Filološki fakultet

Why do certain complex ideas — e.g., scientific, political or economic theories — spread in society, become a matter of debate, while others do not? How and why does the content of complex ideas change the more they are debated by the wider public? How does communicating expert knowledge affect public discourse and political decision making? I argue that in order to identify and possibly predict the social fate of a complex idea, one must explore how lay people understand it. Drawing on cognitive theory and historical research, I propose a theory that describes the social diffusion of complex ideas as a consequence of how lay people construe the relation between those ideas and their perceived real-world contexts. In contrast to the conventional view, the theory suggests that changes to the conceptual content of a complex idea are not an inevitable tradeoff of the spreading process; instead, these changes are what make the idea salient at the individual level, and therefore foster its social diffusion. The article includes a short summary of the historical investigation from which the theory has emerged.

This essay explores the subject of the aversion of intellectuals to the market economy. It does so by studying a selection of Italian films of the early 1960s whose themes are centered upon the economic boom of those years. The films reviewed are Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita, Michelangelo Antonioni's L’Eclisse, Dino Risi’s Il Sorpasso, and Vittorio De Sica’s Il Boom. These films present a critical view of the market forces that are changing the economy suggesting that they favor the ascent of morally controversial human types. Nothing good for society can come out of an economy that rewards hollow or insensitive individuals, while the honest and the conscientious are dramatically left behind, the films seem to say. Comparing these films with the concomitant economic scenario reveals a contrast between the existential anxieties and moral corruption that the films emphasize, and the story that economic and statistical data tell us. This contrast may be taken to imply that the anti-market stance expressed by the films was contiguous with the radical political culture of the time, a culture that bred the film-makers themselves. However, the economic criticism that transpires from the films does not reflect a radical ideology. Instead, the films communicate a more conservative criticism of the market economy by depicting it as a threat to traditional forms of social cohesion, personal conduct, and economic stability.

I argue that since physical objects have cultural significance only when they are invested with some symbolic value, a culturally ambitious literary criticism should have no interest for objects as such. On the contrary, I suggest that focusing on the questions to which the symbolic value of a given objects refer may result in a more culturally significant critical discussion, and is therefore preferable to dissecting the symbolic properties of an object.

This paper presents a brief survey of a trend in literary criticism called the "New Economic Criticism." It focuses on studies that explore the Shakespearean age to contrast what the critical literature has to say about the economic history and culture of the time with the corresponding work of economic historians and some elements of economic theory. It is shown that, with some exceptions, the claims made by economic literary historians are often drawn from questionable economic assumptions and inaccurate historical reconstructions. The paper is in Italian.

This essay examines the contributions of Italian economist Pasquale Jannaccone to the Turin daily newspaper «La Nuova Stampa» during the Italian post-wwii reconstruction. It is argued that the major element of interest in Jannaccone’s work as opinion maker lies in the educational style of most of his articles, which suggests a distinctive awareness that the level of sophistication reached by the economics profession is likely to undermine public communication. In addition to a brief survey of Jannaccone’s scientific biography, two other topics are singled out and examined: his intellectual support to the monetary policy of Luigi Einaudi during the latter’s political engagement, and his defense of the principles of economic and political liberalism in an intellectual context particularly hostile to those ideas.

Placido Rizzotto and Peppino Impastato are two Italian mafia victims whose names were long forgotten until their story became the subject of two films both released in 2000—Placido Rizzotto, by Pasquale Scimeca, and One Hundred Steps, by Marco Tullio Giordana. It is today generally acknowledged that these films are instances of a wider cultural movement blossomed in the nineteen-nineties, which aimed at forming a new national identity defined in opposition to the culture, values and behaviors that allowed the mafia to thrive. I propose a formal analysis to show that these films have contributed to change the Italian public’s sensitivity toward organized crime stories not only through the critical acclaim and commercial success they received, but also by subverting the conventions of the mafia film tradition in at least three significant ways. First, by dismissing the entertaining gangster-movie style of traditional movies, these films encourage viewers to question the individualistic myths that surround the mafia and to consider its social downsides. Second, by focusing on little-known activists, rather than prominent mafiosi and their institutional opponents—police officers, prosecutors, etc.—they counter a deep-rooted commonplace according to which mafia members may well use violence against each other, but do not generally hurt the rest of the community. Third, by emphasizing the pathetic aspects of the stories, they elicit an emotional response that may leave a deeper trace of the story’s meaning than more spectacular films of the kind

Contrary to a commonly held view, an analysis of Walter Siti's novel Resistere non serve a niente shows that the way in which the world of finance is outlined in the book does not offer a key to form an informed judgment on present-day finance. Instead, the text echoes (and elaborates on) a series of topics that already populate public discourse. In doing so, it reinforces a stereotypical view of finance, and makes it look as the epitome of a more general crisis of values. This effect is obtained through three discursive strategies that are central to the novel and constitute the main focus of the present essay. The first is the equation of market and prostitution obtained through an ambiguous interpretation of the notions of economic value, impersonal exchange, and money. The second is the characterization of stockbrokers as ferine, arrogant people in a way that recalls the well-known Keynesian picture of the "animal spirits of capitalism," taken in its current stereotypical (and distorted) sense. The third is the use of redundant and sometimes cacophonous financial technicalities that, in the absence of any explanatory note, generate a confusing impression of meanings in which readers are more likely to get lost than they are to understand the world depicted in the novel.

In 2011, Edoardo Nesi – a former industrialist in the Prato textile district – won the most prestigious Italian literary prize for his autobiographical novel Storia della mia gente, a book centered on the contrast between Prato's past industrial success and present decline. Nesi has since become a regular contributor to Corriere della Sera, among other newspapers, and with his following book, Le nostre vite senza ieri, he has further emphasised his role as a public intellectual. In Nesi's view, Italy's participation in the global economy has exposed Italian manufacturers to a level of competition that they were not ready to meet. This disadvantage, Nesi contends, was exacerbated by the adoption of the euro, which put an end to the former practice of using monetary policy to offset trade deficits. As a result, many firms lost market shares, and the Prato textile district ended up being largely taken over by Chinese businesses. This paper criticises Nesi's account of the Italian industrial decline. In particular, it argues that his sympathetic view of the former political-industrial system is mostly an expression of self-complacency and does not positively contribute to the current debates on the Italian economic crisis.

Italiano
Il presente saggio passa in rassegna una serie di commedie, drammi e satire composte in Inghilterra nel tardo periodo elisabettiano con lo scopo di mostrare come l’affermazione di temi economici sulle scene dei teatri londinesi abbia incoraggiato negli autori un progressivo allontanamento dalle forme di rappresentazione allegoriche per fare posto a forme più realistiche. Per la prima volta nella storia del teatro moderno, dinamiche commerciali e prettamente urbane finiscono al centro di una pièce di teatro imperniando il motore dell’azione scenica su elementi economici, come il credito, il lavoro, la mobilità sociale, le imprese commerciali. Il saggio mostra inoltre come il teatro tardo-elisabettiano si sia avvicinato a svolgere la funzione di forum di idee, dove i problemi della vita quotidiana dei londinesi potevano essere discussi e offerti al giudizio del pubblico. Dopo una ricostruzione sommaria del contesto culturale dell’epoca, il saggio si sofferma sulle money plays, le city comedies, la figura dell’usuraio elisabettiano, e la retorica del “dio denaro”.

English
This essay reviews a series of plays, comedies and satires from the late Elizabethan period. Its purpose is to show that the gradual appearance of economic themes in the dramatic literature of the time coincided with a shift away from allegorical forms and the rise of more realistic modes of representation. For the first time in the history of modern theater, trade and other typically urban dynamics took center stage in a show, making economic subjects such as credit, labor, social mobility, and commercial enterprises the driving force of the dramatic action. The essay also brings support to the widespread belief that late-Elizabethan theater came close to operating as a forum of ideas, a place where issues of daily life could be presented in the form of a show and left to the judgment of the audience. After a brief sketch of the cultural context of the time, the essay dwells on the topics of the money plays, the city comedies, the Elizabethan usurer, and the rhetoric of money as a “visible god”.

Pour les Gaulois et les peuples voisins à la société encore archaïque, il n'y a au fond qu'une nation ennemie, celle de César: un monde foncièrement étranger, hiérarchisé, militarisé. Un empire moderne qui parle une langue morte! L'universitaire italien Stefano Adamo analyse ce monde étrange où les Romains parlent un français émaillé de maximes latines qu'ils comprennent mal eux-mêmes.

Immigration is perhaps one of the most urgent issues in Europe today. It dominated the Brexit campaign and is expected to have a pivotal role in the French, German, and Hungarian elections of 2017. Physical barriers have been erected, the Schengen treaty has been put into question, nationalisms, once thought to be dormant, are resurging. Migrants scare by their number, by their cultural and religious diversity, and by the alleged imbalances they might bring to the social and economic fabric of the countries hosting them. Immigration evokes cultural and economic clashes. Still, what if the former were not at all cultural and the latter had little to do with migrants?

The present chapter contains a discussion of the English translation of Bernardo Davanzati’s Lezione delle monete (1588) in the context of the so-called Great Recoinage of 1696. In that year, the poor state of the silver coins in circulation had prompted the English government to replace the old coins with newly minted ones. This generated a debate over what should be the value of the new coins, and Davanzati’s short essay was translated by John Toland as a contribution to that debate. Retrospectively, the Great Recoinage debate can be seen as an early instance of what has come to be known as the eighteenth-century public sphere. It is therefore a significant event not only in early-modern monetary history, but also from a cultural and political point of view.  The debate essentially revolved around two opposite views. The first, championed by the then Secretary to the Treasury, William Lowndes, was that the recoinage should be taken as an opportunity to enhance the face value of silver coins to make it match the market value of silver. The second, propounded by John Locke, among others, was that altering the value of coins would have made the economy unstable and was therefore to avoid. Locke’s view prevailed. The government did not alter the value of coins and, in doing so, it set a precedent that would result instrumental to the later adoption of the British Gold Standard, the monetary system of industrial Britain. Davanzati’s short essay closely reflects Locke’s views, and was used in the “war of tracts” to further support Locke’s claim that government should not tamper with money. As a result, an essay occasioned by a symposium of erudite Florentines was transformed into a policy brief. In his translation, Toland turns the Italian uninterrupted textual flow into a methodical succession of paragraphs in which every theme is visually singled out. Additionally, he underscores the relevance of the essay to the English context by giving emphasis to the paragraphs that relate to old-time topics of English mercantilism, from Gresham’s Law to the determinants of the rate of exchange. Most importantly, his word choice, punctuation and use of italics stress the practical implications of the treatise over its more scholarly and philosophical aspects. All of this suggests that the English version of the Lezione delle Monete is best understood in light of the political-economic circumstances of the time. Whereas Italian scholars have essentially seen Davanzati as a prose stylist, the 1690s money crisis made English readers more receptive to his monetary thought—and Toland’s translation choices reflect this different sensitivity. In short, whereas Davanzati’s concluding remark is that the essay was written “not for your instruction, Gentlemen, but for your entertainment,” the English translation of the Lezione delle monete seems inspired by the opposite intention.

This short essay contains a reflection on the rise of populism in Western politics. It shows why the modus operandi of modern democracy is akin to that of science and why populist movements are trying to dissolve the ties between political decision making and the production of scientific knowledge.

Economic themes have recently become a conspicuous feature of the Italian novel. Many of these works contrast the present economic order with that of a mostly idealized past. This paper contains a close reading of a selection of such novels analyzed from an economic perspective. It seeks to explain how the authors' criticism of today's economy and the moral stance their stories project relate to a particular interpretation of economic mechanisms. The novels included in the analysis are the following: Come ho perso la guerra, by Filippo Bologna; Dove eravate tutti, by Paolo Di Paolo; La caduta, by Giovanni Cocco; La fine del mondo storto, by Mauro Corona. The study is part of a larger project on the literary representations of contemporary economic issues. The paper is in Italian.

This chapter presents an analysis of four contemporary Italian novels that revolve around the theme of the contrast between past and present. The novels in question are: Dove eravate tutti, by Paolo Di Paolo (2011); Storia della mia gente, by Edoardo Nesi (2010); Riportando tutto a casa, by Nicola Lagioia (2009) and La fine del mondo storto by Mauro Corona (2010). The essay shows that the representation of reality found in these novels does not live up to the expectations generated by the tradition of literary realism and concludes that their success is essentially based on the popularity of their authors in the media and, in particular, on their identity as public intellectuals. Paper in French.