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Most grand tourists in the XIX century have visited the Reggia di Caserta and described it in their memories, as we can read in Caserta nei ricordi dei viaggiatori stranieri by Aniello Gentile (1980). During his travels through Italy in 1786-1787 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe remarked that the Reggia “is in perfect harmony with a region that is itself a garden” and contributed with his words to the celebration of the palace. Meanwhile another Spanish writer and dramatist, Leandro Fernández de Moratín, visited the Reggia in 1793 and wrote his memories in Viaje a Italia (published later on in 1867). It is very interesting to see the German and the Spanish man approaching to Italy, to Caserta, to the people, to art and nature. In our essay we are going to compare their point of view about the palace, the gardens, the famous aqueduct by Vanvitelli and the people they meet. Their feelings and their attitude are sometimes similar and sometimes different, they mostly represent two different worlds and cultural approaches. Our aim is to let them meet through a comparative method which is always very close to the text.

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to explore how participants with different motivations (educational or leisure), familiarity with the medium (newbies and active Twitter users), and participating instructions respond to a highly structured digital social reading (DSR) activity in terms of intensity of engagement and social interaction. Design/methodology/approach: A case study involving students and teachers of 211 Italian high school classes and 242 other Twitter users, who generated a total of 18,962 tweets commenting on a literary text, was conducted. The authors performed both a quantitative analysis focusing on the number of tweets/retweets generated by participants and a network analysis exploiting the study of interactions between them. The authors also classified the tweets with respect to their originality, by using both automated text reuse detection approaches and manual categorization, to identify quotations, paraphrases and other forms of reader response. Findings: The decoupling (both in space and time) of text read (in class) and comments (on Twitter) likely led users to mainly share text excerpts rather than original personal reactions to the story. There was almost no interaction outside the classroom, neither with other students nor with generic Twitter users, characterizing this project as a shared experience of “audiencing” a media event. The intensity of social interactions is more related to the breadth of the audience reached by the user-generated content and to a strong retweeting activity. In general, better familiarity with digital (social) media is related to an increase in the level of social interaction. Originality/value: The authors analyzed one of the largest educational social reading projects ever realized, contributing to the still scarce empirical research about DSR. The authors employed state-of-the-art automated text reuse detection to classify reader response.

Intervento contro la deriva del politicamente corretto e contro la censura dei testi letterari, segnatamente riguardo alla parola "negro"

Recensione di Enzo Traverso, La tirannide dell'io. Scrivere il passato in prima persona (trad. di Luca Falaschi, Laterza, 2022

Ritratto di Vittorio Spinazzola critico militante

Il testo indaga nella rappresentazione letteraria contemporanea delle donne che uccidono per difendersi. La modalità del crimine proposto nella finzione letteraria è il criterio con cui si dividono in tre gruppi alcuni romanzi del XXI secolo di autrici di origini diverse che condividono la scrittura femminile della violenza esercitata dalle donne. La loro origine e l'ambientazione di romanzi permette di tracciare una sorta di topografia della violenza femminile come forma de giustizia per propria mano., The text investigates the contemporary literary representation of women who kill to defend themselves. The mode of the crime proposed in literary fiction is the criterion by which some 21st century novels by authors of different origins who share the female writing of violence by women are divided into three groups. Their origins and the setting of novels allow us to trace a kind of topography of female violence as a form of justice at one's own hand., El texto investiga la representación literaria contemporánea de las mujeres que matan para defenderse. La modaldidad del crimen propuesto en la ficción literaria es el criterio por el que se dividen en tres grupos algunas novelas del siglo XXI de autoras de distinta procedencia que comparten la escritura femenina de la violencia de las mujeres. Sus orígenes y el escenario de las novelas permiten trazar una especie de topografía de la violencia femenina como forma de justicia por propia mano.

The Unknown and the Unnamed (not to mention the Anonymous). The denying of the name in Manzoni and Sciascia One of the main characters in Sciascia’s 1966 play I mafiosi is called «l’Incognito» (the Unknown). The rhetorical device of making a name of the absence of a name has different functions. L’«innominato» (the Unnamed), in Manzoni’s novel The Betrothed, personifies a positive transition, spiritual renewal and redemption. On the contrary, Sciascia’s Unknown is emblematic of the pledge to secrecy typical of a society built on the alliance between politics and organized crime.

It is 2021, the major social media have been around for more than a decade, increasingly being used for reading-related activities, like organizing one’s own bookshelf, discussing novels, and reading book reviews. Still, there is no publication that tried to organize the precious knowledge generated by research about digital social reading (DSR), which is scattered among many volumes, journal articles, and blog posts, intersecting many different disciplines. I tried to do it in this book. Given its broad scope, it will necessarily attract legitimate critics by different parts, from scholars that will think it does not meet specific disciplinary expectations. I think that such an interdisciplinary approach is needed to understand the social, cultural, and pedagogical aspects of DSR. Aware that a synthesis done by a single person can easily overlook even important aspects of a phenomenon, I openly share my work hoping that a community review will help to improve it and make it more useful for other researchers, students, educators, and curious readers.

Il volume raccoglie sessanta scritti su alberi arbusti erbe e fori descritti nelle loro caratteristiche botaniche, nei dettagli di forme e colori, nelle loro posture e qualità, accompagnate da riferimenti poetici e/o artistici: ogni varietà è colta attraverso gli occhi e le parole di poeti e scrittori di età, culture e paesi diversi, dall'Europa all'Estremo Oriente, dall'India alle Americhe. Ciò che queste pagine illustrano è un rapporto diretto e vivo con il mondo vegetale, con divagazioni, aneddoti, ricordi di persone e luoghi familiari. Questi scritti sollecitano un rinnovamento dello sguardo e del linguaggio, rispetto, empatia e curiosità verso il mondo vegetale.

Presence, flow, narrative absorption, immersion, transportation, and similar subjective phenomena are studied in many different disciplines, mostly in relation to mediated experiences (books, film, VR, games). Moreover, since real, virtual, or fictional agents are often involved, concepts like identification and state empathy are often linked to engaging media use. Based on a scoping review that identified similarities in the wording of various questionnaire items conceived to measure different phenomena, we categorize items into the most relevant psychological aspects and use this categorization to propose an interdisciplinary systematization. Then, based on a framework of embodied predictive processing, we present a new cognitive model of presence-related phenomena for mediated and non-mediated experiences, integrating spatial and temporal aspects and also considering the role of fiction and media design. Key processes described within the model are: selective attention, enactment of intentions, and interoception. We claim that presence is the state of perceived successful agency of an embodied mind able to correctly enact its predictions. The difference between real-life and simulated experiences (“book problem,” “paradox of fiction”) lays in the different precision weighting of exteroceptive and interoceptive signals.

This is a review and analysis of the questionnaires most used in empirical research about psychological phenomena labelled as “presence,” “flow,” and “narrative absorption,” mostly for experiences mediated by technology (printed books, screens for games and films, and virtual reality). The items of each questionnaire are categorized based on their wordings, thus independently from the conceptual models within which they have been developed. Overlapping concepts have been formulated in different fields according to specific disciplinary interests and based on knowledge within each field, this review focuses on how language is actually used in questionnaire items, rather than on how concepts are formulated top-down and arbitrarily associated with corresponding linguistic expressions that become items of a questionnaire. The goal is to highlight similarities and overlaps in order to show the aspects for which an interdisciplinary dialogue could bring concrete improvements to different research fields. Based on this categorization, various domains to which the items can be ascribed are identified (e.g. space, realism, agency, etc.) and psychological phenomena are linked to them (e.g. presence, social presence, narrative absorption, etc.). In the end, a synthetic selection of items is presented for each construct.

Prominent among the social developments that the web 2.0 has facilitated is digital social reading (DSR): on many platforms there are functionalities for creating book reviews, ‘inline’ commenting on book texts, online story writing (often in the form of fanfiction), informal book discussions, book vlogs, and more. In this article, we argue that DSR offers unique possibilities for research into literature, reading, the impact of reading and literary communication. We also claim that in this context computational tools are especially relevant, making DSR a field particularly suitable for the application of Digital Humanities methods. We draw up an initial categorization of research aspects of DSR and briefly examine literature for each category. We distinguish between studies on DSR that use it as a lens to study wider processes of literary exchange as opposed to studies for which the DSR culture is a phenomenon interesting in its own right. Via seven examples of DSR research, we discuss the chosen approaches and their connection to research questions in literary studies.

We present a virtual reality app specifically designed for reading/listening to short stories and poems. Empirical studies with VR narrative experiences have proven that the process of embodied simulation enhanced by the VR medium increases users’ absorption and engagement. Accordingly, this solution can be effectively used to promote reading and increase motivation for learning. We discuss the design choices adopted to facilitate its widespread adoption and maximise readers’ engagement with stories.

Discussing Dan Shen's narrative theory, I show how insight from literary criticism can be modelled into an “interpretation protocol” useful to start exploring the complexity of literary texts. Such model could thence used to design teaching modules about narrative theory, but also help in the implementation of machine-learning pipelines for the analysis of texts.

This paper presents the remediation of a nineteenth century Korean manuscript (the 1809 Uigwe) as an interactive digital experience using creative algorithms and gesture recognition developed by LG Electronics. The interactive media project we created using sound visualization invites visitors to jointly experience Joseon’s royal music and the manuscript’s pictorial illustrations. We present the media development process and the results of a survey assessing users’ engagement. Our findings show that technological remediation can be a fruitful way to elicit interest for cultural heritage. The Uigwe media project enhanced the participants’ curiosity for the 1809 Uigwe, and the added sound of the traditional court music (Yeominlak) and the images of the musical instruments increased users’ understanding of the 1809 Uigwe and of royal court music. Overall, the study provides evidence about the use of multisensory digital media for fostering learning about and cultural appreciation of historical artefacts.

Presence, flow, narrative absorption, immersion, transportation, and similar subjective phenomena are studied in many different disciplines, mostly in relation to mediated experiences (books, film, VR, games). Moreover, since real, virtual, or fictional agents are often involved, concepts like identification and state empathy are often linked to engaging media use. Based on a scoping review that identified similarities in the wording of various questionnaire items conceived to measure different phenomena, we categorize items into the most relevant psychological aspects and use this categorization to propose an interdisciplinary systematization. Then, based on a framework of embodied predictive processing, we present a new cognitive model of presence-related phenomena for mediated and non-mediated experiences, integrating spatial and temporal aspects and also considering the role of fiction and media design. Key processes described within the model are: selective attention, enactment of intentions, and interoception. We claim that presence is the state of perceived successful agency of an embodied mind able to correctly enact its predictions. The difference between real-life and simulated experiences ('book problem,' 'paradox of fiction') lays in the different precision weighting of exteroceptive and interoceptive signals.

Il saggio prende in considerazione le letture di Elsa Morante in ambito antropologico e etnografico, sulla base dei libri da lei posseduti e conservati nel Fondo Morante della Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma. L'attenzione riservata a Ernesto De Martino appare complessivamente modesta; assai più vivo è l'interesse che la scrittrice dimostra verso l'opera di Mircea Eliade, più consono alle sue inclinazioni e alla sua sensibilità. Fra i punti di contatto spiccano l'idea di storia e la fascinazione per la sapienza orientale.

In questo capitolo: • introdurremo il problema della rappresentazione e codifica digitale del testo • faremo una panoramica di alcuni metodi di critica letteraria assistita da strumenti computazionali • illustreremo il concetto di distant reading contestualizzan- dolo nel dibattito sui digital literary studies • presenteremo alcune possibilità offerte dalle tecnologie di- gitali per la creazione di opere letterarie, con riferimento ai concetti di digital fiction ed electronic literature • analizzeremo come il cambiamento delle modalità di lettura e scrittura portato dai media digitali (fanfiction e digital social reading) abbia effetto sull’esperienza estetica e sulla lette- ratura come istituzione (canone, ricezione, scuola)

A che cosa serve la letteratura? Qual è la sua funzione? L’ipotesi di questo libro è che per rispondere occorra allargare lo sguardo. Da un lato la letteratura dev’essere considerata come un caso particolare di uso creativo – «poetico» – della parola: come manufatto verbale non legato a una situazione contingente, qui e ora, e quindi incline a durare nel tempo. Dall’altro, l’esistenza di usi non immediatamente strumentali del linguaggio si può spiegare soltanto in una prospettiva di lunghissimo periodo, cioè ragionando su come, nel corso della sua evoluzione, il genere umano abbia elaborato strategie di sopravvivenza che lo hanno distinto dagli altri primati. L’indagine ripercorre le principali tappe della nostra storia evolutiva, insistendo sul principio che ogni innovazione costituisca una risposta a pressioni ambientali, e che superando una difficoltà si possono provocare nuovi squilibri e ulteriori esigenze. La conclusione è che, in ultima analisi, la ragion d’essere di quello che chiamiamo «letteratura» consiste nelle opportunità che essa fornisce di affinare, corroborare, estendere le nostre competenze sociali. Un’opera letteraria è un po’ come una cassetta di attrezzi, che offre la possibilità di dar senso a quanto accade, dentro e fuori di noi. Sta poi ai lettori di fare un uso vantaggioso di quanto avranno appreso o intuito sul mondo, sugli altri, su sé stessi.

We analyse stories in Harry Potter fan fiction published on Archive of Our Own (AO3), using concepts from cultural evolution. In particular, we focus on cumulative cultural evolution, that is, the idea that cultural systems improve with time, drawing on previous innovations. In this study we examine two features of cumulative culture: accumulation and improvement. First, we show that stories in Harry Potter’s fan fiction accumulate cultural traits—unique tags, in our analysis—through time, both globally and at the level of single stories. Second, more recent stories are also liked more by readers than earlier stories. Our research illustrates the potential of the combination of cultural evolution theory and digital literary studies, and it paves the way for the study of the effects of online digital media on cultural cumulation.

The primary use of metadata is the retrieval of the correct kind of information searched by a user. In the case of self-archived fandom the burden of metadata generation is distributed among authors, who upload, label, and publish their work in archives such as the Archive of Our Own (AO3). AO3 implemented an excellent system of tags management with which authors can specify tags for characters, relationships, and additional freeform tags for any use they may think of. Moreover, specialized volunteers, called “wranglers,” aggregate synonym tags: e.g. “harrypotter” and “Harry Potter”. In order to benefit from AO3 tags aggregation, but also to improve it for research purposes, I used the software Protégé (Musen, 2015) and the Web Ontology Language (OWL) to replicate AO3-generated ontology for the Harry Potter fandom, adding further subclasses and properties. In particular, freeform tags offer authors the possibility to make explicit in the metadata any relevant aspect of the story, like a psychological trait of a character (e.g. “Morally grey Harry Potter”), a narrative strategy (e.g. “point of view of Draco”), a setting (e.g. “Diagon Alley”), a timeframe (e.g. “post first war with Voldemort”), etc. A distant reading of fanfiction through the lens of tags has benefits that go beyond the understanding of a widespread – and growing – cultural phenomenon. Data driven insights from research on AO3 can be used to formulate better hypotheses regarding the evolution of other cultural systems – like literary classics or genre fiction – and to more strategically plan labour-intensive and time-consuming tasks like manual annotation of textual corpora.

This contribution presents the process of designing a virtual environment for reading using a VR headset. The aim is to set up an environment that invites readers to experience Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in a new way. Our VR literature concept explores the idea of books as worlds to enter. Its central questions concern how to design new media to enliven older media forms of literature. Decisions taken in the design process concern the shape given to the portions of text displayed, as well as their flow and localization in a virtual 3D space. The hypotheses to be tested in upcoming research are whether this kind of literary experience can attract new readers and help them to be more absorbed in the story – more focused and emotionally engaged – and establish a more vivid memory of what they read. This article is a description of hypotheses about how to design a VR reading environment so as to achieve these results.

The end of deep reading is a commonplace in public debates, whenever societies talk about youth, books, and the digital age. In contrast to this, we show for the first time and in detail, how intensively young readers write and comment literary texts at an unprecedented scale. We present several analyses of how fiction is transmitted through the social reading platform Wattpad, one of the largest platforms for user-generated stories, including novels, fanfiction, humour, classics, and poetry. By mixed quantitative and qualitative methods and scalable reading we scrutinise texts and comments on Wattpad, what themes are preferred in 13 languages, what role does genre play for readers behaviour, and what kind of emotional engagement is prevalent when young readers share stories. Our results point out the rise of a global reading culture in youth reading besides national preferences for certain topics and genres, patterns of reading engagement, aesthetic values and social interaction. When reading Teen Fiction social-bonding (affective interaction) is prevalent, when reading Classics social-cognitive interaction (collective intelligence) is prevalent. An educational outcome suggests that readers who engage in Teen Fiction learn to read Classics and to judge books not only in direct emotional response to character’s behaviour, but focusing more on contextualised interpretation of the text.

Il buon funzionamento di una storia dipende in buona misura dalla figura del cattivo. Se è vero che non si dà trama senza la necessità di superare un ostacolo, identificare l’ostacolo con una volontà individuale, cioè con una persona in carne e ossa, è una delle strategie compositive più efficaci. Ma oltre a svolgere la funzione di antagonisti nell’intreccio, i cattivi risultano spesso attraenti, se non addirittura simpatici. Quali sono le ragioni di questo fenomeno? E come cambia, nel tempo, la distanza fra personaggi positivi e personaggi negativi? Forse i primi decenni di questo secolo segnano anche una nuova tendenza alla polarizzazione. Forse è finito il tempo in cui si trovava sempre qualcosa dell’eroe nel cattivo e qualcosa del cattivo nell’eroe. Sono tornati i cattivi-cattivi?

Review of Baroni, Raphaël, I meccanismi dell'intreccio. Introduzione alla narratologia funzionale. Effigi, 2020.

Recensione a Trevor Cox, A ciascuno la sua voce. Come parliamo e ascoltiamo dai Neanderthal all'intelligenza artificiale

L'emergenza pandemica rimette in discussione i principi che regolano la vita sociale. L'articolo propone una distinzione fra logica della produttività e logica della sopravvivenza, indicando nella cultura umanistica e nella ricerca scientifica di base i fattori essenziali per preservare la biodiversità culturale e per promuovere la formazione alla cittadinanza

Recensione a Michael Corballis, La verità sul linguaggio (per quel che ne so), Carocci, Roma, 2020

La fortuna della narrativa d’investigazione non cessa di stupire: è probabile che nella nostra cultura il tema dell’indagine abbia preso gran parte del posto che nella cultura premoderna era tenuto da tema del combattimento. Una variante del combattimento è il confronto verbale, che alimenta il sottogenere delle storie giudiziarie. Questo articolo prende in esame il primo film di Sidney Lumet, La parola ai giurati (12 Angry Men, 1957), mettendo in evidenza la cellula germinale dell’intreccio. In una giuria popolare dove tutti sono convinti della colpevolezza dell’imputato, un giurato si dissocia, non perché abbia solide ragioni per sostenere la sua innocenza, ma per una ragione di principio: la giuria non può decidere del suo destino senza dedicargli il giusto tempo. Un monito più che mai attuale, in tempi di comunicazioni precipitose e superficiali: e insieme, l’avvio di una riflessione molto simile ai procedimenti della critica letteraria., The continuing success of detective fiction is amazing: investigation has apparently replaced combat as a fundamental topic of narrative. A variant of this theme is verbal confrontation, which feeds the subgenre of court-room fiction. This article, devoted to Sidney Lumet’s first movie, 12 Angry Men (1957), highlights the seed from which the plot unfolds. In a jury where everybody thinks that the accused is guilty, a single juror braves to disagree. He doesn’t know if the accused is innocent, but strongly believes that the jury owes him some time before deciding on his fate. This warning sounds more appropriate than ever in our times of rash and superficial communications and triggers a discussion quite similar to the methods of literary criticism.

L'articolo presenta le novità della particolare lettura che Cesare Garboli appronta su trenta poesie famigliari selezionate nella vasta produzione pascoliana. Di quest'operazione condotta per lo più su ritagli di sartoria, cioè su testi non canonici, sono messe in rilievo l'originalità e il peculiare modus operandi del critico che riesce a dare del poeta un ritratto innovativo condotto sia sulla straordinaria "Cronologia", puntualissima e divertente, sia sul commento ai testi, filologico e godibile al tempo stesso.