Open Access Scientific Journals of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures of the University of Verona
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Adaptation as Emigration: Different Paths to Americanization in Miljenko Jergović’s “Buick Rivera” and Goran Rušinović’s Film Adaptation
No full textThe following essay compares the novel Buick Rivera (2002), written by Bosnian Croat author Miljenko Jergović, and its 2008 film adaptation by Goran Rušinović. The novel’s main plot, dealing with the accidental meeting between a Bošnjak (Bosnian Muslim) expatriate and a Bosnian Serb war criminal in the US, seems unchanged in the film version. However, the director modifies the original setting and several details in the characters’ background stories. Analyzing these changes and the story’s cinematic rendition, we comment on the two authors’ varying approaches to topics such as war, ethical responsibility, emigration, and assimilation in post-9/11 American society. The analysis furthermore develops the idea of the film adaptation process as a unique form of transmediatic and transcultural emigration, in which the plot migrates from one medium to another and from one culture to another with specific effects
The Art of Coming-in-this-World: On Sylvia Plath’s “Elm”
No full textSylvia Plath’s posthumously published Ariel has generated a plethora of responses. While critics have tended to focus on the biographical aspects of the poet’s work, lay reviewers have simultaneously emphasised their lack of understanding and the strength of their perceptual and affective responses. The present article, which focuses on Plath’s “Elm,” has a threefold aim. First, it seeks to present “Elm” as a work of verbal art; secondly, it endeavours to expose the features which may be responsible for readers’ responses; thirdly, it considers the potential of “Elm” for mental health. To this end, the study mobilises concepts and methods drawn from stylistics, (Systemic Functional) Discourse Analysis, psychology, and philosophy. Research findings show that the following features may allow for an internally lived rather than an externally cognised aesthetic experience: the dissolution of the signifier-signified pair, the use of intersensory-physiognomic language and the introduction of atopia as a topos. These salient features enable readers to privilege significance over signification and to be confronted with jouissance, an experience that grounds them in the flow of (be)coming
From the Search for the American Dream to the Journey Back to Southern Roots: Cinematic Representations of Black Migrations
No full textAfrican Americans are excluded from the myth of the ‘nation of immigrants’ due to the forced nature of their relocation to the American continent. Yet, this exclusion can engender an association of blackness with lack of mobility and agency in the national imaginary, which obscures historical constrictions produced by slavery, segregation, and racism. In the last years, new narratives, ranging from historiography to cultural productions, have emerged that highlight how black Americans, despite all odds, have always resorted to migration as a way to fight racism. Cinema has played a major role in the representation of African Americans’ migrations as a fight to become masters of their own lives and has influenced the current reclaiming of the South in important ways
On ‘Not Being Nothing’: Post-ironic Melodrama in James Gray’s “The Immigrant”
No full textThis essay analyzes James Gray’s The Immigrant (2013) discussing it as an instance of post-ironic melodrama (Włodek 2017) aimed at recovering the purity shown by this genre in the early phases of cinematic history. The essay argues that, although the movie pays evident homage to pre-classic silent-era melodramas, it also destabilizes the genre’s conventions by resorting to a particular use of the mise-en-scène and characterization. This directorial choice allows the film to retain pathos without eschewing ambivalence and indeterminacy, finally contributing to produce a complex representation of immigrants’ experience as well as a rather bleak portrait of the American Dream
Accessible Tourism Discourse and the Pandemic: Linguistic Resilience and Communicative Strategies in the Promotion of ‘Tourism for All’
No full textSince its outbreak in Asia in 2019, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has represented an unprecedented challenge for the tourism sector. In addition to the income losses due to travel restrictions and constantly-changing public health protocols, the uncertainty related to the rapid and increasing evolution of the pandemic has inevitably forced tourism operators to rethink how their work is organised and develop new approaches and procedures for planning and promoting their activities. In this scenario, tourists with disabilities have been hit even harder by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, since they have generally been excluded from the main communication channels during the pandemic (UNWTO 2020c). However, more inclusive and accessible approaches by tourism operators could become a profitable opportunity to reboot their activities and overcome the critical effects of the Covid-19 pandemic in a contemporary and future perspective. This study will focus on how tourism discourse is tackling the challenges of the pandemic in the promotion of accessible holidays and Covid-19 related information. By means of discourse analysis and corpus-based methodologies, we will take into consideration the main linguistic and pragmatic features characterising a corpus of promotional web resources employed by public and private operators working in the field of accessible tourism. The research aims to identify and highlight the most effective communicative strategies employed in this sector during the pandemic, in order to understand how language may potentially contribute to a more resilient response to the current tourism crisis. Results will show that verbal and non-verbal resources are the main tools strategically co-employed by accessible tourism operators to instil new trust in the sector, to comply with constantly-changing national and international public health advice and government rules and, at the same time, to ensure safety and social inclusion to visitors and travellers with disabilities.
Online Covid-19-related Information for Travelers: A Corpus-based Study of Modality in Airport Websites
No full textDue to the current pandemic situation, international airport hubs need to adopt special procedures and distancing technology solutions to protect the health of travelers and employees (Sigala 2020). This paper explores the language of the sections of international airports’ websites specifically devoted to Covid-19-related issues and procedures, an emerging type of discourse dynamically reflecting the evolving situation. Like other types of specialized discourse, these informative and regulatory texts present “interdiscoursive” features (Bhatia 2010) borrowed from other genres, mainly legal English (Maci 2013). The paper presents the results of an investigation into the use of modality in a specially compiled 126,000-word corpus of texts concerning major British, North American, central European (Dutch and German) and Italian airports. The findings revealed differences among the four varieties, concerning the frequency and use of core modals, semi-modals, and some suasive verbs and their nominalizations identified through the analysis of keywords. The British websites feature the largest amount of core- and semi-modals, followed by the central European ones. The American texts score the third lowest number of core- and semi-modals and the highest number of suasive verbs/nominalizations, while the Italian sub-corpus presents the lowest values for all the categories, with the exception of the suasive verb recommend, which they employ extensively. Must is used the most in the central European texts, probably because of L1 interference, while recommend is at times erroneously used by the Italian writers. The paper discusses these and other findings and their implications for prospective writers of such texts.
Third Culture Kids. Å vokse opp mellom kulturer / Third Culture Kids. Crescere tra culture
No full textSi presentano due traduzioni, realizzate da Edoardo Checcucci, di testi tratti dall\u27antologia Third Culture Kids, uscita in Norvegia nel 2019. Il tema al centro delle traduzioni che qui si è ritenuto importante proporre è lo sfatamento dei pregiudizi e delle stigmatizzazioni che subiscono quotidianamente molte donne musulmane, nel tentativo di dimostrare che oggi esistono infiniti modi di essere una ragazza musulmana in Norvegia. Nel primo testo Fatimah Mahdi mostra come la religione musulmana e la boxe (potremmo anche dire lo sport in generale) non siano affatto in contrapposizione, malgrado debba confrontarsi ogni giorno con gli sguardi allibiti della gente quando cammina per le strade di Oslo con indosso l’hijab e i guantoni da boxe in spalla. Il secondo racconto autobiografico è di «Aisha» (anonima), una ragazza lesbica cresciuta in Sudan e trasferitasi a Oslo, così da poter vivere una vita più libera e serena e conciliare due elementi irrinunciabili – spesso, erroneamente, considerati agli antipodi – che contribuiscono a definire la sua identità: la religione musulmana e l’omosessualità.Two texts from the anthology Third Culture Kids, published in Norway in 2019, are given in their original version and in the Italian translation by Edoardo Checcucci. The bulk of the translations proposed here is the debunking of prejudices against Muslim women, in that nowadays there are several ways of being a Muslim woman in Norway. In the first text, Fatimah Mahdi shows how Islam and sport, boxe in particular, can coexist, despite people frowning at her while she walks down Oslo in hijab and boxing gloves. The second text is an autobiography by Aisha (anonymous), a lesbian girl born and raised in Sudan, who moved to Oslo in search for a freer and quiet life; here she tries to conciliate two seminal aspects of her life that are often (wrongly) considered as incompatible: Islam and homosexuality
When Trifonov Read Dostoevsky: Ideology, Avarice, and Violence in Late Soviet Culture
No full textMoscow author Iurii Trifonov (1925-1981), famous for his insightful portrayal of the Brezhnev-era intelligentsia, was fascinated by how the ideas of Fedor Dostoevsky could comment on 1970s society. The ties between these two authors are more than an intriguing episode in literary history; they reveal the contradictions between ideology, action, altruism, and avarice underlying late socialism. Trifonov’s celebrated House on the Embankment (Dom na naberezhnoi, 1976) depicts a greedy protagonist who, in the final years of Stalinism, secures a career by betraying his mentor as well as his fiancée. The novella refutes the assumptions that the ends justify the means, a Dostoevskian motif influencing Trifonov’s less-known Impatience (Neterpenie, 1973). This historical novel, which praised the 1881 assassination of Aleksandr II, defends bloodshed in the struggle that eventually toppled tsarism. These two works offered dramatically divergent readings of Dostoevsky, a figure cautiously celebrated in the USSR during the 1971 sesquicentennial of his birth.Keywords: Trifonov, Dostoevsky, commemoration, late Soviet cultur
Праздник понимания и признания. А.В. Пигин/И.С. Андрианова (Отв. ред.). Филология как призвание: Сборник статей к юбилею профессора Владимира Николаевича Захарова (Петрозаводск: Изд-во ПетрГУ, 2019)
No full textАннотация: Праздник понимания и признания. Рецензия знакомит читателя со структурой и содержанием сборника статей, изданного в честь 70-летнего юбилея В.Н. Захарова, выдающегося исследователя творчества Ф.М. Достоевского в конце XX – начале XXI в. Акцентируется роль юбиляра в развитии науки о великом писателе, в пропаганде его наследия, в аккумуляции и многолетней поддержке научного сообщества вокруг изучения наследия Достоевского благодаря преподавательской, журнально-редакторской, издательской и организационно-проектной деятельности, в том числе в российских научных фондах и в Международном обществе Достоевского.Ключевые слова: В.Н. Захаров, наука о Достоевском, научное сообщество, Международное общество Достоевского. A.V. Pigin / I.S. Andrianova (ed.). Philology as a vocation: A collection of articles for the anniversary of Professor Vladimir Nikolaevich Zakharov (Petrozavodsk, PetrSU Publ., 2019).Abstract: A holiday of understanding and recognition. The review introduces the reader to the structure and content of the collection of articles published in honor of the 70th anniversary of V.N. Zakharov, an outstanding researcher of the work of F.M. Dostoevsky in the late XX – early XXI century. The author emphasizes the role of the hero of the day in the development of science about the great writer, in the promotion of his legacy, in the accumulation and long-term support of the scientific community around the study of Dostoevsky\u27s legacy through teaching, journal-editorial, publishing, organizational and project activities, including in Russian scientific foundations and in the International Dostoevsky Society.Keywords: V.N. Zakharov, Dostoevsky studies, scientific community, International Dostoevsky Society
Memories of Dostoevsky in Australia
No full textThe International Dostoevsky Society – the most important Dostoevsky scholarly platform came into being as an idea at the University of Melbourne, at the time Slobodanka Vladiv-Glover entered postgraduate studies in Russian Literature. Her own mentor, Dr Dmitry Vladimirovich Grishin, turned out to be the prime mover of this international forum. That Dr Grishin had reached Australia after World War Two as a refugee was a well-known fact among his students but as young people, they were hardly aware of the significance of his arrival. Vladiv-Glover\u27s memories are followed by an Appendix including previously unplished photos and materials about Dr Grishin, herself and the history of the IDSKeywords: IDS (International Dostoevsky Society) History, Dostoevsky Studies 1971-2021, Dostoevsky in Australia, Dmitry Grishi