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• Staying or leaving? On the non-stereotypical representations of Naples

  36-53

  Antonio Sciacovelli

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  373

  The literary image of Naples, “Capital of the South”, that sees periodic alternations of crisis and splendour in the arts, is certainly dichotomous: on the one hand the locus amoenus in which inventiveness flourishes and different cultural traditions intersect and live together, on the other the symbolic place of immense social disparities, an outbreak of epidemics and the cradle of a lax and reactionary mentality. The image used by Benedetto Croce to define the city, “a paradise inhabited by devils” dates back to the Middle Ages, and is denied from time to time by the authors who intend to build a positive myth of Napoletanità, but already in the early 20th century, and then especially in the period from 1943 (to the present day), there are increasingly critical accents towards this image, which result - more than in hatred or in contempt for the city and its inhabitants - in a tendency to move away from Naples, to abandon a contradictory reality that does not solve its problems, but like a virgin forest grows back destroying every element of progress. The writers examined in the article are: Carlo Bernari, Anna Maria Ortese, Raffaele La Capria, Fabrizia Ramondino, Ermanno Rea, Giuseppe Montesano, Elena Ferrante.

• «In piedi, guardando dal finestrino». Memoria, parola, corpo nell’immaginario ferroviario di Leonardo Sciascia

  73-84

  Andrea Schembari

  Views:

  64

  A disruptive and recurring image in Italian novels and novellas, starting from the mid-nineteenth century, the train assumes, in the work of Leonardo Sciascia, a peculiar function, not simply thematic. Linked to the indelible memory of the first journey of his childhood, the train soon becomes, for the writer from Racalmuto, a topos to resort to for the representation of some of the literary motifs dearest to him: the exercise of memory, the power of the word, the joy of bodies. Through the textual findings considered most significant, the contribution intends to offer a representative exemplification of the arguments proposed.