The essay examines the use of the novella form in the poems following Ariosto, focusing on Bernardo Tasso’s Amadigi and Torquato Tasso’s Rinaldo. Through the analysis of selected episodes, it shows how the former openly embraces the narrative experiment initiated by Boiardo and Ariosto, while the latter arrives at more compromising solutions, favoring the technique of intercalated storytelling, and occasionally alluding to the novellas of the Inamoramento and the Furioso.

During the liberal era, from unification to the rise of fascism, many governments experimented with emergency legislation to control public order or repress the mobilization of opposing political groups. With the approval of the new penal code, political crimes remained an ill-defined offense. Consequently, Crispi and Di Rudinì implemented a state of siege on two separate occasions to condemn any attempt to spread values ​​and principles contrary to the old constitutional foundations of the Albertine Statute.

This article examines the manuscript Opp. Nn. 211 of the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, attributed to Antonio Baldinucci (1665-1717), as an exemplary case of Jesuit missionary preaching in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The thirteen “ragionamenti” it contains reflect the Ignatian tradition of the Spiritual Exercises and the Tridentine doctrine of penance, but above all they reveal a homiletic strategy centered on the stirring of the emotions. The rhetorical-stylistic analysis highlights the systematic use of biblical and patristic quotations, of similes drawn from everyday experience, of exempla and vivid imagery, as well as figures such as hypotyposis, apostrophe, and dialogismus, all aimed at intensifying the dramatic and performative dimension of the sermon. Conceived for oral delivery rather than for print, these sermons demonstrate how Jesuit rhetoric deliberately selected techniques of strong emotional impact, adapting them to a rural and uneducated audience in accordance with the principle of accommodatio. Far from being improvised discourses, the “ragionamenti” of the manuscript show a solid and purposeful rhetorical culture, which made visuality and emotion the cornerstones of missionary persuasion.

This article reviews Michele Donno’s book, Sulle tracce della Socialdemocrazia. L'altra storia dei socialisti italiani 1925-1964, which offers a counter-current reinterpretation of the role of democratic socialism in the early decades of the Italian Republic. The author challenges the entrenched "damnatio memoriae" that historically branded the 1947 Palazzo Barberini split as an opportunistic betrayal. Instead, Donno frames it as a conscious attempt to realign Italian socialism with European democratic standards, directly contrasting it with the PSI's anomalous alliance with the PCI and the Soviet Union. By bridging political history and the analysis of public policies (such as the management of the Marshall Plan), the book highlights the "hinge" and democratic guarantee function exercised by Giuseppe Saragat’s party (PSLI/PSDI). This minority force proved decisive both in securing Italy's adherence to the Western bloc in 1948, and in acting as a political incubator for the first organic center-left governments in the early 1960s. While vindicating the foresight of the social democrats' pro-European, Atlanticist, and reformist choices, the study does not conceal their structural vulnerabilities, including a chronic lack of financial resources, the failure to establish roots as a mass party, and its subsequent decline marked by political patronage. Ultimately, the work restores dignity to an autonomous political culture, inviting scholars to rethink the dynamics of stabilization and modernization in post-war Italy beyond traditional ideological frameworks.