Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1080/00751634.2023.2217596
C. Dellacasa
ABSTRACT Italo Calvino travelled to Japan in 1976 and, throughout his career, became increasingly acquainted with Japanese literature and Buddhist philosophy. This encounter is evidenced by the ‘Japanese shelves’ of his Roman library and by several authorial reflections, which this article scrutinises in order to highlight the material-ecocritical relevance of Calvino’s contact with Japanese nature and culture. In particular, this analysis interprets Japanese gardens as spaces where Calvino rethinks his sense of the human and more-than-human by establishing their mutually constitutive relations. Augustin Berque’s concept of ‘trajectivity’, according to which dualisms are constantly transcended in Japanese milieux, guides this exploration of how Calvino’s Japanese reflections in Collezione di sabbia articulate his dialectical challenge to logocentrism in ‘The Written World and the Unwritten World’, to gendered dichotomies in the Japanese chapter of Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore, and to traditional humanism in Palomar.
伊塔洛·卡尔维诺于1976年前往日本，在他的职业生涯中，他对日本文学和佛教哲学越来越熟悉。他的罗马图书馆的“日本书架”和一些作者的反思证明了这种遭遇，本文仔细审查，以突出卡尔维诺与日本自然和文化接触的物质生态批评相关性。特别是，这一分析将日本花园解释为卡尔维诺通过建立相互构成的关系来重新思考他对人类和超越人类的感觉的空间。Augustin Berque的“轨迹”概念，根据二元论在日本环境中不断被超越，指导了卡尔维诺在《Collezione di sabbia》中的日本反思如何表达他对“书面世界和未书面世界”中的逻各斯中心主义的辩证挑战，对日本章节中的性别二分法的挑战，以及对帕洛玛的传统人文主义的挑战。
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Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/00751634.2023.2185435
C. Barni
ABSTRACT Modern scholars regard La Veniexiana as an apolitical, erotic play, relevant only because women are active leaders of the love game in a patriarchal reversal. Through a close reading of the comedy based on its socio-political context, this article challenges this view. I maintain that chaos is key. I argue that La Veniexiana does not portray a definitive inversion of gendered norms, but rather depicts ever-changing power dynamics which cause chaos. The characters speak different dialects and are both romantic predators and prey. Two confident, rich women speaking Venetian dialect flirt with Giulio, a Milanese citizen speaking pseudo-Italian, who embodies a foreign threat. The erotic and linguistic chaos evokes and mirrors early Cinquecento Venice’s unstable geopolitical situation. Hence, rather than being exclusively concerned with lascivious subjects, La Veniexiana poses an implied controversial question: Will Venetians overpower their conquerors, or will they be complacently conquered?
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Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/00751634.2023.2168892
Tristan J Kay
In his relationship to his readership, Dante can easily be regarded as the most autocratic of writers. Throughout his oeuvre, whether in the use of self-exegesis in the Vita nova and Convivio or in the highly determined linear narrative of the Commedia, punctuated by direct injunctions to its reader, he demonstrates an intense preoccupation with controlling how his work is to be read and interpreted. Scholars have, nevertheless, begun to identify a different Dante, one whose work shows signs of vulnerability and is open to a wider range of interpretative possibilities. A key example of this critical tendency came in the recent Oxford Handbook of Dante, edited by Manuele Gragnolati, Elena Lombardi, and Francesca Southerden. As the editors of the volume write in their introduction: ‘the Handbook is interested in letting another figure emerge alongside that more solid and consistent (one might say overly consistent) Dante: a Dante who is (made) open to interpretation, unbound from the shackles of completion and wholeness haunting [his work]. As such, the Handbook does not want to systematize Dante, nor repeat the gesture of the Vita nova of imposing a unitary narrative and fixing the porosity of the rime. Instead, the Handbook invites openness and the plurality of interpretation, similar to the process of recovering the dialogic character of the rime outside of the prose frame’ (p. xxxii). Nicolò Crisafi’s first monograph, based on his doctoral project, emerges from the intellectual environment at the University of Oxford that fostered the Handbook and it shares that collection’s interest in proposing a more open and plural Dante. Its focus is on the ineluctable ‘masterplot’ of the Commedia: ‘the trajectory of progress through which the poet, at various stages of his path, understands in retrospect the most significant events of his autobiography, his writing career, and his protagonist’s progress in the Commedia’ (p. 1). The masterplot represents poem’s dominant, ‘teleological’ narrative mode, whereby ‘the poet is able to subjugate earlier works or earlier parts of the poem to the revisionist gaze of an endpoint’ (p. 1). Rather than taking this masterplot at face value, however, Crisafi attempts to deconstruct its workings, draw attention to some of the critical and hermeneutical problems associated with its dominance, and shed light upon some of the alternative, ‘non-linear’ forms of narrative that are also at work within the poem. The substantial introductory chapter first shows how Dante’s masterplot has impacted upon and shaped the language of modern critical literature. Crisafi examines a selection of keywords in the critical discourse surrounding the Commedia (examples include ‘conversion’, ‘palinode’, ‘synthesis’,
在他与读者的关系中，但丁很容易被认为是最专制的作家。在他的全部作品中，无论是在《新生》和《康维维奥》中使用的自我注释，还是在《喜剧》中高度确定的线性叙事中，通过对读者的直接禁令，他都表现出了对如何阅读和解释他的作品的强烈关注。然而，学者们已经开始识别出一个不同的但丁，他的作品显示出脆弱的迹象，并对更广泛的解释可能性持开放态度。这种批判倾向的一个关键例子出现在最近出版的《牛津但丁手册》(Oxford Handbook of Dante)中，该书由Manuele Gragnolati、Elena Lombardi和Francesca Southerden编辑。正如这本书的编辑在前言中所写的那样:“《手册》有兴趣让另一个人物出现在更坚实、更一致(有人可能会说过于一致)的但丁身边:一个(被塑造)对诠释开放的但丁，从(他的作品)的完成和整体性的束缚中解脱出来。”因此，《手册》并不想系统化但丁，也不想重复《新生》的姿态，强加一个统一的叙事，固定时间的空隙。相反，《手册》邀请开放和多元化的解释，类似于在散文框架之外恢复时间的对话特征的过程”(第xxxii页)。Nicolò Crisafi的第一部专著，基于他的博士项目，出现在牛津大学的知识环境中，培养了《手册》，它分享了该合集的兴趣，提出了一个更开放和多元化的但丁。它的重点是喜剧中不可避免的“主情节”:“诗人在其人生道路的不同阶段所经历的进步轨迹，在回顾中理解了他的自传、他的写作生涯和他的主人公在喜剧中的进步”(第1页)。主情节代表了诗歌的主导、“目的论”叙事模式，由此“诗人能够将早期作品或诗歌的早期部分置于一个终点的修正主义者的注视之下”(第1页)。然而，与其从表面上看待这个主情节，Crisafi试图解构它的运作方式，将人们的注意力吸引到与它的主导地位相关的一些批判性和解释学问题上，并揭示了一些另类的、“非线性”的叙事形式，这些形式也在诗歌中起作用。内容丰富的引言章节首先展示了但丁的主要情节如何影响和塑造了现代批评文学的语言。Crisafi研究了围绕喜剧的批评性话语中的一些关键词(例如“转换”，“palinode”，“合成”，
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Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/00751634.2023.2166766
Riccardo Gasperina Geroni
ABSTRACT Che cosa accomuna le poetiche di autori diversi tra loro come Cesare Pavese, Elio Vittorini e Carlo Emilio Gadda? Il presente contributo intende indagare da una prospettiva inedita il problema dell’originario nella letteratura italiana contemporanea, a cavallo tra la fine degli anni Trenta e i primi anni Quaranta del secolo passato (1936–1945). Seguendo la lezione inaugurata da Edward Said con Beginnings, l’autore riflette sulla vitalità del tema dell’origine, qui nella fattispecie dell’infanzia riletta alla luce del mito eziologico del Paradiso perduto, entro la cultura italiana tra le due guerre, in cui si intrecciano le suggestioni della Scienza nuova di Vico in combinato disposto con le teorie di Giacomo Leopardi e Henri Bergson. È, difatti, alla luce della funzione della memoria (individuale e collettiva) che questi autori ripensano il fascismo, alla ricerca di spunti capaci di redimere la violenza del presente.
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Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/00751634.2023.2168420
M. Codebò
ABSTRACT A queer reading of Coccioli’s Il migliore e l’ultimo and Fenoglio’s Il libro di Johnny complicates the narration of the Italian Resistance by following a zig-zag path. This path begins on 8 September 1943, a traumatic day in which the national fiction fell apart, leaving the two novels’ heroes stranded without an army, a country, or a king. The path continues through the Resistance in the form of youth secession: the escape of thousands of young women and men away from home to build their own territorial, resistant communities. The last stage in this path consists of the rejection of the vertical link with the father and the establishment of horizontal connections between individuals who until recently were unknown to one another.
摘要：对Coccioli的《最后的我》（Il migliore e l’ultio）和Fenoglio的《强尼的自由》（Illibro di Johnny）的古怪解读，使意大利抵抗运动的叙事复杂化。这条路始于1943年9月8日，这是一个痛苦的日子，民族小说分崩离析，两部小说中的英雄们被困在没有军队、国家或国王的地方。这条道路以青年分裂的形式在抵抗运动中继续：成千上万的年轻男女逃离家园，建立自己的领土和抵抗社区。这条道路的最后一个阶段包括拒绝与父亲的垂直联系，并在直到最近还不为人所知的个体之间建立水平联系。
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Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/00751634.2023.2168377
Olivia Holmes
manage and produce social and moral order, examining the extent to which rhetorical strategies and fiction can preserve this order and avoid danger. Grace Delmolino’s essay examines the gendered dynamics of IX, 7. She presents a non-misogynist reading of the tale and argues that the tale leads us to understand that the agency of all parties and the avoidance of both tyranny and servitude is essential in the foundation of social order. Johnny L. Bertolio examines IX, 8 beyond the apparent comic fiction, as a depiction of civic, moral, and bodily disorder through his reading of the tale in parallel both with Dante’s Inferno and the biblical metaphor of ‘wine of wrath’. Albert Russell Ascoli’s article on the ninth tale examines the figure of Solomon in contrast with the tale’s narrator Emilia. Situating the tale within the microtext, he argues that this understudied tale is an overlooked and essential point of consideration in the critical trend of examining Emilia. In his view, Emilia represents an interpretive and political contradiction in her simultaneous power and defence of the misogyny that challenges that power; as such, she is shown to be central to Boccaccio’s investigation of governance in the Decameron. The final essay in the volume, penned by Max Matukhin, presents a close reading of IX, 10 and an intertextual study of its various antecedents. Matukhin’s investigation reveals that Dioneo subverts the medieval understanding that sodomy was a practice of the upper class and intellectuals as a result of excessive learning, by having a rural Puglian priest demonstrate a corrective to a sodomy born of ignorance. This collection of thought-provoking essays on the ninth day of the Decameron makes a significant contribution to existing critical literature, through the continuation of the Lectura’s project of ensuring neglected tales, and indeed a neglected day, are brought centre stage. The volume offers a renewed perspective of the ninth day as a diverse and yet cohesive collection of tales and provides an insightful investigation of the role of the ninth day in the macrotext, through both the perceptive contributions regarding the individual novelle and the innovative addition of the highly productive introductory essay by the volume’s editors.
管理和产生社会和道德秩序，研究修辞策略和小说在多大程度上可以保持这种秩序并避免危险。格蕾丝·德尔莫里诺(Grace Delmolino)的文章考察了第九章、第七章的性别动态。她对这个故事进行了非厌女主义的解读，并认为这个故事让我们明白，各方的代理以及对暴政和奴役的避免是社会秩序基础的关键。Johnny L. Bertolio考察了第九章，第八章，超越了明显的喜剧小说，作为对公民，道德和身体混乱的描述，通过他阅读的故事与但丁的地狱和圣经的隐喻“愤怒的酒”并行。阿尔伯特·罗素·阿斯科利在关于第九个故事的文章中考察了所罗门的形象，并与故事的叙述者艾米莉亚进行了对比。他认为，在审视《艾米莉亚》的批判趋势中，这个未被充分研究的故事是一个被忽视的重要考虑点。在他看来，艾米莉亚代表了一种解释性和政治性的矛盾，她同时拥有权力，同时又为挑战这种权力的厌女症辩护;因此，她被证明是薄伽丘在《十日谈》中对治理的研究的核心。卷中的最后一篇文章，由马克斯·马图欣(Max Matukhin)撰写，提出了对第九章、第十章的仔细阅读，并对其各种前文进行了互文研究。Matukhin的调查显示，Dioneo颠覆了中世纪的理解，即鸡奸是上层阶级和知识分子的行为，是过度学习的结果，通过一个农村的Puglian牧师示范纠正无知产生的鸡奸。这本关于十日谈第九天的发人深省的文集对现有的批评文学做出了重大贡献，通过延续讲座的项目，确保被忽视的故事，实际上是被忽视的一天，被带到中心舞台。该卷提供了一个新的视角，第九天作为一个多样化的，但有凝聚力的故事集，并提供了一个富有洞察力的调查第九天的角色在宏观文本中，通过对个人小说的敏锐贡献和创新的增加高产的介绍文章的卷的编辑。
{"title":"Boccaccio and the Consolation of Literature","authors":"Olivia Holmes","doi":"10.1080/00751634.2023.2168377","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00751634.2023.2168377","url":null,"abstract":"manage and produce social and moral order, examining the extent to which rhetorical strategies and fiction can preserve this order and avoid danger. Grace Delmolino’s essay examines the gendered dynamics of IX, 7. She presents a non-misogynist reading of the tale and argues that the tale leads us to understand that the agency of all parties and the avoidance of both tyranny and servitude is essential in the foundation of social order. Johnny L. Bertolio examines IX, 8 beyond the apparent comic fiction, as a depiction of civic, moral, and bodily disorder through his reading of the tale in parallel both with Dante’s Inferno and the biblical metaphor of ‘wine of wrath’. Albert Russell Ascoli’s article on the ninth tale examines the figure of Solomon in contrast with the tale’s narrator Emilia. Situating the tale within the microtext, he argues that this understudied tale is an overlooked and essential point of consideration in the critical trend of examining Emilia. In his view, Emilia represents an interpretive and political contradiction in her simultaneous power and defence of the misogyny that challenges that power; as such, she is shown to be central to Boccaccio’s investigation of governance in the Decameron. The final essay in the volume, penned by Max Matukhin, presents a close reading of IX, 10 and an intertextual study of its various antecedents. Matukhin’s investigation reveals that Dioneo subverts the medieval understanding that sodomy was a practice of the upper class and intellectuals as a result of excessive learning, by having a rural Puglian priest demonstrate a corrective to a sodomy born of ignorance. This collection of thought-provoking essays on the ninth day of the Decameron makes a significant contribution to existing critical literature, through the continuation of the Lectura’s project of ensuring neglected tales, and indeed a neglected day, are brought centre stage. The volume offers a renewed perspective of the ninth day as a diverse and yet cohesive collection of tales and provides an insightful investigation of the role of the ninth day in the macrotext, through both the perceptive contributions regarding the individual novelle and the innovative addition of the highly productive introductory essay by the volume’s editors.","PeriodicalId":44221,"journal":{"name":"Italian Studies","volume":"78 1","pages":"145 - 147"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43612847","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/00751634.2022.2158272
Rebecca Bowen
ABSTRACT Moments of visual fixation appear throughout the Commedia. Reconstructing their connotations in relation to contemporary discourses on sight, this article argues that, as well as a literary trope, Dante’s depictions of fixing the gaze function as a metaliterary device, an invitation to the reader’s critical eye that, when interrupted, draws attention to the multiple cultures of gazing circulating at the time – from erotic obsession to contemplative ecstasy via visionary philosophical and theological inquiry. The roots of the trope are traced in Dante’s rime and analysed in key episodes of the Commedia, including the dream of the Siren (Purgatorio xix), Dante’s ‘too fixed’ gaze (Purgatorio xxiii), and the climatic gazes pilgrim and guide turn to God in Paradiso. By encouraging the reader to fulfil the poet’s vision in her imagination, the fixed gaze, and its frequent interruption, emerges as a uniquely suitable trope for negotiating the representational challenges of transcendental topics.
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Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/00751634.2023.2166755
P. Nicholls
ABSTRACT This article explores an idea of ‘disaster’ (‘sciagura’) that figures prominently in Leopardi’s early Canzoni (1818–22). While English versions have generally rendered this word as ‘unhappiness’, ‘woes’, ‘ills’ etc., the emphasis on lyric melancholy misses Leopardi’s sense of a universal ‘calamity’ that is closely bound up with the acquisition of language and with humanity’s increasing separation from nature. The article finds suggestive analogies between Leopardi’s handling of this nexus of ideas and Maurice Blanchot’s much later concept of disaster which is similarly geared to a perception of language as something ‘neutral’ and ‘external’. The article goes on to examine the elevated style and ‘unnatural’ syntax of the Canzoni as a means by which Leopardi cultivates his own version of an impersonal sublime.
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