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• «Siete voi qui, ser Brunetto?» .The faces of Brunetto Latini Representation and self-representation

  96-107

  Noemi Ótott

  Views:

  174

  As in portrait (attributed to Giotto) of Brunetto Latini and Dante Alighieri, history has tended to pair the two poets, who were both exiled from their native Florence. The role played by Brunetto Latini in Florence’s history paralleled that of the orator Cicero in Republican Rome and Dante, his student, was Florence’s Virgil. The famous “Brunetto’s Song” (Canto XV of Inferno) has generated many controversies, determined and justified by an uninterrupted and secular reflection. The encounter between the protagonist-traveler and his master has great importance also from the point of view of the creation of The Divine Comedy. But the old florentine intellectual does not only appear in this canto: in fact, he is the author and, at the same time, the protagonist of the famous opera Il Tesoretto, a didactic-allegorical poem written in volgare. In my study I focus on the figure of Brunetto Latini and on his representation by Dante. At first I examine the protagonist Latini: how he appears in the canto and what his part is in The Divine Comedy. Then I concentrate on the author Latini and I try to identify the poet’s voices in the texts and descriptions according to the context.

• Monicelli and the memory of the Great War

  125-139

  Giovanni De Leva

  Views:

  636

  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.

• Between description and re-enactment: fantasies of a return to the South in the short stories of Giovanni Verga

  Laura Lupo

  Views:

  226

  In his works, Giovanni Verga does not depict Sicily through an accurate description of reality, but through a mental representation of the same from the distant city of Milan, where he lives. Beyond the borders of Sicily, modernity devours characters, whose destiny is not described by Verga. He is the only one allowed to move in this space “di là del mare” (lit.“beyond the sea”), from which he observes “dall’altro lato del cannocchiale” (lit. “as from the other side of the telescope”) the “larve” (lit. larvae) that live in the island. The purpose of this article is to show how Fantasticheria, I dintorni di Milano, Di là del mare, and Passato! have as a common ground a process of recreation of Sicily as a place linked to a past that is never coming back, so the island is described from an idealized and nostalgic perspective. Modernity is indeed a condition as irreversible as death, which, in Passato!, appears as a ruthless conclusion of this process of reconstruction. 

• The Last Mother: From Enrico Pau’s L’accabadora (2015) to Valeria Golino’s Miele (2013)

  85-95

  Bernadette Luciano

  Views:

  281

  L'accabadora, is a Sardinian term deriving from the Spanish word 'acabar' which means to finish or complete. It refers to a female figure in Sardinian popular tradition, 'the last mother', an angel of mercy who assists the terminally ill in leaving the world. In this paper I explore variations of this female figure in two contemporary films. Enrico Pau's film L'accabadora set in pre- and World War II Sardinia, revolves around a protagonist (Annetta) who is a direct descendant of this Sardinian tradition. The second film, Valerio Golino's Miele, proposes what might be considered a contemporary variant of the Sardinian folk figure. While the tabu subject of euthanasia certainly forms the backdrop to the films, what is foregrounded is the isolation and alienation of the female protagonists who carry out care-giving roles tied to death. Torn between the conviction that the tasks they perform as “last mothers” console or provide final moments of serenity to the dying and an intangible discomfort with their execution of the task, they remain seemingly haunted by their roles, exhibiting an unease that arises from societal discomfort with administering death and a profession that requires that they direct their care to the dying rather than to the living. The representation of the films’ protagonists, their framing and the construction of the journeys they undertake, turn both films into narratives of self-discovery, motivated by encounters with others and otherness, and visually configured by the physical mobility across transformed geo-political landscapes that is central to the films.

• Sardinia of linguists and Sardinia for tourists: discursive consonances and dissonances at the beginning of the twentieth century

  10-29

  Diego Stefanelli

  Views:

  207

  The aim of this contribution is to tackle an already highly researched subject by adopting a fairly unprecedented perspective. I would like to concentrate on the representation of Sardinia in one of the most important historical moments for the construction of the image of the island in a modern perspective: the first decades of the twentieth century. I will try to make two apparently distant text types interact: tourist guides and travel reports written by linguists. I will focus on two prototype examples: on one hand the Reisebilder aus Sardinien by Max Leopold Wagner; on the other, the Touring Club Guide dedicated to Sardinia, written by Luigi Vittorio Bertarelli. My intent is to trace the similarities and differences of the two textual typologies in presenting a region at the time universally imagined (and narrated) as different, atypical and in any case "peculiar". In doing so, I will also try to highlight continuity and discontinuity with respect to the nineteenth-century representative methods.

• Ondina and the ondine: Representation issues (verbal and iconographic) of the sporty woman in fascist Italy (ca. 1933)

  140-160

  Marco Giani

  Views:

  579

  In late 1933, L'Osservatore Romano fuelled an argument against Il Littoriale, mouthpiece of the Fascist sport policy, about women’s sport: the Vatican Italian-speaking newspaper was against the public women’s athletic meetings, and the “immoral” shorts dressed by the young Italian athletes, such as Ondina Valla, going-to-be the first Italian woman to win an Olympic gold medal (1936, Berlin). Which was the situation of Italian female sports, at that time? Which was the influence of new women models coming from US? What was considered “immoral” by conservative people in 1933 Italy watching a women’s athletic or swimming meeting? How Hollywood stars could help Ondina and her mates on the road of female emancipation? These are the questions this essay is going to answer, helped by a lot of historical images, useful to reconstruct a whole collective imagination.

• «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.

• “I can't write English, not even Italian... give me any 'giobba'": the Italian emigrants in the theater of Nino Randazzo

  56-68

  Marzia Caria

  Views:

  191

  The paper examines the cultural, social and linguistic representation of Italians emigrated to Australia in the writing for the theatre of Nino Randazzo, a playwright of Aeolian origin, who emigrated to Melbourne in 1952, considered one of the most important and prolific authors in the context of the so-called “letteratura dell’emigrazione”, and more particularly the Italian-Australian literature in italian language. Of particular interest is the theme of cultural and social prejudices of Anglo-Australians towards people of Italian origin, labelled as ignorant, impossible to acculturate and to discipline, largely linked to criminal organizations, which mostly speak a mixed variety of Italian and English. Thus, in particular, in the comedy Il Sindaco d’Australia (1981), in which the stereotypical (but hilarious) image of the emigrant from the south of Italy, impulsive and ambitious, characterized on a linguistic level by the use of Italian-Australian terms; and in the comedy Victoria Market (1982), conceived by Randazzo as a protest against the tendency on the part of Anglo-Australians to build stereotypes towards Italian-Australians, in this case the one that Italian equals mafioso. Randazzo’s theatre, however, manages to distinguish itself from the works of the majority of first-generation Italian-Australian playwrights for its attempt to demystify such prejudices and clichés in an enjoyable way. It is in the choice of a popular tone of comedy, also achieved through the skilful mixing of more traditional Italian forms with Italian-Australian terms typical of the years in which the narrated events are set, that the specific aspects in this author lay.

• "Locking in one's own troubles": the "code of closure" in Mastro-don Gesualdo

  47-59

  Luigi La Grua

  Views:

  238

  In Mastro-don Gesualdo the body and the gesture are the main mean through which Verga’s writing allows the «unveiling» of the characters’ inner life to the reader. This paper aims to describe how the characters of the novel, consistently with the social processes that Verga intends to represent, live a form of closure to communication that finds its most «exact» representation in silence and, concerning the body, in the pose of the turned shoulders.

• Un esperimento didattico. Tre parole per Dante: esilio, desiderio, destino

  8-16

  Carmelo Tramontana

  Views:

  137

  The article, starting from a brief reflection on Dante’s 2021 anniversary, attempts to offer an overall representation of the author Dante through a concentrated form that mixes scientific precision and brevitas, symbolic concentration and narration; the study therefore presents itself as an experiment that takes place halfway between public discourse and scientific discourse on Dante, in that intermediate area, of equally cultural and political value, which is teaching

• "Nordic Mists" on the Strait. The roots Northern Sicilian Romanticism

  28-46

  Daniela Bombara

  Views:

  167

  The present essay aims at tracing the influences of Northern European Romanticism on the works of some Sicilian authors of the early Nineteenth century. The objective is to debunk the myth of a “lower” level of the Italian Romantic literature when compared to the Nordic literature, as it is not focused on the representation of the dark areas of the self, of supernatural, fantastic, and irrational themes that are present in reality. Some ballads by Felice Bisazza (1809- 1867) and Vincenzo Navarro (1800- 1867) are examined. In these works the narration of popular legends highlights a ghostly and horrifying universe, mirroring real situations, such as the violence of the noble class and patriarchy, or the injustice of social inequality. A play by Giuseppe La Farina (1815- 1863), entitled L’abbandono di un popolo (1845), will be then considered; the author portrays the anti-Spanish revolt of 1676 in Messina by focusing on the disturbing and underground forces that intersect with the revolutionary movements. Lastly, the production by Tommaso Cannizzaro (1838- 1921) as translator will be analyzed: the writer makes the fascinating world of Scandinavian mythology available to the Sicilian and Italian public, through the translations of some cantos by the medieval Edda antica.