Literature 3.2
Literature
Vol. 3.2 - 2012

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Table of contents

p. 5La citazione come atto cognitivo
Paolo Canettieri
Abstract

In this article I examine the cognitive aspects of quotation; this contribution should be considered as a part of a project raising the issue of intertextuality in a new way. The questions to which cognitive applications may give response are the following:

1. What happens in our mind when we quote?
2. What happens when we listen to or read a quotation?
3. What happens when we look for a quotation?
4. What kind of memory is activated?
5. What is the cognitive function of a quotation?
6. Can a quotation influence the form and method of reasoning?
7. If this is the case, what areas of argumentation are involved?

The fields of cognitive psychology to which it is necessary to refer in order to answer these questions are those of knowledge representation and information processing (particularly the process of transformation of declarative knowledge into procedural knowledge), the theories about the models and structures of memory (procedural, episodic, semantic), the memory processes (especially its recovery), the theory of reasoning.

Article
p. 22Le continuazioni di Great Expectations. Uno sguardo d’insieme
Claudia Cao
Abstract

Of Charles Dickens’ novels, Great Expectations (1861) is undoubtedly a case of special interest for the number of rewritings that this classic has given rise to since its publication 150 years ago. Among the various types of rewritings, this article focuses on three sequels published in the 1980s and 1990s: Magwitch by Michael Noonan, Estella by Alanna Knight and Jack Maggs by Peter Carey. The aim of the article is to highlight what rewriting strategies these novels have in common and their different effects, while showing the distinct ways they respond to the enigmatic Dickensian ending.

Article
p. 44Ancora sui rapporti fra l’autografo berlinese del Decameron e il codice Mannelli
Alfonso D’Agostino
Abstract

This article re-examines the issue of the relations between manuscript B (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Hamilton 90), a late autograph of Decameron (1370-1372), and manuscript Mn (Florence, Laurentian Library, Plut. 40.1), dating back to 1384. Such re-examination starts from the most exhaustive studies on the subject, namely those by Vittore Branca and Franca Ageno, who are of conflicting opinions: according to Branca, Mn is a collateral manuscript to B, according to Ageno it is its descriptus. The article agrees with Ageno, since no errores separativi in relation to Mn can be found in B, but the analysis sometimes reveals evaluations of certain loci of Decameron which are different from those of both scholars, leading in some cases to original ways to establish and interpret the text of Boccaccio’s masterpiece.

Article
p. 86Pietro Chiari’s America. Among apocryphal attributions and philosophical considerations
Alessio Giannanti
Abstract

In Enlightened Europe, the debate surrounding the New World and the encounter with the Other acted as one of the main driving forces behind the crisis of Eurocentrism, and incited a debate which steered the philosophy of the Enlightenment towards a more relativistic concept of society and institutions. These themes were also developed in literature, particularly in the work of the first Italian novelist, Pietro Chiari. The corpus of Chiari’s “American” themed works comprises: La donna che non si trova (1768); Sulle Americhe. «Notizie compendiose per spiriti colti» (1780); La Corsara Francese (1781) and I privilegi della ignoranza. Lettere d’una americana ad un letterato d’Europa (1784). However, the novel L’Americana ramminga (1763), often attributed to Chiari, is now believed to be apocryphal.
As was the case for the literature of the Enlightenment, Chiari’s approach to the “American” theme results in a consideration on civilization, in condemnation of the Conquest, in the myth of the Noble Savage and of life outside society, which converged to form a sort of reverse mirror image of the Western world, providing the author with the opportunity to submit a critical reading of the present. The perspective adopted by Chiari in his analysis is a significant indicator of the his own subscription to the ideology and rhetoric of the Enlightenment, which has perhaps been underestimated by some critics in the past.

Article
p. 104«Specchio» e «ammunimento di tutti gli altri amanti»: dal Kahedin del Tristan en prose al Ghedino della Tavola Ritonda
Giulia Murgia
Abstract

The merging of the Arthurian and Tristanian worlds, as achieved in the great French compilation Prose Tristan (1230-1240 ca.), has been crucial to reconsider some of the characters belonging to the oldest core of the legend of Tristan and Iseult. In particular, this article examines the role of Kahedin, a knight of Brittany, Iseult of the White Hands’ brother, Tristan’s brother-in-law and Iseult the Blonde’s unlucky lover, who contributes to the definition of a new ideology of chivalric ethics in Prose Tristan. This character undergoes further transformations in the 13th-14th century Italian rewritings of the French romance. Among them, Tavola Ritonda shows his deepest metamorphosis: in this early-14th century Tuscan translation, when Kahedin disguises as Ghedino, he becomes the symbol of unreturned love, not only specchio (mirror) and ammunimento (admonition) for the other lovers in the romance, but also a figure troubled by a form of aegritudo amoris, which is described by deploying lexis and scientific notions directly deriving from the mediaeval medical world.

Article
p. 134Appunti in margine a Inferno, V, 103
Arianna Punzi
Abstract

This article scrutinises the literature on Inferno V, 103 with the purpose to investigate, among the several cultural references detectable in the line, an excerpt from Augustine of Hippo’s De Catechizandis Rudibus. The excerpt is founded on the human need to reciprocate God’s deep love for his creatures.

Article
p. 143Hunbaut: il percorso allegorico di un romanzo parodico
Patrizia Serra
Abstract

The Arthurian romance Humbaut, composed in the late 13th century, is a fragmentary work handed down by a single manuscript, the well-known Chantilly, Musée Condé 472. In research conducted by previous scholars, Humbaut is compared to the other romances on Gauvain, which parodically deconstruct this famous Arthurian character. The aim of this article is to propose a new interpretation of this text. As a matter of fact, a more detailed analysis of the decisive episodes in the plot sheds new light on the relations between this romance and the Augustinian tradition, with special reference to De Magistro, which also focuses on the bond between teacher and pupil.

Article
 

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