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Dialogo con i generi letterari nella letteratura asiaticoamericana
Full text linkREWRITING LITERARY GENRES IN ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE
My dissertation focuses on the examination of some Asian American texts and the way they critically relate to the Western literary tradition, specifically to the “question of genre” in the light of its most recent theorizations. Rather than considering the notion of genre as either a selective-descriptive criterion of classification or a rule literary texts have to conform with, these aim at highlighting a more unstable and flexible idea of genre and its “relational character”.
Because of the explicitly political roots of the Asian American community and discursive formation, until very recently Asian American criticism has read literary texts emphasizing their social and political function to highlight the historical presence of Asian Americans in the United States and their legitimate struggle against power apparatuses. Very little attention has been paid to the aesthetic dimension of their artistic production and the ideological and “constructed dimension of the literary” (S. Lee).
The first two chapters deal with the concept of genre and the issues under debate in Asian America, whereas the remaining chapters consist of a detailed close reading of Mona in the Promised Land by G. Jen, Native Speaker by C. Lee, In the Heart of the Valley of Love by C. Kadohata and The Book of Salt by M. Truong, in order to grasp the literary quality and the manifold negotiations with the traditional generic categories they refer to, respectively the comedy, the spy story, the distopic novel and the autobiography
Il motivo faustiano nella letteratura russa del Novecento
Full text linkThe present study examines the transformation of Goethe’s Faust (1808-1832) central theme in twentieth century Russian literature. The first chapter establishes the methodology and offers a brief overview of the translations and artistic expressions which brought the image of Faust into the Russian cultural field. The second chapter focuses on the reception of Goethean tragedy in the nineteenth century, while the main body of the dissertation concentrates on twentieth century Faustian works. The death of Stalin (1953) is a useful watershed which divides the century into two halves. The guiding path of this examination is the supposition of the existence of a “Russian Faustism”, based on the individuation of a series of characters or attitudes that are connected to Goethe’s Faust, even if they typologically remains Russian. The reworking of the Faustian motif in the twentieth century on the one hand registers a descendent course for the Russian Faust, on the other hand points to its gradually becoming a specific ideological revealer. The metamorphic dynamics of the Faustian motif indicates the glorification or demystification that any singular work achieves towards the social and cultural context to which they refer.
This dissertation takes into account, in particular, the dramas A. Lunačarskij’s Faust i Gorod (1916), S. Alëšin’s Mefistofel’ (1942) and I. Sel’vinskij’s Čitaja “Fausta” (1947), the novels E. Zamjatin’s My (1924) and M. Bulgakov’s Master i Margarita (1926-1940), the farce E. Radzinskij’s Obol’stitel’ Kolobaškin (1968), the tale N. Elin’s and Vl. Kašaev’s Ošibka Mefistofelja (1984), the sketch M. Kreps’ Vizit satany (1986). The analysis shows how Lunačarskij, Alëšin and Sel’vinskij retell positively the Faustian story, from the point of view of a Faust converted to socialism and defender of ethical-ideological values of communist doctrine; Zamjatin and Bulgakov show the progressive deprivation of power of the hero who, divested from the oppressive authority, of the possibility to express his own identity, becomes an anti-Faust. This Faust, for his artistic and sentimental vocation, is insane and socially ‘superfluous’. On the contrary, Radzinskij, Elin and Kašaev, Kreps create the image of a mean, disenchanted Faust, without elevated expectations, a type who aims to achieve material pleasures, a pošlyj man, a social climber, boastful and obsessed with the thirst of success.
This research has proved that the transformation of the Russian Faust is strictly conditioned by the historical, ideological, political, social and cultural context into which this figure of world literature is positioned
I Dialoghi d’amore di Leone Ebreo: incontri di culture nella storia di un libro del Rinascimento
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On the origin of the Western Greek Poleis.
Full text linkIn the light of the debate on colonisation or so-called colonisation, the question is if by this
term the process is under attack. In southern Italy, the relationship between the Greeks and
local populations is the main issue. The hermeneutic path developed in Magna Graecia in
the last century is summarised. There is no doubt that, at first, the point of view that
assigns to the Greeks a civilising function towards an indigenous world thought as a unit
has prevailed. The archaeological finds put that model in crisis, without denying the main
role of the Greek apoikoi
