- Author:
Marianna Deganutti
- E-mail:
mariannadeganutti5@gmail.com
- Institution:
University of Oxford
- Year of publication:
2016
- Source:
Show
- Pages:
33-48
- DOI Address:
https://doi.org/10.15804/IW.2016.07.02
- PDF:
iw/07/iw702.pdf
Paradoxical identities in Levi, Morante and Tomizza
By considering three works of Primo Levi, Elsa Morante, and Fulvio Tomizza, this analysis aims to investigate some examples of composite and paradoxical identities. Regarding the matter in question, I will examine cases in which the elements shaping the subjects, especially language, will be discordant with the proposed identity. In Primo Levi’s La tregua, the author seeks to account his Jewish belonging, despite his lack of knowledge of yiddish. Morante investigates the troubled linguistic identity of Aracoeli’s protagonist, while the extreme hybridism of Stefano in Tomizza’s L’albero dei sogni allows remarkable forms of estrangement to surface. thanks to the support of identity theorists such as Baumeister and Chambers, and of theorists of the monolingual/plurilingual condition such as Fishman and Lepschy, I will employ a more fluid notion of identity in order to contemplate different variables and solutions, which may lead to contradictions. these three authors can, therefore, be considered forerunners of recent literary studies on migration, which deal with the impellent necessity to remove the limits imposed by strict definitions of identity.
- Author:
Salvatore Francesco Lattarulo
- E-mail:
salvatore.lattarulo@uniba.it
- Institution:
Università di Bari “Aldo Moro”
- Year of publication:
2015
- Source:
Show
- Pages:
113-134
- DOI Address:
https://doi.org/10.15804/IW.2015.06.07
- PDF:
iw/06/iw607.pdf
THE POET IN HIS TENT: THE INFLUENCES OF GIUSEPPE UNGARETTI AND VITTORIO SERENI ON NELO RISI’S EARLY WORKS
L’Esperienza (Experience, 1948) can truly be considered the first stage of Nelo Risi’s (b. 1920) poetic career. However, this early work of his was poorly received when it first came out. Some poems of this collection were included in two later editions of a book by the title Polso Teso (Strained Wrist), in the section entitled Le Vacche Magre (Lean Cows). this editorial decision marked the author’s willingness to use his first real poetic work as the starting point of his solid and personally chosen literary journey. However, as a detailed analysis of L’Esperienza reveals, the lyrical onset of the author is still heavily influenced by the literary tradition. As a result, the first section of the book, La Tenda (The Tent), comprises elements borrowed from Giuseppe Ungaretti’s Il Porto Sepolto (The Buried Harbour) and Vittorio Sereni’s Diario d’Algeria (Algerian Diary). All of this is in stark contrast with the author’s actual aim, which is to distance himself from literature in order to embrace reality. In particular, the common topos of ‘tent’, which is a narrow and precarious space, becomes the sign of the poet’s permanent condition of imprisonment and also exile after the war. therefore, homecoming is a problematic occurrence because it is very difficult for the poet to return, to come back to himself and thus regain his primary identity.
- Author:
Duilio Caocci
- E-mail:
dcaocci@unica.it
- Institution:
Università degli Studi di Cagliari, Italia
- ORCID:
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5432-3137
- Year of publication:
2020
- Source:
Show
- Pages:
41-54
- DOI Address:
https://doi.org/10.15804/IW.2020.11.2.3
- PDF:
iw/11_2/iw11203.pdf
Irony and Sarcasm in Andrea Camilleri’s Un filo di fumo
This article examines the representational modes of the relationships in Andrea Camilleri’s Vigata community and, in particular, those presented in Un filo di fumo. Our initial consideration is that only by combining a semantic perspective with a pragmatic one, the measurement of Sicilianisms and the evaluation of the quality of the Sicilian-Italian language can provide useful information. We need to analyse the relationship that exists between the extra-linguistic hints provided by the narrator and by the characters and the dialogues interspersed in the novel to realise that one needs to be wary of the literal sense of the text in order to fully grasp the significance of many statements. In other words, speakers make constant use of oblique strategies of communication, amongst which, this article argues, irony and sarcasm (in the current interpretation offered by the philosophy of language) emerge as prevailing. As irony is seldom presented as dislocated from an environmental, relational, and historical context, both the narrator and the characters are charged with the duty of providing indispensable information. The Sicilian-Vigatese world arising from some of Camilleri’s novels takes on a semiotic specificity, then, that can be deciphered only with adequate linguistic and cultural competence.