RiCOGNIZIONI. Rivista di Lingue e Letterature straniere e Culture moderne

THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE POPPY

Carmen Concilio — Sat, 30 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

IF A SPICE BECOMES AN ENGINE OF HISTORY

Costanza Mondo — Sat, 30 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Lunedì 23 ottobre, il primo incontro del ciclo di lezioni tenuto da Amitav Ghosh si apre in una sala lauree gremita e avvolta da un grande senso di anticipazione. Numerosissime studentesse e altretatnti studenti, con le/i docenti, hanno risposto con entusiasmo all’opportunità di ascoltare il rinomato autore bengalese parlare all’Università di Torino. Come tema del suo primo intervento, Amitav Ghosh ha scelto di esporre idee ed elementi chiave dietro alla sua ultima produzione saggistica pubblicata nel 2021 e poi tradotta in Italia con il titolo La maledizione della noce moscata da Neri Pozza. Rispecchiando perfettamente la sua produzione letteraria ed ampiezza tematica, il saggio di Ghosh è composito negli intrecci che propone ed indaga: colonialismo, capitalismo, crisi climatica e sfruttamento sono sapientemente osservati nel loro irriducibile legame, che l’autore dipana appoggiandosi ad una minuziosa ricerca storica. É in fondo questa l’origine etimologica della parola ‘testo’ – textus, tessuto – a cui Ghosh ci reintroduce con il suo saggio e la sua lezione.

THE GREAT BLINDNESS

Clara Battiston — Sat, 30 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

La questione ambientale è sempre stata un tema caro ad Amitav Ghosh, scrittore ed antropologo che si distingue per l’abilità di mantenere i piedi per terra, la nostra, e gli occhi ben aperti verso un pianeta nella sua nuova epoca, l’Antropocene. Nella conferenza tenutasi il 25 ottobre all’auditorium dell’Ateneo torinese, Ghosh ha parlato di cambiamenti climatici e della forza della natura, di fronte ad un pubblico di docenti, studenti universitari e liceali. Ed è soprattutto con le nuove generazioni che l'autore riesce a comunicare in maniera fresca, empatica e chiara, rafforzando il concetto che sì, anche gli umanisti possono risvegliare le coscienze. Anche gli umanisti possono essere delle pop star (che in fondo ci meritiamo).

Amitav Ghosh parla a tutti, e parla di un mondo sempre più affezionato alla filosofia capitalista: in esso il legame fra cultura e consumismo è stretto, e di conseguenza le persone vengono invogliate a consumare e sprecare, attratte da una pubblicità accattivante e da false promesse. Sfruttando l’influenza della cultura sull’opinione pubblica, l’autore ha deciso di usare la letteratura per fissare tanto la sua preoccupazione davanti al cambiamento climatico - che merita forse più l’appellativo di ‘crisi’ climatica – quanto la speranza che ci sia ancora tempo per intervenire e imparare. È con questo intento che è nato il suo saggio La grande cecità: Il cambiamento climatico e l’impensabile (The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable, 2016), pubblicato in Italia nel 2017 dall’editore Neri Pozza, nella traduzione di Anna Nadotti e Norman Gobetti.

THE IBIS TRILOGY

Gaetano Sperindeo — Sat, 30 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Il terzo giorno di ciclo di conferenze, dal titolo The Ibis Trilogy, si apre con una prima sessione in cui Amitav Ghosh approfondisce da un punto di vista storico, geografico e artistico le relazioni commerciali tra l’Occidente e la Cina in un periodo compreso tra il XVIII secolo e XIX secolo. Amitav Ghosh ricostruisce attraverso una vera e propria lezione di storia, con l’aiuto di dipinti e fotografie, quelli che sono i grandi eventi che fanno da sfondo ai tre romanzi della trilogia Ibis: Sea of Poppies (2008), River of Smoke (2011), Flood of Fire (2015).

SMOKE & ASHES

Jessica Pons — Sat, 30 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

L’approfondita esplorazione di Amitav Ghosh sul commercio dell’oppio presentata nella sua illuminante conferenza Smoke & Ashes del 27 ottobre, presso il Dipartimento di Lingue e Letterature Straniere dell’Università di Torino, scaturisce dal suo capolavoro di saggistica pubblicato nel 2023 con il medesimo titolo.

In occasione della conferenza, l’autore si è distinto non tanto per la semplice dissezione del contenuto del suo trattato, quanto per l'arricchimento della narrazione storica attraverso l'inserimento di riflessioni personali e dettagli inaspettati, frutto della sua prolungata ricerca inerente alla Trilogia dell'Ibis; questi romanzi hanno fornito a Ghosh l'impulso per condurre un'analisi post-scrittura, sintetizzata poi nella pubblicazione del volume intitolato Smoke & Ashes e nella conferenza in esame. Smoke & Ashes emerge pertanto non solo come un'analisi storica minuziosa, ma altresì come un epilogo narrativo in grado di colmare il vuoto percepito alla fine della Trilogia; oltre a colmare una lacuna storiografica, delineando la configurazione dell'impero coloniale britannico, basato metaforicamente su tè e papaveri, la narrazione getta luce sull'amoralità dei colonialisti britannici e olandesi, mettendo in evidenza le considerevoli fortune accumulate attraverso il contrabbando e il commercio incontrollato di oppiacei.

The Visual-Digital Storytelling in Current Migration Narratives

Maria Festa — Sat, 30 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Using W. J. Thomas Mitchell’s concept of the “pictorial turn” as a starting point, this paper assesses the impact of the digital world and new media on the body of current migration narratives within the field of anglophone postcolonial literature. In a culture dominated by images, new media, particularly the Internet, have increasingly complemented written language as the primary means of conveying storytelling. In regard to migration narratives, as it happened at the dawn of cinematography when the human face attained a multidimensional, visual and emotional focus, this shift in the messenger has conferred a digital life to the human face itself. Given this new media reality, the human face is now able to communicate simultaneously across distances, across time and to a wider audience. This quality, referred to as “facialization” by Thomas Macho, enables individuals to take a predominant role as real-life protagonists in their own real-life stories engendering in return an online community. Furthermore, as put forth by Hilde C. Stephansen, this online community also takes a stand against the mainstream narrative of present-day migrations and directs attention to marginalized human beings prevented from entering Western societies. In this paper, these real-life stories are explored in the visual-digital storytelling by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie of her experience as a migrant; by Reni Eddo-Lodge as a descendant of earlier migrants; by Lucy Popescu as an activist working for the publishing industry as well as by activists engaged in the Refugee Tales Statement. This visual-digital production of migration narratives and their consequent availability also render the human rights issues facing stateless persons pressing and immediate.

"In Nature's Dress." The Anthropocene, Talking Nature and the Poetry of Margaret Cavendish

Alessio Mattana — Sat, 30 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

This paper examines a selection of poems on nature by Margaret Cavendish, an English poet and natural philosopher active in the mid-seventeenth century. Cavendish’s conception of nature was “organicist”, meaning that all creatures – humans, animals and plants alike – share similar abilities in terms of feeling and reasoning. In this essay, Cavendish’s organicism will be discussed as the philosophical framework of her collection Poems, and Fancies (1653), especially those poems in which beasts, plants or nature herself engage in dialogue with human beings about their relationship with the environment. It will be argued that Cavendish’s choice to give voice to nature works as a fictional strategy to help readers imagine an alternative idea of nature, one different to that of nature as resource that was becoming increasingly widespread with the advent of early modern science. In the final section, it will finally be suggested that reading Cavendish’s poetry through the lens of post-humanism can contribute to present-day discussions on the Anthropocene.

Modern Resignation to Postmodern Despair in Don Delillo’s ‘Cosmopolis’ and ‘Falling Man’

Maria Ilaria Tonelli — Sat, 30 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

This article investigates how DeLillo depicts the impact of 9/11 in Cosmopolis and Falling Man through the antagonistic (intratextual) and oppositional (intertextual) connections between their characters, and then proves the importance of counter-narrative as a means to survive the encounter with communal and private tragedies. To this end, the articles provides a complementary analysis of DeLillo’s characterizations and stylistic choices in Cosmopolis and Falling Man, reading the novels through the lens of DeLillo’s essay “In the Ruins of the Future” (2001), Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation (1981) and “The Spirit of Terrorism” (2002), Jacques Derrida’s Writing and Difference (1967), Slavoj Žižek’s Welcome to the Desert of the Real (2002), and Søren Kierkegaard’s Either/Or (1843). While the two novels offer a Postmodern sublimation of the defining features and challenges of the post-9/11 lost sense of reality, I argue that Kierkegaard’s Modern philosophy is the key to a comprehensive reading of them, as it offers the theoretical ground for a metaphorical leap of faith that grants access to “a higher realm” of acceptance, overcoming the feeling of bewilderment and alienation in the aftermath of the late modern age.

Intercomprehensive Approach and Inclusive Language Education

Paola Celentin — Sat, 30 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

The similarities between the intercomprehensive approach to language teaching and inclusive language education have been studied for some years, but there is currently no speculative research or laboratory experiments that can validate their convergences.

During the a.y. 2021/2022 members of the ELICom research group of the University of Parma started an experimental research at the Language Center in a course of intercomprehension between Romance languages. This course, open to all, saw among the participants a large number of students with special learning needs and allowed to implement a pilot study aimed at detecting some aspects considered particularly significant.

First results suggest that the intercomprehensive approach may have positive effects on the psycho-cognitive profile of this type of learner and that bimodal input is effective for all kind of students.

Mozart in the East

Cecilia Conte — Sun, 24 Dec 2023 11:50:35 +0100

The aim of this paper is to highlight an aspect of Mozart's production that has long been neglected by contemporary musicology: the strong influence of Orientalism in some of the composer's works. After a brief focus on musical antecedents related to Orientalism, mostly composed in France, Austria and Germany, we will then examine four of Mozart's most famous works in more detail: the Violin Concerto in A major K219, the Piano Sonata in A major K331 and the two renowned Singspiele: Die Entführung aus dem Serail K384 and Die Zauberflöte K620. For each of these works, all of them replete with Turqueries and exotic elements, different aspects will be examined with the aim of providing a multifaceted review of the main manifestations of Orientalism in European musical production of the 18^th century. It is worth clarifying that what will be examined constitutes the original core of a series of elements that, in Art music production of the following centuries, will become a compositional norm with explicit reference to the Middle East, although derived from cultural and musical stereotypes. Furthermore, when discussing the East in a musical context, we do not refer to well-defined geographical and cultural boundaries. In this paper, we will also offer a brief analysis of this highly stereotyped and antithetical Eastern world, from a perspective strictly linked to the musical context, but one whose influences also partially extend to literature and visual arts.

Die Knarrstimme in deutsch- und in kroatischsprachigen Gesprächen als Merkmal eines zusätzlichen abschliessenden stimmlichen Musters

Dario Marić — Sat, 30 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Occasional short switches to creaky voice are common in spoken discourse of numerous languages without either the speakers or the recipients being highly aware of them, which is the reason the creaky voice phenomenon is, under the best of conditions, considered by them as a phenomenon of going down to very low or even the lowest part of their vocal range. In this paper, it is proposed that creaky voice when it comes to spoken conversations in German and Croatian serves as a short-term mechanism for a relatively delayed formation of completional prosodic patterns that, until the manifestation of the creaky voice, to that point also comprise, among other features, accents with rising or flat tonal components. Such completional patterns may accompany utterances that immediately precede the decision to allow the interlocutor to take turn, utterances that do not immediately precede it, or utterances that immediately precede a change in the speech act by the same speaker. The creaky voice, however, sometimes occurs in other sequences, i.e., within prosodic patterns without the accents bearing rising or flat components of the tonal movement, which is, however, considered as a result of an unintentional ''slipping'' into creaky voice due to the speaker's to low value of the subglottal pressure at the given moment.

Cupcakes, Marshmallows and Muffins. The Translation of Food Cultural References in Animated Films in Italy

Vincenza Minutella — Thu, 21 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

The aim of this paper is to explore the presence of Cultural References in animated films and to investigate the approach adopted by Italian dubbing professionals to deal with such culture-specific elements. The analysis is based on a corpus of twelve American animated films released between 2001 and 2018 by companies such as Disney, Disney-Pixar, DreamWorks, 20th Century Fox, Illumination Entertainment, Universal Pictures. By analysing the transcriptions of the English and Italian dialogues and the films, the paper identifies food and drink Cultural References and examines the translation strategies used in Italian dubbing. A comparison of older and more recent films throws light on differences through time as well as on translation patterns. The linguistic analysis of the English and Italian dialogues is complemented with comments by two Italian dubbing professionals on dubbing practice in Italy.

Glocal and Linguo-cultural Approach to Double Degrees

Elisabetta Paltrinieri, Paola Capponi — Sat, 30 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

[rec. di] E. BONVINO et al., "Agire in L2. Processi e strumenti nella linguistica educativa", Hoepli, 2023

Rossana Ciccarelli — Thu, 14 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

[rec. di] E. BONVINO et al., Agire in L2. Processi e strumenti nella linguistica educativa, Hoepli, 2023

[rec. di] G.I. BISCHI, G. DARCONZA (a c. di), "La pizia, la civetta e il cavaliere. Saggi su Sciascia e Dürrenmatt", Galaad, 2022

Anna Fattori — Sat, 30 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Reviewo of collecion of essays on Sciascia and Duerrenmatt

[rec. di] P. MENZIO, "Della poesia come amore per il mondo", dell’Orso, 2023

Elisabetta Paltrinieri — Sat, 30 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

[rec. di] P. MENZIO, Della poesia come amore per il mondo, dell’Orso, 2023

[rev. of] S. BETTEGA, L. D’ANNA, "Gender and Number Agreement in Arabic", Brill, 2023

Giuseppe Petrantoni — Sat, 30 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

[rev. of] S. BETTEGA, L. D’ANNA, Gender and Number Agreement in Arabic, Brill, 2023

[rec. di] C. ÖHLSCHLÄGER et al. (Hg.), "Narrative des Humanismus in der Weimarer Republik und im Exil", Brill-Fink, 2023

Fabio Ramasso — Sat, 30 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

[rec. di] C. ÖHLSCHLÄGER et al. (Hg.), Narrative des Humanismus in der Weimarer Republik und im Exil, Brill-Fink, 2023

[rec. di] M. Begliuomini, "La Méditerranée de Gabriel Audisio. Cartographie d'une idée", Presses Universitaires de Provence, 2023

Barbara Wahl — Sat, 30 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100