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Starting from the innovative approach operated by Hans Hunfeld and the more recent evidence by Mirco Magnani, this paper deals with the use of literary texts in language education, among which poetic texts are no exception. The present paper aims specifically to argue that even popular songs can place their lyrics as a model for language learning, most notably after considering the recipients of education within a broad objective of inclusivity. The use of songs in linguistic education for Italian as a Second or Foreign Language is already known, but it deals mostly with the classical melodramma or Italian art song. However, here it will be argued that even contemporary music spread among teenagers and youths can belong to the education program for languages. This paper presents the drill music lyrics of Louboutin (2020) by Vale Pain and Rondo da Sosa as a less orthodox but not less valid instrument to teach and learn Italian for foreigners.

In the nineteenth century, Euro-American maps of Africa in the cultural contact of Europeans and Africans were also rhetorical devices, which articulated the politics of territorial conceptions of the geographical space. I contend that cartographic styles visually prompt alternative territorial perspectives with insights into past geographies. The paper examines three nineteenth-century maps of Yorùbáland in West-Central Africa highlighting cartographic styles, symbolic representations and territorial politics. Through a historical-stylistic analysis, I explore the cultural motivation of map production, their composition and the semiotic evaluation of their representations to stress alternative map appearances. These maps worked in territorial power relations, which highlight map styles as a persuasive element in the social construction of territorial identities and interests. Overall, the paper stresses maps are vital devices in the nineteenth century territorialisation of Yorùbáland, which exemplify the cultural interdependence of Europeans, Americans and Africans.

This study explores the ontological assumptions of mapping as active processes, rather than passive representations and discusses the need for pragmatic guidelines in map-making, as maps only acquire meaning through their users’ minds and bodies. The paper presents historical examples of Italian colonial topographic mapping of the southern Libyan Desert during the 1930s. It emphasizes the interconnected histories of geographical exploration, social and cultural contexts, and technical practices. The paper argues that the ‘empty spaces’ on maps reflect intentional choices made by cartographers, not insufficient data. The performative nature and diverse sociocultural conditions of maps need to be considered to understand their meaning and use.

This paper explores the socio-environmental implications of energy extraction and production in Gela, Sicily. It examines narratives surrounding oil encounters and the manipulation of social and environmental consciousness by national energy companies. Two toxic narratives are examined: the formation of petrofictions and the use of myths and eco-efficiency rhetoric for greenwashing, drawing on environmental and energy humanities perspectives. Through a critical analysis of Orazio Labbate’s novel Suttaterra, the paper explores the trauma induced by encounters with oil and environmental conflicts documented in Sicilian landscapes. It also examines the manipulation of public perception by national energy companies through mythological storytelling, using the example of Eni’s offshore gas exploration project in Sicily. The paper points to the urgent need for a transition to sustainable energy practices and calls for greater environmental and energy justice in the region.

In this paper, the author analyses the apocryphal text Shouluo biqiu jing, centred around the saviour bodhisattva Yueguang Tongzi (Candraprabhākumāra in Sanskrit). It is possible that this text was written in Silla, with some connection with its royalty and the hwarang group. This paper confronts this hypothesis with other ones that connect it to some Sui-Tang millenarian movements. Chosen methodology is the historical and philological analysis. The conclusion is that the text was likely written in China, bu it possibly circulated in Korean Peninsula. The text is probably the result of composition and manipulation.

Enchi Fumiko’s literature has frequently faced the topic of ageing, especially focused on the bodily decay from the point of view of disease or loss of beauty and femininity and often in reference to the double standard adopted for female and male bodies. In this paper, focusing mainly on the novel Komachi hensō (1965) and the short story “Futaomote” (1959), I analyse how in Enchi’s works the figure of the actress and the one of the onnagata actor perceive the process of ageing vis-à-vis their gender and sexuality. The onnagata and the actress experience a real loss of identity when facing age, since the success they have lived has almost been based on the charm of their figure on the stage. In this paper I analyse how the protagonists cope with the reality of ageing, comparing their reaction with regard to their gender and sexuality. By looking from a peculiar perspective the idea of the ‘female’ decaying body, I aim at giving a further contribution to the already rich scholarship on the vision of ageing in Enchi’s literature. Moreover, I aim to demonstrate that the foundational elements of Enchi’s series of works, known as rōjomono or ‘works on old women’, typically believed to have originated in the 1970s, were in fact established as early as the late 1950s.

This paper critically considers digital curatorial practices, increasingly used both in commercial and museum settings, involving the animated mapped projection of digitised works of art. It draws attention to the problematic and common misuse of the term ‘immersive’ to designate such practices and examines their effectiveness for art historical knowledge sharing and meaning making. Through first-hand observation of a number of such exhibits, the paper considers the lessons that can be learned from them and how they would specifically apply to a corpus of twentieth-century frescoes that make up the study object of a research project on art historical digital curatorship.

The paper aims at exploring the linguistic aspects of the superdiversity characterizing Italian schools. Data was collected through a questionnaire submitted to 316 middle and high school students from Arezzo and Florence, in Tuscany. Both qualitative and quantitative results are presented, showing the roles of languages and dialects in the lives of the students, as well as the impact of several factors in shaping their attitudes towards accented speech. Overall, this paper promotes the adoption of a granular conceptualization of mobility (the Regionality Index) as a variable representing migratory backgrounds.

This paper analyses the poetic form and language of two poems by Grigoris Ałt‘amarc‘i, a prominent Armenian poet from the early modern period, in the multilingual and multireligious environment of Anatolia and Armenian highlands. Through an analysis of the forms, expressions and symbolism found in the poems Tał Astuacatur Xat‘ayec‘un i Grigoris kat‘ołikosē Ałt‘amarc‘oy and Du es aregak, as well as the linguistic data collected from them, this paper explores the stylistic kinship between early modern Armenian and new Persian poetry. It discusses the ways in which Ałt‘amarc‘i navigates the predominantly Persian and partly Turkish languages in the Islamicised milieu, and composed poems with an Armenian affiliation.

Many heritage and cultural professionals have emphasised the ability of online content to reach beyond museums’ traditional audiences, yet one of the largest surveys to date shows no significant change in the demographic breakdown of online and on-site visitors. This paper aims to investigate the discrepancy between the data and the narrative, using two case studies to illustrate the pitfalls of using common social media metrics such as ‘views’, ‘likes’, and ‘shares’. Drawing from the authors’ previous sector-wide study, the paper highlights what shapes these numbers, and questions how useful they are as a measure of ‘audience engagement’. Finally, it looks to computational methods to explore nuanced alternatives that could supersede these metrics in the coming decade.

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

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

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

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

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

Within the long-standing educational linguistic research tradition on the so-called ‘operational models’, little attention has been devoted to inclusive practices, particularly when learners with specific language needs are present in mainstream classes. This paper aims to fill this gap by presenting a new teaching procedure (Language Teaching Cycle) which brings together some key-principles derived from traditional models with new insights into the psycholinguistic processes that characterize language learning and should be supported in order to promote inclusion. The first part of the paper proposes a critical literature review of two major teaching procedures (the PPP sequence and the Teaching/Learning Unit), while the second part presents the theoretical bases of the Language Teaching Cycle, as well as its potential future developments and applications.

John Paul II’s World Youth Days (hereafter WYDs) were mega-events that happened eight times between 1987 and 2002. They took place in Europe, Asia, North America and South America. Observing the role women played in these global gatherings of young Catholics provides essential insights into gender issues within Catholicism during John Paul II’s pontificate. First, this paper shows that, within the organization chart of the WYDs, women faced a “stained glass ceiling”, but a few did manage to obtain a position of responsibility. Secondly, the paper studies how Catholic feminist culture found a place in WYDs, even though theologically conservative prelates, who did not back the idea of an inclusive Church, often organized them. This second part is focused on the Denver WYD (1993), marked by several feminist performances, which led to strong disputes between liberal and conservative Catholics. The way in which women became involved in this debate and the reaction of the Catholic hierarchy is studied in the third part.

The paper analyses the phenomenon of infinitive loss in Balkan Slavic in the context of the broader cross-linguistic process of subjunctive-infinitive competition (SIC). I adopt a diachronic perspective, analysing the historical developments pertaining to SIC in languages ranging from Old Church Slavonic to present-day Bulgarian and Serbian. The main goal of the paper is to distinguish between those instances of Balkan-Slavic infinitive loss that are a result of broader typological processes and those that can be viewed as genuine Balkan-sprachbund innovations. The specific Balkan innovation in this context was the replacement of infinitives by finite subjunctives in obligatory subject-control environments. I analyse this diachronic development as the result of a formal reanalysis affecting the syntactic status of the Balkan-Slavic subjunctive marker, which allowed it to spread to obligatory-control structures.

The paper will first present Kripke’s “translation test” to identify any semantic ambiguity and his claim, against Donnellan, that we should not expect to disambiguate the referential vs. attributive uses of definite descriptions via translation into another language. Second, the paper will discuss a strengthened version of Kripke’s “translation test” proposed by Voltolini to distinguish between any semantic vs. pragmatic phenomena. Finally, the paper will show that translation cannot work as a test for the semantic/pragmatic distinction, but can rather work as a test for the explicit/implicit distinction.

This paper examines the use of Middle Armenian in the medieval kafas (short monorhymed poems) associated with the legendary history of Alexander III of Macedon in its Armenian translation. These poems, composed in Armenian in the 13th-16th centuries, contain classical and vernacular language. Examining the interplay between the poetic requirements of meter and rhyme and the linguistic features of Middle Armenian, this paper points to cases in the kafas where the choice between words and grammatical forms is dictated by poetry. This includes the use of both classical nominative plural ending -ք and the medieval (and modern) -(ն)եր, and the concurrent comprehensibility of the present and imperfect indicative both with and without the particle կու.

This paper explores the use of deixis in the Armenian translation of the Greek New Testament, with a focus on the medial deictic forms in the gospel of Matthew. Against the two-way deictic distinction in New Testament Greek with proximal οὗτος and distal ἐκεῖνος, the three-way system in Armenian based on the proximal -s-, medial -d- and distal -n- raises questions of how and why the Armenian medial forms are used. Through comparison with Latin, which also has a three-way system (proximal hic, medial iste, and distal ille), and close analysis of key passages, this paper highlights both the semantic values of the Armenian medial forms and the issues of translation that arise as a result of their employment.

This paper studies the formal distinction of the indefinite article from the quantifier ‘one’ in Early and pre-Modern Armenian texts by three 18‑19th century authors as well as in a colloquial Modern Eastern Armenian dialogue. The key question is whether these sources use the same forms for both functions. The paper gives typological, diachronic, and areal perspectives to the analysis of non-standard data rarely included in discussions of the historical grammar of Armenian. It also touches upon some general issues of grammaticalization of the forms of ‘one’ as an indefinite article and the use of numeral classifiers in colloquial Eastern Armenian.

Any theory of language – ancient or contemporary, philosophical or cognitive – faces the same problem, i.e. how to reconcile the unequivocally corporeal character of the speakers and the world they speak of with the somewhat ‘incorporeal’ character of the meanings of linguistic expressions. It is for this reason, for example, that direct-reference theories of language (Stroll 1999) seek to eliminate the Fregean notion of 'sense' (Sinn) from semantics. What is at stake is a completely corporeal account of language. However, such an attempt clashes with the fact that the vast majority of linguistic expressions do not refer either to any objects in the world or to the pre-scientific intuition that words have an autonomous 'meaning' (that is, that the 'sense' of a word does not coincide with the referent, Bedeutung). To solve such a problem, the Stoics introduced in their theory of language the notion of lekton, i.e. what is 'said' or is 'sayable'. Even if the lekton is, properly speaking, incorporeal, at the same time it is the corporeal product of what human speakers do when they utter a verbal utterance. In this paper I propose to compare the notion of lekton to the similar notion of 'use' (Gebrauch), much debated in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. The thesis of this paper is not that there exists a direct philological connection between the Stoic notion of lekton and the notion of linguistic 'use' in Wittgenstein (even if this cannot be excluded either). Instead, the idea is that when one wants to propose an adequate theory of language, one cannot but introduce a notion such as that of lekton or 'use'.

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

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

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

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

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

The main purpose of the Journal is twofold. On the one hand, to collect papers devoted to general synchronic linguistic analysis (including sociolinguistic analysis) of a particular language (even as testified in a specific text) and even those incorporating a comparative analysis with other languages. According to this aim, the papers submitted can have a theoretical and/or a descriptive approach, in both respects adopting a typological and functional perspective. On the other hand, one of the major aims of Bhāṣā is to better understand the evolution of the various languages employed in South Asia today and in the past.

This paper discusses Leibniz’s treatment of the term ‘nihil’ that appears in some logical papers about the notion of Real Addition. First, the paper argues that the term should be understood as an empty (singular) term and that sentences with empty terms can be true (§2). Second, it sketches a positive free logic to describe the logical behaviour of empty terms (§3). After explaining how this approach avoids a contradiction that threatens the introduction of the term ‘nihil’ in the Real Addition calculus (§4), and how this approach should be understood within Leibniz’s philosophy (§5), the paper assesses the prospects of such an approach with regard to two fundamental issues in Leibniz’s thought: the fictional nature of infinitesimals (§6), and the occurrence of the term ‘nothing’ in the proof of the existence of God that we find in the New Essays (§7).

n the years 1675-84, Leibniz sought to disprove Descartes’s account of clear and distinct perception by implementing a three-step argumentative strategy. The first part of the paper reconstructs the argument and highlights what aspects of Descartes’s epistemology it addresses. The reconstruction shows that the argument is based on conceivability errors. These are a kind of symbolic cognition that prove Descartes’s clear and distinct perception as introspectively indistinguishable from Leibniz’s symbolic cognition. The second part of the paper explores the epistemic implication of the indistinguishability between clear and distinct perception and symbolic cognition: the mind constitutively depends on products of the imagination. My conclusion addresses the role of the imagination in symbolization. Symbolization does not exceed imagination; it rather is an idealized use of cognitive surrogates, like characters, to submit to the imagination what is not subject to it.

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

In his 1677 Dialogue, Leibniz answers the question of how it is possible that speakers of different languages agree on the same truths by postulating “a certain correspondence between characters and things”. In the mid-1680s, he arguably attempts to specify this “correspondence” by explaining how linguistic particles are connected to our perception of spatial relations among things in the world. Firstly, this paper focuses on the role that, according to Leibniz, signs and characters play in our knowledge. Secondly, it introduces the solution that can be found in the Dialogue to the problem of how the same truth can be expressed in different languages. After briefly expounding Leibniz’s theory of natural languages, the paper gives an account of Leibniz’s analysis of the nature of prepositions and of how they contribute, in a natural language, to determine the correspondence between characters and things that is mentioned in the Dialogue.

Public history constitutes a historical field, it includes several related journals, membership organisations, research centres, undergraduate and graduate programs all over the world. Most importantly, Public History has been marked by growing historiography and an increasing public interest in history. However, there is a lack of research on the most important constituent element of Public History, the ‘public’. The aim of this paper is to shed light on how Public History has approached the public in the last four decades. By focusing on the two different forms the public has taken, the public sphere and the public agency, the paper examines the notion of the public as it appeared in the historiography and how it determined the epistemology and methodology of Public History.

The present paper argues for a view of gender agreement without either grammatical or natural gender being represented as syntactic features. Rather than deriving declension classes in terms of realisation, I postulate them as the only relevant feature that is lexically specified on the noun. Agreement copies the declension class and triggers presuppositions. When these presuppositions clash with those already active in the discourse, default agreement is realised. The paper moreover provides a quantitative analysis of semantic correlates of declension classes and a novel analysis of SC declension classes.

This paper provides an overview of the current status of L2 pronunciation teaching and shows that there is a greater appreciation for L2 pronunciation teaching today than there was in the past. The paper starts by reviewing the main theoretical approaches in pronunciation teaching of the past 70 years and introduces today’s approach focusing on ‘speech intelligibility’ rather than on the achievement of native-like pronun-ciation. It then addresses the following issues: what we mean by foreign accent and speech intelligibility; how foreign accent can affect communication and speakers’ integration in society; what challenges present-day L2 pronunciation teachers; how technology can help.

When we talk about characteristics of Digital Humanities (DH), digital publishing certainly is a prominent domain to mention. Open access papers and books, blogging, collaborative writing, and digital editions have become deeply rooted in the DH, reflecting a self-confident culture of Open Science. The rational constitution of our writings, however, has received far less attention: How can we design digital publications that mirror epistemological implications of DH methods and the composition of our arguments and narratives better than current publishing formats? In this paper, I argue that the DH need formats that exceed traditional texts and their rather linear design. Digital publishing that provides (meta) data or remarks on applied methods as mere supplements would not be enough, too. Those elements are integral parts of a scholarly demonstration and they should be presented as such. They must be visible as constituents of our sense-making. We need media that depict the complex nature of data-driven research. Interlinked and multimodal digital publishing seems to lead in the right direction. I elaborate on this matter from a theoretical point of view by building on research on hypertext. I will also point to first successful attempts of implementation. Refining these approaches promises to facilitate the presentation of intricate sense-making in the DH.

Do images exist? In this paper I argue that the notion of an image is ontologically empty – i.e., images are no more than a cultural invention akin to epicycles in astronomy. There are only flat objects engaged in various causal roles. In this paper I will defend the thesis that in visual culture, in the neurosciences, and in philosophy of mind, there is no convincing evidence in favor of their existence. Moreover, I will outline a series of arguments aiming at showing that images do not exist. I will discuss briefly discuss why many authors – from the iconic turn to the neurosciences – use the notion of image as though it were something real. I will conclude suggesting to drop the subject-object divide and to consider a completely flat ontology made only of (relative) objects.

The so-called “art map age”, a phenomenon marked by the convergence of visual arts and cartography, emerged between the 60-70s and early 2000s. The close relationship between cartographic and artistic language is a “commonplace” of the present world: if the artistic experiments with the maps have been supported by a vast bibliography, in this paper I follow a strictly geographical approach to describe some trends of contemporary art. I take inspiration from a terminological distinction introduced by Arthur Robinson and Barbara Petchenik: and that is between ‘mapper’, ‘mapmaker’ and ‘cartographer’. Furthermore, combining the “types” of the mapper, the mapmaker, and the cartographer with the different attitudes regarding maps (as medium, image, abstraction, etc.), I will suggest a small classification scheme.

In this paper we will address the following points: (1) we will question the geneal belief that Kant’s philosophical approach has a geographical character, by showing how critical philosophy and physical geography establish, in their respective systems, two inverse relationships between the rational and the aesthetic form of spatiality; (2) we will argue that cartography still plays a role in the realization of a scientific system of cognition, and that this role consists in guiding this very realization; (3) lastly, we will develop the hypothesis that the map of the cognitive faculties, exemplified by the transcendental topic, is part of a device aimed at keeping the subject from the adventures of thought typical of dogmatism.

The aim of this paper is two-folded: 1) to discuss Modarres-e Reḍavi’s edition of Anvari’s divān in order to show that this edition, although still very valuable, should be used cautiously: even for non-philological, literary-oriented studies manuscripts should be checked. These should include not only the newly-discovered codices, not used by the editor, but also the manuscripts he used, which must be double-checked; 2) to give a solid starting point to any scholar attempting to investigate Anvari’s divān from a philological perspective, by showing in which areas Modarres-e Reḍavi’s edition is lacking and to what extent.

ʿĀqil Khān ‘Rāzī’ (c. 1026-1108 AH, c. 1617-1696 AD) is a seventeenth-century Indo-Persian poet, historian and statesman who authored a dīvān, some mystical treatises, a historical chronicle and a number of mas̲navīs. This paper focuses on two of his mas̲navīs, Mihr-u māh (1065 AH, 1654/55 AD) and Shamʿ-u parvāna (1064 AH, 1658/59 AD), which are adaptations/translations in Persian of two Neo-Indo-Aryan narrative poems written in Awadhī during the sixteenth century. The aim is to understand how ʿĀqil Khān adapted/translated these two South Asian texts in Persian. In order to achieve this objective, this study concentrates on the imagery of fire in the prologues and in the conclusions of the compositions. The intertextual elements are analysed, unveiling the literary process devised by ʿĀqil Khān ‘Rāzī’ to compose a complex layered text that could be enjoyed by the multilingual readership of seventeenth-century South Asia.

The available reconstruction systems of Old Chinese have proven to be indispensable tools for research in different fields, nevertheless, they remain flawed in many aspects and thus call for continuous refinement. Focusing on Baxter and Sagart’s reconstruction (2014), in this paper I will argue that a more systematic way of incorporating palaeographic data as an integral part of the methodology could enhance the reconstruction outcomes. In particular, the graphic forms preceding the kaishu 楷書 script of many characters and the frequent cases of phonetic borrowing in unearthed texts can provide considerable insightful data. Through some illustrative examples, I will contend that phonetic borrowings in excavated texts can provide insights for a) reconstructing items not included in current reconstructions; b) disentangling rhyme class mergers, and c) questioning and verifying the forms of items included in current reconstructions. A more porous boundary between the fields of palaeography and Chinese historical phonology could thus provide new data for answering many of the still open questions relating to Old Chinese.

This paper focuses on oft-overlooked vegan and vegetarian practices among contemporary Buddhist communities in Asia and Europe. It synthesises findings from a range of Buddhism-related contexts with an emphasis on transnational and Internet-based communities. Exploring multifaceted food imaginaries, foodways and placemaking practices, it argues that communities of engaged Buddhists, at different scales, deliberately resist mainstream food markets.

This paper offers a comparative overview of the expression of directed motion constructions in Vietnamese, Chinese, and Korean, and explores the acquisition of these constructions by L1 Korean and L1 Chinese learners of Vietnamese, with a focus on the role of typological factors and language-specific morpho-syntactic properties in the acquisition process. This investigation not only provides valuable insights into the challenges faced by learners of L2 Vietnamese from diverse linguistic backgrounds but also enriches our understanding of the typology of motion events.

To what extent does the narrative of Japan’s prehistorical origins matter to Italy? In the second half of the twentieth century, Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome hosted two significant exhibitions dedicated to Japanese archaeology and ancient art: Tesori dell’Arte Giapponese in 1958 and Il Giappone prima dell’Occidente in 1995. Both displays provided Italian visitors with an unparalleled framework to engage with early artistic manifestations of the archipelago known today as Japan. Built on a critical analysis of the prehistoric and protohistoric artefacts from the Jōmon to Kofun periods selected for the Italian audience, this paper examines the active application of narrative discourse on Japan’s identity by the Japanese government in Italy. Still, it also sheds light on the presence of Japanese archaeology and art in Italian public and private collections throughout the twentieth century. The analysis delves into the textual and visual presentation of exhibits, examining both the venue and catalogues. These sources offer insights into potential instances of orientalism or self-orientalism, revealing a narrative closely tied to stereotypical views. The investigation unravels aspects of Japan’s past emphasised in diplomatic shows, evolving alongside ground-breaking archaeological discoveries in post-war Japan.

Although in postcolonial ecocritical literature the agency of animals finds full recognition, representations of insects are so rare that curiosity arises about their untapped ecocritical meaning. Interestingly, in Namwali Serpell’s The Old Drift, a chorus of mosquitoes takes centre stage. In the first section of this paper, I argue that Serpell’s novel recontextualises classical references, placing them between adaptation to the conventions of epic poems and innovation. In the second section, the ecocritical meanings of the chorus of mosquitoes are analysed and framed in relation to the concepts of ‘simulacrum’ and post nature.

The paper examines the text of the scholia, mostly non yet edited, on Euripides’ Hecuba in the manuscript Vat. gr. 1135 and its apographon, with the aim of placing it within the textual tradition. The analysis of some scholia allows ascribing the most part of this material to the scholarly exegesis of the twelfth century, shedding light on the state of the Euripidean scholia after the eleventh century, which is the period to which the veteres manuscripts date back, but before the Palaeologan age.

This paper aims to analyse the speech of the lawgiver in Book 4 of Plato’s Laws, the only one directly addressed to the citizens of the Cretan colony to outline their behaviour rules. This speech is examined not only for its ethical content but also for its argumentative structure. In particular, references to archaic gnomic poetry, which give the discourse great solemnity, are reviewed. In addition, the lawgiver’s mastery of rhetorical tools aimed at persuading citizens is emphasized. The lawgiver’s use of persuasion, further applied in all the preambles prefixed to the laws, seems to be an implementation of rhetoric as psychagogy outlined in the Phaedrus.

In this paper I analyse some different mythical narratives about the trial of Orestes after the matricide. Aeschylus’ Eumenides (458 B.C.E.) have canonised a single version of the myth, based on the judgement at the Areopagus Council and on the hero’s acquittal through Athena’s vote. As a matter of fact, other versions exist in and outside of Athens about the hero on trial (i.e. Eur. Or., El.; Theodectes Phas. fr. 5 Snell; Dem. 23.74), which reveal alternative assessments of Orestes’ vengeance act.