226 research outputs found
Metamorphosis of a Genre: "The Daydreamer" by Ian McEwan
No full textWhen a major author engages in writing a book for children, it always turns out to be more than a mere incursion into a less prestigious genre. This paper proposes a reading of Ian McEwan’s "The
Daydreamer" aimed at unveiling its different levels of signification through a study of its paratextual, intertextual, structural, and metafictional components, as well as of its illustrations, in order to show how
they synergically contribute to the creation of a dense and most intriguing book capable of throwing new light on our very idea of “children’s literature”
Dialoghi d'autore: il "Pentameron" di Walter Savage Landor tra storia e finzione
No full textAmong the thousands of volumes in Ian Greenlees’s astonishing library, one finds
the sixteen tomes of "The Complete Works of Walter Savage Landor", one of Greenlees’ favourite
authors. A poet, translator, tragedian and prose writer, a first-rank classicist, Landor was well
known to his contemporaries, although he is virtually forgotten nowadays. He spent twenty-six
years of his life in Italy, mainly in Florence, and he also visited Bagni di Lucca several times.
The paper takes into account one of his most interesting “Italian” works, "Pentameron" (1837),
a series of dialogues featuring Petrarch and Boccaccio. The title, a clear echo of "Decameron",
overtly hints at its structure, that is five days in which the two 14th-century writers entertain
themselves in friendly conversations in Certaldo. Athough these conversations deal with a wide
range of topics, from politics to religion, their main focus is Dante, namely the "Divine Comedy",
on which the two speakers extensively comment. They are in fact spokesmen of different attitudes
towards Alighieri and his poem, Boccaccio showing an unconditional reverence for the "sommo
poeta" which Petrarch is definitely not ready to subscribe. The latter gives voice to a harsh criticism
which echoes attitudes that were well consolidated in English Dantism at Landor’s times.
Thanks to the skillful ventriloquism typical of all Landor’s "Imaginary Conversations", the characters’
voices are intertwined with and often overlap the voice of their author, creating a trompe
l’oeil effect that continuously challenges the reader to discriminate between what is historically
correct and what is, on the contrary, fictional. Hence, much of Landor’s love for Italy and admiration
for Italian literature surfaces in these dialogues, where he also anachronistically appears in
a few references to himself and his experience as an English exile
Erratum: OncoScore: a novel, Internet-based tool to assess the oncogenic potential of genes
No full textScientific Reports 7: Article number: 46290; published online: 07 April 2017; updated: 22 May 2017 The original version of this Article incorrectly listed all author names in reverse. The author list now reads: Rocco Piazza, Daniele Ramazzotti, Roberta Spinelli, Alessandra Pirola, Luca De Sano, Pierangelo Ferrari, Vera Magistroni, Nicoletta Cordani, Nitesh Sharma & Carlo Gambacorti-Passerini.</jats:p
"'That both English and Italians ... may be civil and humane to each other': l''Account of the Manners and Customs of Italy' di Giuseppe Baretti"
No full textThe essay focuses on Giuseppe Baretti’s "Account of the Manners and Customs of Italy" published in London in 1768 as a firm refutation of Samuel Sharp’s slanderous "Letters from Italy" (1765) and of the books written by “those other English writers, who after a short tour have ventured to describe Italy and the Italians”. In the Preface, Baretti ascribes their distorted reports about the Bel Paese to “premature and rash judgments” and sets out to provide the English public with a new account of Italian life and culture interspersed with observations on the mistakes of those travelers whose only aim was to write fashionable books full of “slander and invective” just to please their readers’ “malignity and love of novelty”. His account results in an illuminating cultural document in which Italy is ‘explained’ to the English by an Italian intellectual long accustomed to England and English life. This allows him not only to ‘deconstruct’ Sharp’s book by punctually rebutting the prejudices and stereotypes Doctor Sharp shared with many of his contemporaries, but also to provide the reader with pregnant comparisons between the two countries. The essay also points out that Baretti’s position somewhat mirrors that of the traditional travel writer: while the latter usually reports upon a foreign nation to his fellow countrymen often surrendering, as it happens in Sharp’s "Letters", to common views and preconceived ideas, Baretti writes a book about his own country for the benefit of a foreign audience, whose culture and mentality he nevertheless knows well enough to be able to orientate his account in order to make it as appealing as possible to his English readers. A careful negotiation on the part of the author is therefore necessary, which the paper unveils in both its cultural components and argumentative strategies
Forward to the Past: la sfida della Storia in Machines Like Me di Ian McEwan
No full textIn his novel, Machines Like Me (2019), Ian McEwan offers an interesting example of “alternate history” while dealing with crucial ethical issues connected with the development of Artificial Intelligence. Instead of setting his story in the future, the author chooses to set it in the past, but he radically changes the contours of the latter. Hence, the England of the early 1980s is turned into a technologically advanced society, well ahead of the scientific progress of the early 21st century. Thus, the future casts its light on the past in what appears as a typically postmodernist mélange: besides mingling genres (from speculative fiction to uchronia), McEwan also performs an intriguing hybridization of fact and fiction. The paper intends to explore the rich historical dimension of the novel, which betrays the author’s interest in the reflection on history and on its narrativization – as well as its manipulation and/or contamination – within the literary text
Il piano come tecnologia sociale. Yevgeni Preobrazhensky e la prognosi per il futuro
No full textYevgeni A. Preobrazhensky was one of the main economists of Soviet Russia. In his analysis of the transition from the NEP to socialism we find structural elements of what the author calls plan-based thought. The concept of «socialist rationality» and «primitive socialist accumulation», the formulation of a «new economic and administrative science», the concept of planning as a result of «social rationalization» and the idea of «forecasting» as an expression of a specific conception of time that claims to impose the future in the present, are fundamental for understanding plan-based thought and its transformations on a global level.Yevgeni A. Preobrazhensky è stato uno dei principali economisti della Russia sovietica. Nella sua analisi del passaggio dal NEP al socialismo troviamo elementi strutturali di quello che l'autrice chiama pensiero di piano. Il concetto di "razionalità socialista" e di "accumulazione socialista primitiva", la formulazione di una "nuova scienza economica e amministrativa", il concetto di pianificazione come risultato della "razionalizzazione sociale" e l'idea di "previsione" come espressione di una specifica concezione del tempo che pretende di imporre il futuro nel presente, sono fondamentali per comprendere la storia del pensiero di piano a livello globale e le sue trasformazioni attuali
Estudos de impacto de vizinhança: avaliação de sua aplicação em Florianópolis
No full textDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnológico, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Urbanismo, História e Arquitetura da Cidade, Florianópolis, 2010No atual contexto de consumo do espaço, a implantação dos empreendimentos em Florianópolis tem contribuído de forma significativa para a desqualificação urbano-ambiental da cidade. Apesar de visíveis as consequências da ausência de estudos de previsão de impacto, permanece incipiente e insuficiente a utilização do Estudo de Impacto de Vizinhança em Florianópolis, instrumento previsto no Estatuto da Cidade (Lei Federal n° 10257/01). Mesmo quando exigidos, tais estudos não têm sido suficientes para garantir a devida mensuração dos impactos a serem ocasionados no meio ambiente urbano. Nesse sentido, o presente trabalho tem a finalidade de avaliar - a partir da análise de quatro Estudos de Impacto de Vizinhança de empreendimentos urbano-turísticos em Florianópolis - se a qualidade desses estudos possibilita aos órgãos responsáveis, e à população interessada, posicionarem-se de forma criteriosa sobre os possíveis impactos a serem ocasionados no meio ambiente urbano, bem como acerca da viabilidade ou não da implementação de tais projetos. Busca-se, portanto, questionar a premissa da existência de um consenso social quanto à importância desses empreendimentos, tendo em vista que abandonar os conflitos inerentes à implantação de um empreendimento significaria ignorar a capacidade das instituições públicas e dos atores envolvidos de atuar como planejadores e gestores do território. Nesse sentido, é necessário um avanço qualitativo dos Estudos de Impacto de Vizinhança, a fim de não sejam utilizados apenas para legitimar formalmente processos de licenciamento (in)questionáveis
"Armonie botaniche e simmetrie geometriche: The Garden Of Cyrus di Sir Thomas Browne come anatomia del mondo in prospettiva saggistica"
No full textThis essay offers a reading of Sir Thomas Browne’s The Garden of Cyrus (1658) in connection with the light thrown on it by one of Browne’s most ardent devotees, i.e. the German writer Winfried Georg Sebald (1944-2001). At the same time, The Garden of Cyrus will be analyzed with an eye to the wider context of a relevant essayistic tradition which, in many significant cases, drew inspiration from the literary topos of the garden. Finally, a close reading will reveal how the main subject of Browne’s text proves to be the quincunx, a geometrical pattern through which the author, as if spurred by an irrepressible exegetical/esoteric enthusiasm, set out to find a principle of metaphysical design in all Creation
ʻA sort of Philosophical Back Gardenʼ: Keats’s useful and officinal plants
No full textThe relationship between Keats and the green realm is more complex than it appears at first sight. His references to plants are more than occasional pieces of botanical poetry, denotatively conveying his highly specialized expertise in plant taxonomy and the officinal use of herbs, nor can they be always interpreted as symptoms of Keats’s allegiance to the conventions of Romantic organicism.
On the contrary, they are part of a macrotextual semiotic strategy extending for the whole arch of the poetic production of this author and informing the more profound, structural levels of his poems. Moreover, the phenomenon structurally transposes Keats’s ecological and ethical perspectives on the man-nature relationship, on poetry as a life-sustaining agent, on the poet’s responsibility in coping with human suffering to preserve life and health
Lively Lanscapes of Literature
No full textThe present work deals with the production of the contemporary British novelist Penelope Lively. The aim is that of tracing an outline of the author and her several novels through a problematizing approach. Features both of the novelist and her works will be discussed against some literary theories in order to foreground contemporary issues about fiction writing
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