of dialects an element of realism which he will later use remarkably in his novels and films. Pasolini, following the ‘crisis’ expressed in the Ceneri di Gramsci poems, and further to his reading of Auerbach, concentrated on the dialectics of humble and sublime in his interest for the Commedia, as it also features in his films, for which it became a style signature. The rewriting of the Comedy under such a perspective and his progressive self-identification with Dante’s life and poetics will characterize the final stage of his activity, from La Divina mimesis to Salò, le 120 giornate di Sodoma and finally Petrolio, for their representation of the crisis through similar narrative devices (the author as a poet-prophet, the split self, etc.). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay revisits the debate about the autonomy or heteronomy of art in a theoretical perspective. The departure point is the famous controversy between Togliatti and Vittorini about the role of intellectuals and the purpose of art in relation with the positions of Italian architects involved in post-war reconstruction -- namely, Ernesto Rogers -- their ethical and moral concerns, their civil commitment. Such debate affects architecture in a particular way, given how this art is more directly connected than others with society and reality, with the transformations of the means of production and of technology. After so many years, this debate provides an opportunity for meditation around some key issues for architectural design, such as its civil role and purposes, and the relationships among the disciplines, and between art and technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between the 1970s and 1990s, legal realism -- especially the Scandinavian strand -- attracted much interest among Italian legal philosophers, particularly in Genoa and Bologna. Although this interest has since been waning both in Italy and elsewhere, foremostly Alf Ross's work has been experiencing a renewed attention in recent times particularly through the impetus of some new translations of his work, with some accompanying critical studies. Highly relevant is the translation of his 1933 Kritik der sogenannten praktischen Erkenntnis, zugleich Prolegomena zu einer Kritik der Rechtswissenschaft, edited by Alessio Sardo and Nicoletta Bersier, providing scholars in Italy with wide access to a work in which Ross lays the foundation for an authentic science of law, through a critique of moral cognitivism and a defense of emotivism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]