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

  Laura Lupo

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  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. 

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

  119-131

  Marina Paino

  Views:

  103

  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.

• "And I am in that number, even though it is useless": friendship between Lapo Mazzei and Francesco Datini

  120-135

  Gloria Camesasca

  Views:

  156

  The notary Lapo Mazzei (1350-1412) was a correspondent of the merchant of Prato Francesco di Marco Datini (1335 about-1410). Mazzei’s letters written to Datini from 1390 to 1410 and published by Cesare Guasti (1822-1889) are an important source because they return a significant cross-section of life and personal relations of a merchant and a notary lived in Tuscany at the end of the fourteenth century. The aim of this paper is to analyze the friendship between Mazzei and Datini and other important figures through the study of notary’s letters