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In her poetry collection falsche freunde the German-speaking artist Uljana Wolf develops a translinguale Lyrik, a poetic voice dwelling on a linguistic and geographical border zone. Building on Emily Apter’s concepts of untranslatability, this paper investigates how Wolf’s structural and thematic checkpoints instil a strong political commitment into her poetry. Furthermore, this engagement is here interpreted as the expression of the paradigm of the postmigrantische Gesellschaft. Finally, the paper argues that through the choice of the term ‘alien’ over the category ‘fremd’ Wolf suggests an innovative shift in the representation of migratory dynamics, from their cultural dimension to their biopolitical significance.

In this paper, Old High German mood alternations in the different types of subordinate clauses (complement, adverbial and relative clauses) are discussed. The use of the subjunctive in subordinate clauses is notoriously more frequent than in Modern German and has not yet been thoroughly investigated. Based on a comprehensive corpus study, the paper will show that the licensing conditions for the subjunctive in Old High German are determined by notions such as veridicality and – in relative contexts – specificity. These conditions are thus similar (but not always identical) to those observed for Modern Greek and Romance languages. Furthermore, a syntactic analysis is provided in order to account for the licensing of the subjunctive in each type of subordinate clause.

In this paper the preparatory stages to the realisation of the onomastic section of Paccagnella’s Vocabolario del pavano are summarised. The main issues of this section regarded the arrangement of the excerpts and headwords. In its second part the paper discusses some stylistic uses of the proper names in Pavan literature, trying to give a general overview of Pavan onomastic expressiveness, and paying particular attention to some onomastic annotations not included in the Vocabolario.

This paper focuses on linguistic and literary intersections between Testori’s Ambleto (1972) and Ruzante’s theatre, with particular attention to the comedy named Moschetta. Moschetta had been recited by Franco Parenti and Testori – as he himself testifies – was crucially influenced by this staging, and especially by the language Parenti used in order to recreate Ruzante’s dialect. This paper tries to document the importance of that experience with respect to the Ambleto and to its contaminated and extremist language, pointing out some specific features that Testori might have taken from Moschetta.

Through the study of the preparatory papers of d’Annunzio’s Phaedra preserved in the Archivio Privato del Vittoriale, the article aims to demonstrate the leading role of the medieval vulgarisation of Ovidian’s Metamorphoses by Arrigo Simintendi for the composition of the tragedy. Through a careful work of compulsion and auscultation of the fourteenth-century text, d’Annunzio recovers formal and lexical tesserae to build Phaedra’s hendecasyllables, to recreate congenial images, to provide the most appropriate sounds and musicality, and to suggest psychological insights through the comparison between his characters and the mythological archetypes dear to his theatre, of which Ovid’s masterpiece is an admirable compendium. Ultimately, the essay suggests that the influence of Simintendi’s vulgarization and the method of compulsion extends beyond the tragedy of 1909.

In the second decade of the 20th century, d’Annunzio was introduced to Chinese readers primarily via Anglo-Saxon culture and received as much success as controversy. This article focuses on the reception of d’Annunzio in a specific group in China: the League of Left-Wing Writers, one of the most important Chinese literary associations, which was founded in 1930. Through the analysis of the social-historical context and Chinese literary field during that time, this paper explores the reasons for the initial acceptance of d’Annunzio by the Left-Wing group and for their change of attitude toward the Italian poet.

Theo Padnos published My Life Had Stood A Loaded Gun in 2004, when Prison Studies were burgeoning and gaining academic attention globally. Neglected by critics, the book relates the author's experience as literature instructor in an American prison. Engaging methods of pedagogical research and reader-response criticism, the paper investigates the role of literature in the cultural activities of young male inmates in a medium security jail in Vermont. An original amalgam of crime reports, pedagogy of literature, and autobiographical criticism, Padnos' study for the first time confronts young criminals with a literary canon dripping with violence. The experiment sheds light on the reading activities of prisoners, on their and the author's social background, and on the power of American literature to speak to marginal groups.

Linguists argued that the Cockney dialect, in London, is expected to be replaced by Multicultural London English in the years to come. However, this does not imply that Cockney is dead, as recent research revealed that it just moved to Essex. This paper aims at examining whether (l) vocalisation, a common feature of Cockney, is still present in the London district of Bermondsey. Ten working-class English speakers, stratified by age and sex, have been recorded by means of sociolinguistic interviews. The results, discussed both quantitively and qualitatively, show that: (a) (l) vocalisation is present in all age cohorts, with young speakers favouring the non-standard feature; (b) preceding long vowels trigger (l) vocalisation.

The so-called indirect passive, where the subject is not the argument of the underlying verb that bears the Theme/Patient role, is generally understood to be a bi-clausal phenomenon (cf. Kuno 1973; Shibatani 1978; Kuroda 1979). In other words, the passive morpheme rare is merged with a clause, and then the resulting item is combined with the subject. In this paper, however, we argue that the indirect passive is best understood as a mono-clausal phenomenon. We first point out that with some instances of the indirect passive, the passive morpheme rare is not understood as being combined with a verb or clause in syntax. Thus, we are led to assume that the lexicon contains numerous instances of the Vrare form. This implies that even when the passive morpheme rare is combined in syntax, it forms a constituent with the relevant verb; hence, the indirect passive is a mono-clausal phenomenon. We furthermore maintain that when the indirect passive involves the merging of rare with a verb in syntax, the verb must be a volitional verb, and demonstrate that this generalization, as well as the case particle alternation involved in the indirect passive, poses a challenge to the bi-clause analysis but not to the mono-clause analysis. Finally, we review one of the main arguments for analyzing the indirect passive to be a bi-clausal phenomenon, which concerns the antecedent of zibun. We show that it is inconclusive at best.

The goal of this paper is to reconcile the definite marking with the indefinite-like semantics of those superlatives that take a relative/comparative reading. Following Szabolcsi (1986) and Heim (1999), we will assume that the difference between absolute and relative readings of superlatives is represented at the syntactic level of semantic representation, LF (Logical Form). We will however depart from Heim’s hypothesis that what raises at LF is the superlative operator itself (EST). We will instead assume a quantificational-determiner analysis of EST, which involves two raising operations at LF: EST-raising to Spec,DP and raising of the whole superlative DP (Determiner Phrase) to a scope position in the sentence. We will examine the relative readings of quality superlatives. The generalizations and the proposed analysis are not assumed to extend to quantity superlatives.

This paper analyses Angela Carter’s desecrating tendency to taboo-breaking in thematic and formal terms. By referring to her short-fiction production and focusing on “John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore", I intend to show how gender/patriarchal and genre/authorial taboos are similarly broken and transmuted into daringly subversive outcomes. In line with her feminist agenda and postmodern transformism, Carter superbly challenges, sabotages, violates, de- and re-constructs traditionally codified sexual and gender taboos by mimicking such reversals through new narrative solutions. If diversity, multiplicity and change guarantee the continuity of life, incest can easily metaphorise a taboo relationship based on repetition of the identical, sameness, and immobility, to be finally transformed, if not avoided. Consistent with many of her female characters’ incestuous relationships with parents or siblings, Carter also establishes incest-like relationships with previous authors and narrative discourses, which she predatorily appropriates. Carter’s resulting narrative testifies to the fact that taboos must be first experienced to be eventually broken. It is in the dialectic between rule and infraction, taboo and its violation that Carter’s writing is rooted, constantly looking for borders to be crossed.

Designed as a paper reflecting on the editorial mediation of early modern French literary texts, this article maps the educational activities conducted on the Tragiques Inventions site since 2020. In particular, it delves into the procedures linked to documenting, generating and manipulating descriptive and analytical (meta)data. A new concept of ‘hand-reading’ is being developed – the possibility of using digital technology to prioritize human intervention in the construction of knowledge through textual editing. This concept will bring a fresh perspective on early modern literary texts.

There is a substantial body of scholarship arguing for the relevance of magic realism to Toni Morrison’s fictional production, with one exception being her last novel God Help the Child, which, in that respect, has been remarkably overlooked. The present paper intends to fill this scholarly gap by focusing on what Morrison called “enchantment”, a powerful blend of magic and realism that she employed to represent a host of racial and ancestral issues of Blackness, often of a traumatic kind.

Sylvia’s Lovers is a novel about war. It is a historical novel set in the years 1793-1800 during the Napoleonic wars, and written by Elizabeth Gaskell in the years 1859-1862 when the American Civil War broke out, in April 1861. Examining Gaskell’s correspondence with Charles Eliot Norton in the years 1861-63 and the articles Norton wrote in support of the War and the anti-slavery cause, this paper explores the way in which the news coming from America and the debates on the contemporary events left a significant mark on the second part of the novel. The implied reference to the context of the American Civil War would shed new light on Gaskell’s narrative choices concerning the plot and the main male character’s development, which has been substantially overlooked.

Linguists argued that the Cockney dialect, in London, is expected to be replaced by Multicultural London English in the years to come. However, this does not imply that Cockney is dead, as recent research revealed that it just moved to Essex. This paper aims at examining whether (l) vocalisation, a common feature of Cockney, is still present in the London district of Bermondsey. Ten working-class English speakers, stratified by age and sex, have been recorded by means of sociolinguistic interviews. The results, discussed both quantitively and qualitatively, show that: (a) (l) vocalisation is present in all age cohorts, with young speakers favouring the non-standard feature; (b) preceding long vowels trigger (l) vocalisation.

The so-called indirect passive, where the subject is not the argument of the underlying verb that bears the Theme/Patient role, is generally understood to be a bi-clausal phenomenon (cf. Kuno 1973; Shibatani 1978; Kuroda 1979). In other words, the passive morpheme rare is merged with a clause, and then the resulting item is combined with the subject. In this paper, however, we argue that the indirect passive is best understood as a mono-clausal phenomenon. We first point out that with some instances of the indirect passive, the passive morpheme rare is not understood as being combined with a verb or clause in syntax. Thus, we are led to assume that the lexicon contains numerous instances of the Vrare form. This implies that even when the passive morpheme rare is combined in syntax, it forms a constituent with the relevant verb; hence, the indirect passive is a mono-clausal phenomenon. We furthermore maintain that when the indirect passive involves the merging of rare with a verb in syntax, the verb must be a volitional verb, and demonstrate that this generalization, as well as the case particle alternation involved in the indirect passive, poses a challenge to the bi-clause analysis but not to the mono-clause analysis. Finally, we review one of the main arguments for analyzing the indirect passive to be a bi-clausal phenomenon, which concerns the antecedent of zibun. We show that it is inconclusive at best.

The goal of this paper is to reconcile the definite marking with the indefinite-like semantics of those superlatives that take a relative/comparative reading. Following Szabolcsi (1986) and Heim (1999), we will assume that the difference between absolute and relative readings of superlatives is represented at the syntactic level of semantic representation, LF (Logical Form). We will however depart from Heim’s hypothesis that what raises at LF is the superlative operator itself (EST). We will instead assume a quantificational-determiner analysis of EST, which involves two raising operations at LF: EST-raising to Spec,DP and raising of the whole superlative DP (Determiner Phrase) to a scope position in the sentence. We will examine the relative readings of quality superlatives. The generalizations and the proposed analysis are not assumed to extend to quantity superlatives.

This paper analyses Angela Carter’s desecrating tendency to taboo-breaking in thematic and formal terms. By referring to her short-fiction production and focusing on “John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore", I intend to show how gender/patriarchal and genre/authorial taboos are similarly broken and transmuted into daringly subversive outcomes. In line with her feminist agenda and postmodern transformism, Carter superbly challenges, sabotages, violates, de- and re-constructs traditionally codified sexual and gender taboos by mimicking such reversals through new narrative solutions. If diversity, multiplicity and change guarantee the continuity of life, incest can easily metaphorise a taboo relationship based on repetition of the identical, sameness, and immobility, to be finally transformed, if not avoided. Consistent with many of her female characters’ incestuous relationships with parents or siblings, Carter also establishes incest-like relationships with previous authors and narrative discourses, which she predatorily appropriates. Carter’s resulting narrative testifies to the fact that taboos must be first experienced to be eventually broken. It is in the dialectic between rule and infraction, taboo and its violation that Carter’s writing is rooted, constantly looking for borders to be crossed.

Designed as a paper reflecting on the editorial mediation of early modern French literary texts, this article maps the educational activities conducted on the Tragiques Inventions site since 2020. In particular, it delves into the procedures linked to documenting, generating and manipulating descriptive and analytical (meta)data. A new concept of ‘hand-reading’ is being developed – the possibility of using digital technology to prioritize human intervention in the construction of knowledge through textual editing. This concept will bring a fresh perspective on early modern literary texts.

There is a substantial body of scholarship arguing for the relevance of magic realism to Toni Morrison’s fictional production, with one exception being her last novel God Help the Child, which, in that respect, has been remarkably overlooked. The present paper intends to fill this scholarly gap by focusing on what Morrison called “enchantment”, a powerful blend of magic and realism that she employed to represent a host of racial and ancestral issues of Blackness, often of a traumatic kind.

Theo Padnos published My Life Had Stood A Loaded Gun in 2004, when Prison Studies were burgeoning and gaining academic attention globally. Neglected by critics, the book relates the author's experience as literature instructor in an American prison. Engaging methods of pedagogical research and reader-response criticism, the paper investigates the role of literature in the cultural activities of young male inmates in a medium security jail in Vermont. An original amalgam of crime reports, pedagogy of literature, and autobiographical criticism, Padnos' study for the first time confronts young criminals with a literary canon dripping with violence. The experiment sheds light on the reading activities of prisoners, on their and the author's social background, and on the power of American literature to speak to marginal groups.

Sylvia’s Lovers is a novel about war. It is a historical novel set in the years 1793-1800 during the Napoleonic wars, and written by Elizabeth Gaskell in the years 1859-1862 when the American Civil War broke out, in April 1861. Examining Gaskell’s correspondence with Charles Eliot Norton in the years 1861-63 and the articles Norton wrote in support of the War and the anti-slavery cause, this paper explores the way in which the news coming from America and the debates on the contemporary events left a significant mark on the second part of the novel. The implied reference to the context of the American Civil War would shed new light on Gaskell’s narrative choices concerning the plot and the main male character’s development, which has been substantially overlooked.

This paper deals with Latin discontinuous nominal expressions (hyperbatons) both by a diachronic perspective internal to Latin (I-VI cent. A.D.) and compared to Romance languages. A nominal expression can be considered discontinuous when its word order is interrupted by one or more elements. In these cases a violation of the principle of the ‘domain integrity’ takes place. Discontinuity is typical of Latin and sets it apart from Romance languages, in which hyperbatons are not allowed. It is well attested in all phases of Latin so that it is considered one of the most distinctive feature of Latin word order. In this paper, we explore the hypothesis that not all linearly discontinuous orders are real hyperbatons. In fact, cases in which the order Modif.-N or N-Modif. is interrupted by the complement of one of the two categories are frequent; in this perspective the domain of hyperbatons results consistently restricted. As regards real hyperbatons, we will propose the following three syntactic configurations: Type 1 due to the extraction of an element within the phrase; Type 2 due to the insertion of a weak element in second position; Type 3 due to the insertion of a verb. A final observation will concern the fact that we find in Latin kinds of hyperbatons that can be considered a clear sign of those that will develop later in Romance because they involve clitics which are absent in Latin.

This paper investigates the syntax of non-topicalized preverbal subjects in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). In BP, both locative PPs and locative DPs can occur in preverbal position: Na escola do Pedro aceita cartão de crédito; A escola do Pedro aceita cartão de crédito. In the latter case, the verb agrees with the locative. In BP, it is also possible to find non-argument constituents triggering verbal agreement, as in Essa estante cabe muitos livros. These sentences have been analysed as innovative constructions restricted to BP. This paper shows that some of the above structures are also present in other languages, e.g. Italian; not all of them are therefore innovative constructions of BP, and subcases need to be differentiated. The hypothesis is that sentences with preverbal non-argumental subjects have the same syntax as sentences with argumental subjects. What seems to occur in some cases is a modification in the verb thematic grid. We interpret BP’s “flexible diathesis” patterns as revealing that in this grammar, a variety of verbs have undergone a modification of their thematic grid which their counterparts in European Portuguese and other Romance languages did not.

Indefinite nominals can typically be modified by pre- or postnominal adjectives in Romance languages. With the exception of a small group of adjectives concerning physical or moral characteristics whose meaning changes according to their pre- or postnominal use, the position of an attributive adjective does not alter its meaning. However, prenominal adjectives in a Spanish indefinite trigger its specific interpretation, thus preventing its variable reading; the same phenomenon obtains also in Catalan. The aim of this paper is to discuss specific cases in some Sicilian dialects – mainly in the dialect of Delia (province of Caltanissetta) – in order to provide further evidence of the fact that prenominal evaluative adjectives force the specific interpretation of indefinites in Romance. Since Sicilian dialects do not typically display prenominal adjectives, this paper will therefore draw on elatives to check whether Sicilian shows a parallel restriction in the postnominal position.

This paper gives an account of the specific Venetian relationships of Andrea Zanzotto, with a particular emphasis on intensive dialogue with Carlo Della Corte (whose archive is housed at CISVe / Interuniversity Centre for Venetian Studies. A Zanzotto’s memoir on his friendship to Della Corte closes the paper.

In studies, more than forty, that the French academic Guy Tosi has dedicated to his favorite Italian author, Gabriele d’Annunzio, between 1942 and 1987, the name «Venice» appears many times. First, Venice is the city where d’Annunzio met French writers and artists: his translator Georges Hérelle, the musician Claude Debussy, the writer Maurice Barres, the dancer Ida Rubinstein. Secondly, Venice is associated primarily to the novel Il Fuoco that Guy Tosi has studied in numerous papers. Retracing these studies, importants also for the discovery of many previously unpublished documents (especially correspondences), this paper aims to highlight the main contribution of the French academic about contacts and reminiscences of French literature in the work of d’Annunzio.

The relationship between d’Annunzio and Pascoli, focused on Poemi conviviali and Alcyone, starts with the last lyric of d’Annunzio’s work, Il commiato, and the preface of Conviviali. The latter is a reply to d’Annunzio’s dedication and enunciates themes that, even if common to d’Annunzio, are developed with a different sensitivity and in a more direct comparison with classical sources. This is also reflected in lexical correspondences, for which it is difficult to identify debits and credits. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how Pascoli personally takes up and re-proposes d’Annunzio’s suggestions.

This essay analyses d’Annunzio’s sources in Rebora’s work – in one case, it is the other way around – showing the latter’s consciously argumentative use of the source author, whose words are borrowed to overturn their ethical value. Thus, from d’Annunzio’s precious aestheticism, these words move on to Clemente Rebora’s harsh, morally pregnant poetry, acquiring a whole new colour. Beside many examples of specific intertextual relations, concerning first Frammenti lirici and then Canti anonimi and Poesie sparse, this paper also includes in-depth analysis of the peculiar ideology underlying the two poets’ work. The results of this research, tapping also into the Concordance, are copious. The final part of the essay presents a reflection about the two authors’ mental and stylistic attitude with respect to the War, delineating unforgettable moral portraits.

In this paper aspects of the sibilant system in the variety spoken in the Germanic language island Sauris/Zahre in north-eastern Italy are presented. I investigate whether an intermediate, postalveolar “shibilant” (from Protogermanic */s/) in preconsonantal position is preserved from Middle High German as observed in other German minority languages in northern Italy. In Sauris/Zahre, in preconsonantal position a postalveolar realization is sometimes mentioned in literature, while in Modern Standard German and most related varieties in this position historical, postalveolar */s/ is retracted to palatoalveolar /ʃ/.

This paper focuses on the incipit of d’Annunzio’s plays written in French and first staged on French theatres. It analyses on one hand the thematic and structural link between the first scene of the play and the dramatic development and, on the other, the correspondences with French theatrical poetics.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the first chapter of Forse che sì forse che no (1910). D’Annunzio’s last novel brings together the myths of the technical age, celebrated by Futurism, and the conflicting forces of forbidden desire, debilitating eros, madness and fascination with the past. The structure of the chapter, after the beginning dedicated to the challenge of speed and the taste for danger, finds its centre of gravity in the long sequence of the visit to Palazzo Gonzaga, a scene from which variations on the themes of the double, incest, the decline of humanistic civilisation and a dense network of intertextual references unfold. Particular prominence is given to the comparison with Vernon Lee’s writings dedicated to Mantua and the labyrinth.

The influence of loubok (Russian popular print) on Dostoevsky’s works is a topic deserving more attention than has been given up to now. It makes us understand how Dostoevsky got inspiration from popular iconography. The present article could be a further contribution to this research topic; its aim being to investigate the recurrence in Dostoevsky’s poetics of a particular typology of popular print, showing how a wife beats her husband after he came back home drunk. This loubok spread widely through Russia (the peasant family version) and Germany (the cobbler version). In particular the German version, which had a wide readership thanks to the German printer G. Renner and was named “Der Blaue Montag” was undoubtedly known to Dostoevsky, since it was widespread in the very period he travelled through Germany. In this paper I will try to show how the Russian novelist caught not only the general setting but also some details from this version to describe Marmeladov’s home in the scene (I, 2) when he comes back home and faces a violent welcome from his wife Katerina Ivanovna.

The call for a “New Mythology” represents one of most controversial traits of German Romanticism. In the early works of F. Schlegel and F.W.J. Schelling, as in the so called Älteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus, mythology stands for the Utopia of a universal reorganization of knowledge, capable of founding, after the Legitimationskrise of the modern era, a new horizon of shared ideas and values. Starting from an investigation of the mythological form as legitimation instrument and utopian catalyzer, this paper aims to shed light on the historical genesis of the “new Mythology” and its outcomes.

This paper examines Heidegger’s Beiträge zur Philosophie with the aim of shedding light on its messianic-eschatological approach. Firstly, I take into account the formal structure of history through a reference to Aristotle’s grasp of κίνησις and its principles. I then try to connect this structure to the complex epochal movement of Universal History, as it emerges from Heidegger’s works in the ‘30s. Lastly, I deal with the concept of the last-God’s realm in order to stress the messianic dimension of Heidegger’s projects for the new humankind known as the Futurians.

In the interwar period, the Soviet Union experienced an unprecedented attention towards children’s literature. The October revolution was a driving force for all the arts and particularly for the editorial production aimed at forging the ‘new man’, embodied in the present moment by the younger generation. The CPSU increased its investment in all forms of publications – books, magazines, posters – and proposed them for mass production with the scope of educational engineering. Through an analysis of the literary and visual contents of the 1920’s issues of the magazine Murzilka, this paper aims at defining the characteristics of the new man as they appeared on the pages of one of the most popular magazines for children in Soviet Russia.

During the 1970s, the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) initiated a redefinition process of its political culture, deeply inspired by libertarian and anti-statist themes having its fulcrum in the idea of “self-management”. The paper aims not only to examine the ways in which the ideal of self-management is translated concretely into two fundamental areas of the political debate of the time, but also to understand the role played by the idea of self-management in the PSI’s evolution in a neoliberal sense.

Setting out from a poem that will be published as part of Elettra, this paper deals with the close relationship that exists among d’Annunzio’s Laudi since their first appearance in 1899. As a case study, I will focus on Ferrara, Pisa, Ravenna, later published as Città del silenzio.

The paper traces some general reflections on the problems, methods and perspectives of authorial philology applied to d’Annunzio’s work and in relation to some recent scientific contributions. Following Contini’s philological sensitivity, the d’Annunzio variant studies have dealt with a peculiar processing method that manifests itself almost instantly, in currenti calamo interventions. In critical editions, they are given an adequate representation through multilayered apparatuses and through the distinction between text prehistory and protohistory. The critical applications of these studies have since been the most attractive prospects for an investigation into the elaboration of d’Annunzio’s text.

In the contemporary literary universe, where the ‘commercial pole’ of literary field prevails over the ‘autonomous’ one, according to the dichotomy introduced by Pierre Bourdieu and furtherly developed by Pascale Casanova, the phenomena of so-called ‘world fiction’, has been becoming increasingly widespread. Considering that many readers read the works of fiction in order to experience the Other and the Alterity, the writers originating from or somehow related to peripheral cultures are expected to represent their cultures. The value of authenticity is attributed to their representations, even if the author’s autonomy is significantly limited by the rules of the chosen genre (‘world fiction’), and of the literary field they are trying to penetrate. Starting from these premises and focusing on the extraordinary success of two American writers of Balkan origin, Tea Obreht and Sara Nović, in this paper I will try to provide some answers to the following questions: what is the expected image of the Balkan in the USA literary field? Is the discourse of balcanism still present? And why do these images, although fictional, have an importance for the real world?

As a paratextual element, headlines occupy a prominent place in the layout of texts, thus performing a wide range of pragmatic functions. In journalistic articles, titles tend to serve as a bait to seduce readers who are offered multiple and varied proposals on account of the journalist macro-genre. This paper examines the type of headings that the writer J.F. Mira – anthropologist, Hellenist, novelist, and translator – has used in his journalistic essays over four decades of publications in multiple distinguished newspapers throughout the Catalan-speaking world. This broad period allows for an analysis that indicates a gradual transformation of the titles he chooses, characteristic that shows how titles mode brings together text and any specific sociocultural context. In addition, from this perspective, the Valencian writer invites readers – while selecting them – to discuss matters that shun both emergencies and frivolities of today’s social media.

The comedy Rodiana (Venice 1542), written by Andrea Calmo, opens with a quote in Greek from a passage of the Odyssey, uttered by a doctor from Rhodes. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the historical, linguistic, and cultural context of Venice in the mid-sixteenth century, during which Greeks and Greek language (ancient and spoken) played quite an important role. The analysis of the text allows to identify, albeit under the literary guise, some elements to understand several aspects of daily life in Venice in the age of Tintoretto.

The aim of this paper is to highlight the quotations and allusions to World War I and Resistance songs in I piccoli maestri, the second novel by Luigi Meneghello published in 1964.

This paper aims at providing a first research on the autobiography of the Venetian farmer Liberale Medici (1922-2016). The Medici’s work crossed the boundaries of private writing by winning the Premio Pieve in 1988, and, consequently, with its first publication, entitled Schola cantorum (Rome: Edizioni Live, 1989). Recently, it has been also comprehended in the anthology La vita è sogno (Milan: il Saggiatore, 2016). After highlighting the main linguistic features of this autobiography, the analysis focuses on its metaphorical devices, in order to survey its figurative language.

This short essay deals with the analysis of verb tenses’ functions in the language variety testified by the Atti del podestà di Lio Mazor. It is a series of judicial documents written at the beginning of the 14th century in a small village in the Venice Lagoon. They show an archaic state of language, in which the Simple Past is still productive, while nowadays in Northern Italy it has disappeared from the varieties spoken in the area, that use only the Present Perfect. In the 1980s, some typological studies on Romance languages identified in the expansion of the semantic functions related to the Present Perfect a diachronic process named aoristic drift. In this paper, we analyze the linguistic distribution between Present Perfect and Simple Past showed by the Atti in the light of the aoristic drift’s theory. We also integrate this theoric background by applying a refined textual analysis to the documents. The combination of linguistic theory and text analysis to investigate ancient language varieties is the innovative element of the present work, with respect to the traditional studies about aoristic drift.

The paper revolves around the well-known topic of the parodic remake of La pioggia nel pineto. Some new and unexpected elements are added to this subject, going from literature to music, from Paolo Buzzi and Montale to Armando Gill and Jovanotti. More finely, La pioggia sulla Fiera, poem composed by Alberto Cavaliere (who also wrote the successful Chimica in versi, in 1921), where the Dannunzian rain is transferred to Milan, is taken into consideration. There, the rain pours down on the XXXV Fiera Campionaria’s opening ceremony (1957), at the same time shaking flags and soaking different authorities, which are mentioned in the poem – sometimes in rhyme – as parts of a sharp and brilliant divertissement.

This paper presents the critical edition of the vernacular version of Tractatus de locis terre sancte, the Latin travel chronicle to the Holy Land written by Francesco Pipino (about 1270-1330), a Dominican friar best known for his Latin translation of Devisement dou Monde. The edition is based on the codex VI 56 (6140) (Venezia, BNM), which contains the only still known copy of this vernacular version.

The poem La Cuccagna by Giuseppe Lazzari was published during the Venetian Revolution of 1797. This paper will provide an edition based on its two extant copies as well as a commentary, whose aim is to contextualize the poem in regards to the historic events after the fall of the Republic of Venice. Inscribed in the long literary tradition of the ‘land of Cockayne’ or ‘feast of Cockayne’, the text exhibits nonetheless a significant deviation from its more traditional expressions. Taking advantage of the cuccagna’s meaning of wealth and freedom, the author praises Napoleon and the revolution, having faith in new social and political circumstances, while at the same time claiming for radical reforms.

This paper offers the critical edition of some letters and postcards written by the soldiers of Schio (Vicenza) during World War 1 to their priest Elia Dalla Costa (1872-1961). The language used is a type of Italian called ‘italiano popolare’ with the presence of Vicenza dialectal substrate.

D’Annunzio, according to a Gadda’s remarkable declaration, constituted one of the pillars of his own formation. This paper focused on the controversial relationship between Gadda and d’Annunzio: after an initial infatuation, the more grounded Gadda takes on openly critical and parodic positions (in his works, but especially in some sarcastic epistolary communications with Gianfranco Contini). This attitude, however, is not constant over time and leaves place for unequivocal appreciation of the overall figure and specific areas of d’Annunzio’s production.