Search

Search Results

• The polygenesis of the subject: from Ovid to the modern and back

  177-185

  Attilio Scuderi

  Views:

  36

  The Essay reconstructs, in a longue durée Perspective, the Polygenetic Process of «the Birth of the Self», from the Classic Theme in Plauto and Ovidio, through Dante, the Medieval commedia elegiaca, and the Humanistic Tradition of “Cantari”, up to the Florentine Scene and the Machiavellian Turn. As a conclusion, the Subject is not a Modern Invention, but a continuous and open Phenomenon of Rediscovery in Western Culture.

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

  Laura Lupo

  Views:

  207

  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.