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• Cogas, janas e le altre: le creature mitiche e fantastiche nella letteratura e nel cinema sardi

  56-76

  Myriam Mereu

  Views:

  243

  Sardinian contemporary literature and films have recently recovered an extensive heritage of folk myths and legends taken from the oral tradition. Legendary figures, such as accabadoras (female figure who was enabled with the task of easing the sufferings of the dying people), and fantasy creatures, such as cogas, surbiles (‘vampire witches’), janas (‘fairies, pixies’), and panas (‘the ghosts of women who died in childbirth’) are being revived by writers and film directors with the purpose to bring their memory back to life and share it with a wide audience of readers and spectators.

  The analysis of imaginary and legendary creatures in Sardinian contemporary literature cannot overlook orality and its central role in shaping popular imagination over the centuries. Writing has replaced orality, whilst mass media and digital media are getting the upper hand over storytelling as a practice of community and family aggregation, meant to mark the long working hours and scare the children, amongst the most common functions of Sardinian oral storytelling. 

  The literary corpus includes fairy tales, novels, tales and legends dealing with the Sardinian oral tradition, whilst on the cinematic side I will examine short films, feature films and documentaries made in Sardinia over the last fifteen years.

• Monicelli e la memoria della Grande Guerra

  125-139

  Giovanni De Leva

  Views:

  599

  In my essay, I examine Mario Monicelli’s La Grande Guerra, in order to verify if its comic and anti-heroic perspective really leads to a new concept of WWI. I first retrace the director’s previous filmography, where the characters, genres and patterns which will recur in La Grande Guerra originally take shape. I then reconstruct the movie’s genesis, focusing on the sources the screenwriters refer to: not only WWI movies and memories, such as Kubrick’s Paths of Glory and Lussu’s Un anno sull’Altipiano, but also, quite unexpectedly, La vita militare by De Amicis.

  On this basis, I analyse the representation of the war, in its figurative and narrative elements. In many senses, it’s a war seen from the ground, and indeed the scenography and script take inspiration from the soldiers’ pictures of the front and their military songs. In this realistic context, Monicelli develops the plot of two cowardly privates, from a poor, undisciplined background, who ultimately identify with their nation enough to sacrifice themselves for their compatriots.

  The purpose of highlighting the unacknowledged war contribution of the mass, however, is somehow contradicted by the army’s image. The comic and anti-heroic aspects, indeed, concern only the low-ranked soldiers, while the Command is represented in a sentimental way. In this respect, Monicelli confirms a rhetoric coming from De Amicis, and later inherited by Fascism: the army as an image of a model society, where North and South, rich and poor, educated and illiterate unite, and where everyone deserves his hierarchical rank.

• Sardegna tra leggenda e realtà: ‘Sa femmina accabadora’, colei che dà la buona morte, nelle immagini e nelle parole di alcuni autori sardi

  77-84

  Gisella Murgia

  Views:

  466

  The term accabadora refers to a woman entrusted with the task of facilitating the passing of the dying people. She killed for pity, called by the families of the patients to relieve their sufferings on their own deathbed. Basically, she practiced a sort of ante litteram euthanasia. But that carried out by the woman was also a necessary action for the survival of relatives who, most of the time, did not have the necessary resources to alleviate the sufferings of the kinsmen. Furthermore, in small towns, the doctor was often several days away on horseback. While the accabadora took life away, on the other hand, she gave it back, helping the women of her community to give birth. Everyone in the village knew the activity of these women but all of them were silent. They were convinced that the work of the accabadora was a meritorious work because it took the burden of putting an end to the sufferings of the patient. They implicitly recognized in it a social utility. After outlining the figure of 'sa fèmmina practica', this report analyses some works by Sardinian authors who are interested in it. Above all, we will mention the novel by Michela Murgia, Accabadora (Campiello prize 2010); the film by Enrico Pau, L'accabadora; the novels L’ultima agabbadòra by Sebastiano Depperu and L'agabbadora. La morte invocata by Giovanni Murineddu; the short film Deu ci sia by Gianluca Tarditi, winner of the 2011 Golden Globe at 48th New York Film Festival; Ho visto agire s’accabadora by Dolores Turchi; Eutanasia ante litteram in Sardegna. Sa femmina accabadora by Alessandro Bucarelli and Carlo Lubrano and S’accabadora e la sacralità del femminino of Maria Antonella Arras.

• Dizionari, sinonimia e marche d’uso

  108-122

  Maurizio Trifone

  Views:

  271

  La straordinaria ricchezza della lingua italiana non sempre viene adeguatamente valorizzata dai dizionari. Nell’epoca della digitalizzazione del dizionario continuano a sopravvivere procedimenti definitori che andrebbero ormai messi al bando. I participi presenti o passati che abbiano anche funzione di aggettivo (per es. nascente) sono talvolta definiti con la formula «Nei significati del verbo». I nomi deaggettivali indicanti qualità, condizione o stato (per es. ordinarietà) sono spesso definiti con la formula “l’essere + aggettivo di base (ordinario)”. Queste definizioni, la cui valenza informativa è pressoché nulla, non rendono certo un buon servizio al lettore. Del tutto diversa è l’impostazione di un dizionario dei sinonimi, che deve cercare di orientare il lettore nel dedalo delle possibili alternative lessicali con l’intento di aiutarlo a trovare i termini più adatti per esprimere le diverse sfumature di uno stesso concetto. La ricerca delle equivalenze semantiche diventa in tal modo una scoperta delle differenze, più o meno rilevanti, che esistono tra una parola e l’altra. Di essenziale importanza a tale riguardo è la funzione delle marche d’uso: la distinzione tra parole fondamentali, parole di alto uso, parole di alta disponibilità e parole comuni, utilissima in molti ambiti, non è di grande aiuto per uno scrivente interessato a informazioni di carattere stilistico. La classificazione per fasce di frequenza non ci avverte per es. che volto è di registro più elevato rispetto a faccia, autovettura è di registro più formale rispetto a macchina, cinematografo nel senso di ‘sala cinematografica’ è antiquato rispetto a cinema.