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• The link between space and the individual in Petrarch and Leopardi

  38-45

  Julia Dabasi

  Views:

  190

  The interdisciplinary approach in history makes it possible to widen researchers’ perspectives. Italian literature is one medium in which we can reflect the relationship between geography, identity and imagination. John Agnew’s idea that ‘Place is a meaningful site that combines location, locale and sense of place’ conveys the main aspect of a ‘meaningful location’ and gives us a framework within which we can rethink space and place through Italian literature.1 In my research, I intend to examine the connections between identity and landscape, how experiences form the view of the environment through Giacomo Leopardi’s Infinity (1819) and Francis Petrarch’s letter of 26, April, 1336 in which he describes a vision about his ascent up Mount Ventoux. My main aim is to present how the impressiveness of nature becomes visible through the experiences of Leopardi and Petrarch, which is part of their existence. The mountain and the sea are key elements of these texts. The two places chosen and described by the poets have different significance: while Petrarch considered that the Mount Ventoux is the place of spiritual fulfilment, for Leopardi the hill of Recanati meant an isolated place where he could let his imagination roam free. All in all, this research offers new perspective to discover relationship between Italian literature and other disciplines in order to answer other, complex theoretical questions. I examined the topic from an interdisciplinary view to highlight the ways in which history, geography and literature can be linked.

• Secondary school adolescents: identity, languages and hereditary languages. The case of the provinces of Biella and Vercelli

  87-109

  Ruben Benatti

  Views:

  216

  This contribution is part of the tradition of heritage languages and linguistic and cultural identity. It mainly deals with the perception of the identity of students of non-Italian nationality or origin and their relationship with the language and the culture of origin, and those of the host community. More and more children and young people of non-Italian origin are present in Italian schools: the integration model pursued in Italy wants to respect cultural differences and language is one of the key elements of this process. The research concerned two provinces of Eastern Piedmont: Biella and Vercelli. Using a sociolinguistic and sociologic approach, a study was carried out through the administration of questionnaires concerning language and identity, the motivation towards integration, the perception and attitude towards one’s own language/culture of origin, and the Italian language/culture. The emerging picture presents sometimes ambiguous attitudes that can be defined almost as a “suspension” between the desire for “Italianisation” and the preservation of one’s roots. The research poses stringent questions schools and society are called to address on the construction (or reconstruction) of their own identity.

• The scrutineer and the Scriptures. Notes on Calvino's Bible

  132-145

  Antonio Sichera

  Views:

  52

  La giornata d’uno scrutatore is a fundamental text in Italo Calvino’s itinerary. It marks a divide between a before and an after. In fact, La giornata is placed between the fairytale Calvino and the ‘cosmicomic’ Calvino as a decisive and scandalous encounter with the reality of the body and with the texts of Scripture, in a strong and almost unthinkable nexus, which makes La giornata d’uno scrutatore a Calvinian unicum. To highlight the connection between the call of the body and the Bible is the task of this essay.

• Why read the French classics: Calvino and the lesson of the French masters

  119-131

  Marina Paino

  Views:

  73

  Calvino’s move to Paris in 1967 marks a new phase of his life, in which, inevitably, contact with French culture becomes closer and more direct. The essay examines the relationship that, during the years in Paris and in those of his return to Italy, the writer weaves with the great French classics, in scattered writings and within the Norton Lectures.

• Apollinaire and Ungaretti: towards the "fall" of modernity

  96-118

  Laura Giurdanella

  Views:

  189

  The relationship of esteem and affinity between Apollinaire and Ungaretti involves both biographical and literary levels. While critics have plentifully probed the direct biographical relationships – starting with the encounter of the poets in 1913 – and followed the progress of their friendship during the years of the First World War, the indirect contacts, i.e. those prior to Ungaretti’s arrival in Paris in 1912, would still seem unexplored. Moreover, over the years, various thematic connections have also been proposed; however, certain other thematic and textual tangencies could still reserve new and profitable insights into their hermeneutic key to modernity.