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• Franco Zangrilli, II piacere di raccontare. Pavese dentro il fantastico postmoderno

  132-136

  Biagio Coco

  Views:

  121

  Franco Zangrilli, II piacere di raccontare. Pavese dentro il fantastico postmoderno

• Max Gobbo and the fantasy rewrite of a Renaissance period

  122-130

  Franco Zangrilli

  Views:

  136

  The paper examines thè characteristics of Max Gobbo’s writing in his fantasy novel Alasia - The Iron Maiden. The novel is set in a dystopian XVI century Italy infested by demons, vampires and other strange creatures. The novel unfolds in a clear and flowing prose, supported by a simple and effective writing, expressing thè complexity of a world of darkness, in thè hands of devils. It is full of suspense, of comings and goings, of mythical evocations, as of dramatic moments and a humorous multitone irony.

• Spiritualism and positivism in Luigi Capuana's short narrative

  Debora Bellinzani

  Views:

  297

  Luigi Capuana believed in the immortality of the soul as conceived by theosophical theories, as well as in the perceptibility of the manifestations of the spirits. At the same time, his short stories and essays reflect his faith in the positivistic approach and in experimental sciences. During a period that sees the proliferation of seances evoking spirits, Capuana writes his only four short stories that depict the perceptible manifestation of a ghost. In Creazione (1901), La evocatrice and Forze occulte (1902), and Un vampiro (1904), the spirits appear and show a noticeable originality when compared to the ones that haunt contemporary ghost stories. By examining the structure of the mystery through Freud’s “uncanny”, and by exploring the content of the stories through Capuana’s key science concepts, the analysis will demonstrate how the subtraction of mystery as well as the reflection on science create a common literary ground where Spiritism and Positivism can surprisingly coexist. On that ground, the scientific openness to the discoveries of the Twentieth Century emerges with the strength of reassuring ghosts.

• Cogas, janas and the others: mythical and fantastic creatures in Sardinian literature and cinema

  56-76

  Myriam Mereu

  Views:

  271

  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.