1,720,994 research outputs found
An Interview with Lorenzo Andolfatto: Shi Kong and the Translation of Chinese Science Fiction in Italy
No full textIn 2010 Lorenzo Andolfatto edited and translated into Italian Shi Kong, an anthology of contemporary Chinese science fiction: it was the first science fiction work translated directly from Chinese into Italian and one of the first publications of Chinese science fiction in a European language at all. In this dialogue Andolfatto and Iannuzzi discuss the birth of the volume, the cultural agency of the translator, present and future perspective of Chinese science fiction translations in the Italian market
Serialità e orrori contemporanei
No full textAmerican Horror Story, serie televisiva nata nel 2011 e giunta nell'ottobre 2014 al debutto della quarta stagione (sul canale via cavo FX negli Usa), può essere portata ad esempio di due fatti culturali tra i più interessanti degli ultimi anni: la potenza del medium televisivo come veicolo di narrazioni contemporanee di ottimo livello creativo, e l'incredibile versatilità dell'immaginario horror come strumento di riflessione sul passato e sulla contemporaneità, con un ampio potenziale di impegno critico. Nei suoi esempi migliori, l'horror fa parte di quella stagione di “adultità” artistico-creativa che è già stata chiamata seconda età dell'oro della televisione americana e American Horror Story ne offre ottimo emblema – dal riuso camp e patinato di materiali del repertorio di genere e non solo, prefigurato da altre serie degli autori Ryan Murphy e Brad Falchuk, alla scelta di una formula narrativa a mezza strada tra serialità forte e formula antologica, al ritorno in voga della categoria di autorialità in sede di ricezione critica.
Nel saggio vengono ripercorsi temi e tropi caratterizzanti delle prime quattro stagioni di una serie che ha portato in scena i lati oscuri della storia recente (non solo) statunitense: dal bacino del rimosso individuale e del nucleo familiare borghese, agli orrori della società novecentesca nella sua dimensione collettiva - il manicomio, la psichiatrizzazione, l'elettroshock, la repressione della “devianza”, il razzismo, la schiavitù e la segregazione del “diverso”.
Si pone infine attenzione ad alcuni aspetti salienti del livello produttivo della serie, realizzata tramite uno sforzo autenticamente “corale” delle professionalità e maestranze coinvolte.
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This article argues that, with its four seasons aired in the United States by the cable channel FX between 2011 and 2014, the television series American Horror Story aptly exemplify two significant phenomena characterizing the contemporary mediascape between the USA and Europe: the success of high-end productions for the small screen, and the versatility of horror tropes and their potential to express forms of engagement and critical reflections on the past and present of society.
In its best manifestations, horror series are part of a current phase of artistic maturity of American television drama. American Horror Story is a case in point, with its camp and stagy re-use of the genre's repertoire – anticipated by previous series created by executive producers Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk –; its renewing of the anthological format; and its ability in bringing back into fashion ideas of authorship applied to television production.
This article offers an ample survey of the series' themes and tropes, devoting specific attention to its depiction of the dark sides of “modernity”: from what we are used to repress at an individual level, to perversions hidden behind the surface of the nuclear family, to barbarities nested in the heart of contemporary societies – asylums and psychiatrization, institutional policies and places to suppress of anything deemed “devious”, forms of racism and slavery, and segregation and abuse of the “other”.
Elements related to the production of the series are also surveyed – including episodes direction, product design and set decoration, sound engineering and editing – to foster a better understanding of American Horror Story as a collective creative enterprise
Exploring the Curious Life and Times of Italian Science Fiction
No full textThis short article is a panel report on a double science fiction (sf) session organized by Giulia Iannuzzi at the The 2014 Annual Conference of the American Association for Italian Studies held in Zurich.
The first session, “The Genre In and Outside the Canon,” opened with a paper by Elio Baldi entitled “Science Fiction and Canon: The Case of Italo Calvino.” Calvino’s reception is an excellent example not only of the difficult relationship between Italian literary criticism and sf, but also of the striking differences between Italian studies in Italy and Italian studies abroad (especially in the US). The paper by Umberto Rossi that followed, entitled “Italian Slipstream: La ragazza di Vajont by Tullio Avoledo,” contextualized Avoledo’s work within a complex set of cultural phenomena and tendencies from slipstream to postmodernism and within the difficulties of the contemporary Italian publishing market. The second session, “From Rome to Mars: Geographies on the Screen,” featured Silvia Caserta on the presence and use of science-fiction imagery in two Italian films: Totò nella Luna (1958) and Fascisti su Marte (2006). The fact that the two films are comedies is indicative of Italy’s difficult relationship with the technoscientific imaginary. Despite using different frames and narrative strategies, Cavalli argued, both films convey an affectionate image of the Italian people as fundamentally incapable of using technologies. The second paper, by Giulia Iannuzzi, was entitled “Fortunes of American Science Fiction in Italy from the 1950s to the 1960s: Translations and Adaptations between Text and Screen” and closed the second session with some thoughts on the widespread practice of translating science fiction from English into Italian after WWII.
The dialogue between panelists was helped along by Domenico Gallo, editor and contributor to many Italian magazines and collections, who did a fine job of focusing attention on the key issues: the presence and meaning of sf imagery in “canonical” Italian authors such as Calvino and Primo Levi; the controversial relationship between Italian literary criticism sf, seen in the broader context of the uneasy relationship between Italian cultural elites and hard sciences, which tend to be regarded as an “inferior” form of knowledge; the contemporary publishing market and its division between small, specialized sf initiatives and the important sf works published as mainstream fiction
Television is Out There: Serialità e Sizigia
No full textQuesto saggio parte dalla constatazione che il racconto seriale televisivo sta vivendo una stagione di ibridismi a vari livelli: dalle declinazioni della formularità narrativa, alle distinzioni di genere, dalle differenze tra messa in scena televisiva e cinematografica, al manicheismo che usava distinguere buoni e cattivi, fino alla distinzione tra dominio della produzione e della ricezione nel circuito comunicativo.
In questo lavoro di ricerca particolare attenzione viene dedicata al ruolo, per molti versi pivotale, che la fantascienza ha rivestito (e sta rivestendo) in questi processi. La serie X-Files (creata da Chris Carter, 1993-2002, 2016), con la sua dualità di sotto-trame e di punti di vista, con la sua incessante riproposizione di un’ambiguità ontologica ed epistemologica del mondo finzionale e del racconto, ha non solo costituito un'eccezionale esemplificazione di questi cambiamenti, ma anche svolto una sua particolare sizigia tra immaginario collettivo e paradigma di realtà contemporaneo, tra narrazione catodica e mito, tra verità e paranoia complottista.
Il saggio offre una riflessione su questi processi coprendo un arco temporale che va dagli anni Ottanta ai Duemiladieci, e muovendosi in tre ambiti di analisi: testuale (generi e tecniche del racconto nella serialità di oggi), tecnologico e industriale (nuove possibilità del medium), comunicativo (la natura del testo televisivo e della sua ricezione all'epoca della trans-medialità e della ri-mediazione). Considerate nel loro insieme queste tre sfere di riflessione suggeriscono una periodizzazione, e permettono di interrogare il significato profondo di ciò che oggi va sotto il nome di “serialità televisiva”.
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This article argues that serialized narratives on the small screen are undergoing, in recent years, a phase of increasing hybridism on many levels, as regards serialization formulas (e.g. serial vs series); the differences that used to distinguish mise en scène on the small and the big screen; the Manicheism according to which stories used to be populated by heroes and villains; and the production and reception as distinctive phases of media communication, increasingly characterized by new forms of interaction between networks and creators, and their audiences.
Furthermore, this research traces the distinct contribution that science fiction has brought and is bringing to these ongoing hybridization processes, a role exemplary embodied by X-Files (created by Chris Carter, 1993-2002, 2016). With its duality of plot lines and points of view, X-Files embeds ontological ambiguities and epistemological uncertainties in its narrative invention, aptly exemplifying the main changes that television series underwent between the 1990s and the 2010s, and tapping into central currents of the contemporary collective imagery.
The comprehensive analysis of these processes offered by this article covers the decades between the late 1980s and the 2010s, and can be outlined around three main spheres: textual (genres and techniques of serialized narratives); technical and industrial (new possibilities available to the medium thanks to innovations in production and distribution); communicative (the television text and its reception in the age of trans-media storytelling and re-mediation). The concurrent reflections on these levels allows to suggest possible periodizations in recent television history, and to call into question what we mean by 'television series' today
Sexposition e potere a Westeros
No full textQuesto saggio offre una disamina di alcune caratteristiche produttive e distributive e un'analisi tematica e narratologica della serie televisiva 'Game of Thrones', creata nel 2011 da David Benioff e D. B. Weiss per il network HBO come trasposizione del ciclo di romanzi 'A Song of Ice and Fire' di George R. R. Martin, e giunta nel 2016 alla sesta stagione.
Il caso di 'Game of Thrones' e del suo straordinario successo di pubblico è adoperato come osservatorio su alcuni aspetti del rapporto industria culturale e pubblici nel mondo contemporaneo.
Potere e conflitto, intrigo e guerra, sesso e violenza, invenzioni fantastiche e soprannaturali sono gli ingredienti essenziali di una narrazione che segue le vicende di diverse casate nobili in competizione per conquistare il trono della terra immaginaria di Westeros.
L'intreccio si dipana tra infingardi scacchieri politici, o geografico-bellici, e 'quest' intraprese da personaggi isolati o con pochi compagni: una struttura corale e un andamento tipicamente da soap opera (senza esclusione di colpi di scena, rivelazioni e agnizioni), che producono un andamento costitutivamente digressivo, scompaginando il funzionamento della stagione come unità discorsiva dotata di parziale autonomia. Queste spinte centrifughe nella diegesi favoriscono e riflettono anche una particolare centralità dell'ambientazione (intesa in senso ampio, non meramente fisico).
La serie coniuga un mondo finzionale fantastico tratteggiato con ampiezza e profondità diacronica ad ispirazioni latamente storiche, dalla Guerra delle due rose al vallo di Adriano, dal sistema feudale dell'Europa alto-medievale, ai culti delle civiltà assire e mesopotamiche, per menzionare solo alcune delle più evidenti.
Il clima oscuro e fascinoso di Westeros è reso con la dovizia di dettaglio grazie ad un budget tra i sei e gli otto milioni di dollari a puntata.
Accanto a tematiche portanti come il potere e la brama di potere, la sperequazione tra ricchi e poveri, la ricorrenza del tema dei natali, è la presenza di sesso e violenza ad aver generato i cortocircuiti più interessanti che si sono prodotti tra scelte produttive e le dinamiche della ricezione.
La disparità di genere che ha contraddistinto l'estetizzazione del sesso e della sopraffazione fisica in 'Game of Thrones' – pur accompagnata a una costruzione sfaccettata dei personaggi femminili – è stata motivo di accesi dibattiti, significativi di una perdurante centralità del corpo femminile negli immaginari contemporanei, un corpo vero campo di battaglia su cui si disputano contese di intramontabile rilevanza culturale, simbolica e politica.
Le discussioni cominciate dai fan e proseguite da commentatrici/ori e studiose/i, hanno rivendicato una fruizione criticamente attiva e impegnata, e sono riuscite a chiamare direttamente in causa i produttori e i responsabili creativi della serie, costringendoli a difendere le proprie scelte.
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This essay offers a comprehensive discussion of the television series 'Game of Thrones', created in 2011 for HBO by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, as an adaptation of George R. R. Martin's saga 'A Song of Ice and Fire'.
The success and critical reception of its first 6 seasons is examined from a productive, distributive, thematic and narratological standpoints, and the series is proposed as an observatory on how the public has been able to interact with the cultural industry and the in recent years.
Power and conflict, schemes and wars, sex and violence, fantasy and supernatural are all essential ingredients to the story of different noble houses competing for the throne in the imaginary land of Westeros. Vast geopolitical stages and individual quests contribute to a choral narrative, that - thanks to well-oiled soap-operistic devices - defers narrative closure and disrupts the functioning of the season as a relatively autonomous narrative unit.
This centrifugal tendency favours and reflects also the peculiarly central role of the setting (in a broad sense). The fantastic world of the series is accurately depicted as ample and deep, and informed by a wealth of historical inspirations – from the War of the Roses to the Hadrian's Wall, from the medieval-Europe feudal system to Assyrian and Mesopotamic ancient cults – to mention but a few.
Westeros' dark and fascinating atmosphere is brought on the screen in a particularly rich and detailed way thanks to an impressive budget between 6 and 8 million dollars per episode.
Power and the greed for power, inequalities between the rich and the poor, the recurrent theme of family origins and birthrights are central to the series identity, but what originated some of the most lively debates among fans and scholars is the presence of sex and violence. The gender inequality as regards the aestheticization of sex and physical abuse – even if accompanied by the construction of many complex female protagonists – was object of debates, emblematic of the persisting central role of the female body in contemporary collective imageries, battlefield for disputes overs cultural, symbolic and political ideas.
Discussions started by the series' fan base and continued in journalistic and scholarly contexts have made known an active role of the public, able to call into question creative choices on the part of the series' production, and to critically interact with authors and show-runners
La poesia straniera in Italia, «un dono di libertà»
No full textQuesto saggio ripercorre la storia dell’editoria di poesia tradotta in Italiaa partire da alcune esperienze tardo-ottocentesche significative che prepararono le pratiche del secolo successivo; passando quindi a comparsa, codificazione editoriale, uso del testo a fronte, e alle esperienze editoriali che hanno segnato il passo nella traduzione e proposta di poesia straniera in Italia nel Novecento e sino agli anni duemila. Queste ultime sono trattate con particolare riguardo a collane specializzate (riservando cioè più brevi cenni a collane che hanno offerto poesia a fianco di altri generi), alla presenza di autori contemporanei, e all’individuazione di editori, direttori, curatori, traduttori, dei loro ruoli e iniziative in termini di progetto e mediazione culturale.
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This article offers a historical survey of translated poetry in Italy, starting from a few important publications in the late 19th century up to the 2010s. It reports the appearance, coding and use of parallel texts, and all subsequent projects which marked the range of foreign poetry publishing in Italy between the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. Special attention has been devoted to poetry series, to the presence or not of contemporary authors in the catalogues, to editors, directors and translators, and to their role and agency in terms of cultural mediation
Una conversazione con Massimo Soumaré sulla traduzione della fantascienza giapponese in Italia
No full textIn this interview, Iannuzzi and Soumaré discuss the small number of professional translators from Japanese into Italian in the field of entertainment literature. This makes it particularly difficult to introduce works to an Italian readership. Additionally, the narrative modes and procedures of Japanese writers are different from those found in Italian literature. Some fantasy works such as mangas, though, have been widely translated. According to Soumaré, a translator should act as a cultural mediator while leaving concepts from the original texts as intact as possible. Soumaré mentions his editing of a series of volumes called Alia, for which he chose writers who might appeal to Italian readers unfamiliar with the Japanese fantasy genre. Among these writers are Sakyō Komatsu, Yasutaka Tsutsui and Shin’ichi Hoshi. He notices that the impact of Japanese works on Italian readers is often visual, determined by films and animations. He believes that, in contrast to the situation in Italy, entertainment literature in Japan has a cultural space of its own due to academic literary critics such as Takayuki Tatsumi. Japanese publishers, too, are more prepared than Italian publishers to risk publishing unusual works and little-known authors. He finally mentions some of his recent translations from the work of Okina Kamino, Ryō Suzukaze, and Jūza Unno
Electric hive minds: Italian science fiction fandom in the Digital Age
No full textToday science fiction fandom seems to have achieved full critical recognition in all its complexity and segmentations, as an extraordinary vantage point from which to observe ongoing changes in the relationships between cultural industries and the public, and monitor developments in an increasingly interconnected mediascape. This essay looks at some critical issues regarding the activities of Italian science fiction fans, starting from central questions on their use of media and their accomplishments: where can fannish activities be positioned in relation to the professional fields of science fiction cultural production across different media? How have the new media, by making new spaces and tools available to produce content and connect people, influenced fans’ activities and the form and workings of fannish communities? And how, in turn, have these people and their activities influenced media development and the shape of the contemporary Italian mediascape? Provisional answers are provided to these questions drawing on existing primary sources, testimonies and contributions on past decades, and on a survey conducted in 2015 to capture the present state of Italian fandom
‘Qu'il est question d'une langue sauvage’: Phrasebooks for European Travellers in Eighteenth‐Century North America
Get PDFThis article explores the vocabularies of indigenous languages published as part of the travel accounts written by explorers, traders and colonial policymakers in North America over the eighteenth century. Starting with the renowned Voyages by the Baron de Lahontan, the analysis takes as its endpoint the journals of the famous expedition led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The aim of this study is to foreground what these lexicographic compilations reveal about European encounters with societies categorised as radically different from – and less civilised than – the traveller's own: an ‘otherness’ sometimes exploited as a mirror and term of comparison that challenged the observer's ethnocentrism. Drawing on existing scholarship about the cultural history of Euro-American encounters in the modern age, this study puts forward an original analysis of the temporal conceptualisations underpinning vocabularies of ‘savage languages’, in terms of both historical diachronicity and time as a culturally constructed frame of human experience. This focus on the lists of words and phrases included in travel accounts, journals and relations makes it possible to question the relationship between the recording of linguistic evidence and travel narratives, and explore the complex negotiations between empirical observation and pre-existing cultural categories and stereotypes. A close reading of these often-neglected primary sources helps us to identify recurrent conceptual tropes and assign a central role to the historicisation of American indigenous people within wider processes of cultural construction of a global Europeanness
The Translation of East Asian Science Fiction in Italy: An Essay on Chinese and Japanese Science Fiction, Anthological Practices and Publishing Strategies beyond the Anglo-American Canon
No full textThis essay examines the translation of Chinese and Japanese science fiction literature in Italian specialized collections between the 1980s and the 2000s, critically assessing cultural agencies involved, and the role of Anglo-American translations as vehicular initiatives.
Science fiction as a genre with a strong identity - with an easily recognizable and cross-mediatic repertoire of themes and tropes - is a unique vantage point from which to observe the shape and functioning of a trans-national literary production, or, in other words, of a literature which presents global characteristics shared by different linguistic and cultural traditions. Since science fiction was first published as a specific narrative sub-genre in the Anglo-American world (the starting point is usually seen as coinciding with the invention of the word scienti-fiction and later science-fiction in the late 1920s), its narrative inventions have often functioned through shared imaginaries and conventions generally accepted by authors, not only in the case of specific trends or movements, such as cyberpunk, but more in general through a collective adoption and use of ideas and images.
In the Anglo-American field of science fiction studies, there has been increasing attention in recent years to non-English traditions as well as to the idea of global or world science fiction. It is evident that translations have a critical role to play in shaping the idea we (“we” as readers, scholars, or authors) have of the trans-national science fiction production (leaving aside the thorny question of the “canon”). This is even more true when applied to the Italian science fiction readership, since science fiction as a label used by publishers arrived in Italy during the 1950s, essentially in the form of translations of British and American publications
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