Forum Italicum: A Journal of Italian Studies

Alcestus is the sixth among fifteen eclogues in Giovanni Boccaccio's Buccolicum carmen (c. 1362–63). Like most poems in this book, Alcestus presents an allegorical narrative based upon a specific historical episode. More particularly, Alcestus takes the form of a political panegyric in honour of Louis of Taranto (the husband of Queen Johanna), who returned to Naples in 1348, after a long conflict involving a vendetta for the murder of Andrew of Hungary (Johanna's first husband), in 1345. This article aims to offer, first, an overview of Boccaccio's Alcestus; and then, provide a closer examination of this work. Taking into consideration its historical background, as well as its literary strategies, I will focus on the different kinds of shifts that emerge in the text – from winter to spring, absence to return, sorrow to happiness, and peace to fear. As I will try to demonstrate, these shifts, besides reflecting the political instability that marked the Neapolitan Trecento, also reveal Boccaccio's literary models for this eclogue – mainly Virgil's Eclogues 5 and 8.

The article contributes to the rediscovery of the depth and complexity of Manzoni's thought, which too often has been reduced to an uncritical expression of Catholicism. Narrating the plague that struck Milan in 1630 in The Betrothed and the History of the Column of Infamy Manzoni reveals political, social, and cultural mechanisms remarkably similar to ours while struggling with the Coronavirus pandemic. The essay analyzes the apparatuses of contagion, the crucial importance of language, the devices of alienation favoring the loss of the sense of objectivity during the 1628 plague, and the pandemic of our time. For Manzoni, the recovery of reality in its bare complexity is possible, to a certain extent, by referring to the two fundamental lines of his thought. On the one hand, the philosophical irony with deep roots in Friedrich Schlegel, European Romanticism, and the reaction to Kantian philosophy. Romantic irony triggers the ethics of writing that runs through Manzoni's novel. On the other hand is the religious direction that Manzoni finds expressed in the Gospels, human conscience, and the idea of “eternal justice”. It emerges in crucial moments of the novel and its appendix, in what Emmanuel Levinas called the “epiphany of the face” which is considered in intersection with Paul Ricoeur's idea of “oneself as another”. Manzoni sees all the problems inherent in both reason and religion. In trying to keep them united, he participates in the most advanced Romantic view of religion and politics, what Frederick Beiser has defined as “one of the most creative and interesting attempts in the history of philosophy to surmount the classical dilemma between humanism and religion.”

Il presente saggio analizza gli elementi del peritesto editoriale, autoriale e allografo che compongono l’edizione di Centuria. Cento piccoli romanzi fiume di Giorgio Manganelli che dal 1995 pubblica Adelphi, evidenziando come le chiavi di lettura e di interpretazione del testo manganelliano proposte e veicolate cerchino di suggerire un’idea di sperimentazione, di caso unico e singolare all’interno tuttavia di una tradizione letteraria altresì familiare e codificata.

In Clara Sereni's (1946–2018) semi-autobiographical (cook)book, non-chronological recollections are evoked by a variety of recipes that mark crucial moments in the narrator's life. At first glance, Sereni portrays herself as a patient and perceptive housewife who learns how to read a room and cook accordingly. She describes her individuality and imagination in the kitchen as an adolescent, and later she depicts the pride and power she derives from her duties as a housewife. However, if we peer between the cracks, what emerges is a depiction of a woman who struggles to convince herself of her worth. Undoubtedly, cooking is one of Sereni's chosen means of communication and self-starvation is another. Food speaks volumes about the challenges she faces as a woman navigating the private, patriarchal sphere as well as the public, capitalist one at a crucial time when the Women's Movement was gaining momentum in Italy. In this article, I focus on Sereni's complex relationship to food, family, and freedom as she transitions from childhood, in the wake of the Second World War, to parenthood, on the heels of the Vietnam War. First, I illustrate how Sereni's account of adolescent bulimarexia in relationship to her father problematizes the mainstream eating disorder theory of the 1980s, which vilifies the role of the mother and largely overlooks the role of the father. Thereafter, I suggest that as an adult Sereni is spread thin in her conflicting roles as housewife and employee, and thus she struggles to negotiate the opposing demands imposed upon her. Consequently, Sereni experiences an eating disorder relapse. However, as an adult her anorexia is of a highly different nature, triggered by the larger social and cultural context of the 1970s, a time when the Italian feminist movement was arguably at its peak. In essence, I show how Sereni's eating disorder is shaped and reshaped over time, namely in line with a shifting patriarchal system.

Questo articolo è una lettura dei sette romanzi di Umberto Eco da Il nome della rosa (1980) al Numero zero (2015) alla luce delle sei conferenze che ha tenuto alla Harvard University (1992–1993), pubblicate col titolo Sei passeggiate nei boschi narrativi. È un tentativo di trovare la chiave di lettura dei suoi romanzi e le regole del gioco narrativo che nella veste dell’“autore modello” ci pone. Eco, non solo con i suoi romanzi, ma anche con le sue opere di saggistica ci mette in gioco, ci trascina in un labirinto e ci procura dei segnali per guidarci. Eco ha tenuto sei conferenze e ha scritto sette romanzi; ogni conferenza parla di un punto cardine della narrazione e ogni romanzo è una dimostrazione di quel punto. Questo articolo è una rilettura delle sue opere narrative considerando i sei punti cardinali della narrazione da lui definiti: l’autore e il lettore modello, l’intreccio, l’indugio, la fiducia tra l’autore e il lettore, l’enciclopedia richiesta dal testo e la finzione narrativa. Come sostiene Eco, soltanto scoprendo le regole del gioco del labirinto e il sistema creato dal suo autore, ovvero la sua strategia, possiamo scoprire il senso vero di un’opera letteraria.

The journey undertaken by the protagonist Assunta Patanè in Mario Monicelli's film The Girl with the Gun is far more than a mere spatial displacement fired by a desire for revenge, but it gradually takes the form of an itinerary of an individualistic and cultural nature that is eventually to overturn the stereotypes of Assunta's native Sicilian community, thus enabling her to embrace modernity and, in particular, emancipation, both of which are totally alien to her at the opening of the film. The metamorphosis of the protagonist passes through various phases that will lead her towards self-awareness and self-determination, following her arrival in Great Britain with the intent to take revenge on Vincenzo, the man responsible for her dishonour. The polyhedral use of language (Sicilian dialect, Standard Italian and English), the impact of a new society and culture, not to mention the series of relations, above all with male characters so different from each other (Vincenzo, John, Frank and Doctor Osborne), will mark Assunta's gradual path towards maturity. In an atmosphere initially overhung with tragedy but gradually transformed through comedy and humour, the Sicilian woman will succeed in freeing herself from the prejudices and customs of an archaic world, so as to affirm her presence and personal identity, now liberated from the simplistic male–female binary and from the respective roles decreed since antiquity.

Questo studio presenta un’analisi corpus-based dell’uso e della produzione dei connettivi e delle unità fraseologiche dell’italiano in apprendenti di italiano L2 di diversi livelli di competenza linguistica. I connettivi e le unità fraseologiche rivestono un ruolo chiave nell’uso di una L2. Da un lato, i connettivi aiutano gli apprendenti a organizzare la struttura informativa del testo e a collegare frasi e blocchi testuali. Dall’altro, le unità fraseologiche influenzano positivamente la fluenza e l’uso della L2. Gli apprendenti tendono a usare sia i connettivi sia le unità fraseologiche fin dalle prime fasi dell’apprendimento. Tuttavia, lo sviluppo dell'uso di quest’ultimi sembra non essere lineare nella L2. Il presente studio indaga, quindi, se e in quale misura ci sia un progresso nell’uso dei connettivi e delle unità fraseologiche in apprendenti di italiano L2.