Literature 11.2
Literature
Vol. 11.2 - 2020

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Table of contents

p. 5Su Apocolocyntosis 6,1: Marti(s) municipem vides
Mauro Aresu
Abstract

This paper aims at suggesting a new solution to one of the many Apocolocyntosisloci difficiles (6,1). After providing a list of the main solutions advanced throughout the history of the exegesis of the text, it eventually suggests a new one, taking into consideration the palaeographic evidence and the historical and cultural context in which the Apocolocyntosis is supposed to have been written.

Article
p. 12Vom Exquisiten. Versuch einer Theorie
Thomas Emmrich
Abstract

The exquisite can be seen as a blind spot in earlier reflections on aesthetics. This may partly be due to the hegemony of the beautiful and the sublime, alongside which alternative concepts were not considered in any depth. Through Roman Literature, this contribution explores the origin of the exquisite, i.e. the term «exquisitus», in order to assist this neglected aesthetic category in building a theory of its own.

Article
p. 31«I know I’m fatter»: hunger and bodily awareness in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden
Anna Gasperini
Abstract

This article analyses the connection between food, hunger, and child health in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s 1911 children’s novel The Secret Garden. It combines food in children’s literature theory, medical history, and body studies, and specifically it draws from Pasi Falk’s concept of corporeality, which conceives the human body as a sensual and sensorial entity (1994). Within this theoretical framework, the article reads The Secret Garden as the account of the two child protagonists’ corporealization, that is, their transition from incorporeality (which coincides with lack of hunger, disconnection from one’s own body, and illness), to corporeality (which coincides with hunger, awareness of one’s physicality, and health). Tracing the two children’s progress from illness/incorporeality to health/corporeality, the article contributes to position the novel within the Victorian and Edwardian medical discourse about child nutrition and healthy child physicality; in this analysis food emerges as a key-element to both the corporealization process in the story, as a sensorial stimulant, and to the novel’s engagement with debates about child nutrition and health in its cultural and historical context.

Article
p. 50Bergtagning: la leggenda del rapimento nella montagna nelle ballate e nei racconti popolari svedesi
Angela Iuliano
Abstract

The Swedish term bergtagning means ‘abduction into the mountain’ and indicates a popular belief, whose first literary evidence is in a skaldic poem dating back to the 12th century. According to the legend, the mountain could magically abduct people who were wandering among woods, keeping them prisoner forever or setting them free in a deeply changed state of mind. This motif is the subject of many oral folk tales, recorded in rural areas of Sweden during the 19th century, and it also recurs in several ballads written in the 19th but belonging to ancient oral traditions that date back to the Middle Ages. The bergtagning motif is deeply rooted in the popular culture; references and allusions to ancient lore occur in numerous literary works even in modern times. This article aims to analyse how the phenomenon is described in some of the contexts in which it occurs: folk tales and medieval ballads, and, in order to understand its roots in popular culture, in Norse sagas and skaldic poetry.

Article
p. 67Autocomunicazione e life writing. Considerazioni sulle biografie collettive inglesi della prima età moderna
Ivana Ledda
Abstract

Life writing constitutes a valuable resource for the scholar of English literature and culture of the early modern age. Recent analysis of the production and circulation of biographical material has brought to light a relational perception of the self, which mainly feeds into the participatory and performative aspects of early modern life writing. Specifically, this essay focuses on the cumulative conception of life as it emerges from the prefaces to the collections of English biographies published between the 16th and the 17th century, some examples of which will be examined. In this regard, the perspective of cultural semiotics will allow us to detect the expression of the self-descriptive and autocommunicative processes of the early modern English culture, especially when taking into account the increase in the circulation of collective biographies during the seventeenth century. Moreover, this theoretical framework allows us to bring to light some particular features of early modern English life writing showing affinity with the use of biography and the conception of the self in the digital age.

Article
p. 86Briefe, Briefträger und Postbeamten in Reiner Kunzes Der Löwe Leopold – Fast Märchen, fast Geschichten
Chiara Virdis
Abstract

This essay attempts to relate the fundamental features of Reiner Kunze’s poetry and prose to the book for children Der Löwe Leopold – Fast Märchen, fast Geschichten (1970), with particular reference to the topic of the post, which can be found in three of its four stories, as well as in the poem Warum sind Löwenzahnblüten gelb? The essay opens with biographical events of the author, some of which led him to become an enemy of the State in East Germany by the end of the 60s. In the same section, thematic cores of Kunze’s works are defined (among those, his interest for the individual sphere of human existence and for political topics). The second part is largely dedicated to the topic of the post and contains a detailed comparison between the characters of the mailman and the mail clerk, which occur in the stories analyzed in the third section of the essay. Finally, the focus of the third section is on the recurrence of the main topics of Kunze’s works in the book Der Löwe Leopold. An in-depth analysis of the elements related to the post in the two stories Der Löwe Leopold and Der Drachen Jakob is also provided in the last part of the paper.

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