“L’ombra delle colonne infami”. La letteratura e l’ingiustizia del capro espiatorio, 2022
In this essay we reinterpret Camus’s novel The Plague in light of the historic urgency that with ... more In this essay we reinterpret Camus’s novel The Plague in light of the historic urgency that with Covid 19 pandemia made us face a real pestilence, thus allowing us to read reality and fiction as even. Our rereading relativizes the traditional allegoric interpretation of critics, while at the same time it widens its perspectives. It is in fact in the universality of illness that evil acquires its authentic value in the novel, both in its ethical dimension than in its social and political stance. For our analysis we focus on the stylistic level, considered by Camus himself as the most appropriate key to understand the novel, built as a Greek tragedy and as such not reducible to specific ideological dimension.
in inglese: Windows, greenhouses, telescopes, fishbowls: the external perspective in proustian de... more in inglese: Windows, greenhouses, telescopes, fishbowls: the external perspective in proustian descriptions. n if few have read it entirely, Proust's novel is undoubtedly famous: to this day in France the number of publications on Proust each year exceeds the number ...
@nalises. Revue de critique et de théorie littéraire
Si l'émergence du numérique dans l'époque contemporaine peut modifier l'approche cogn... more Si l'émergence du numérique dans l'époque contemporaine peut modifier l'approche cognitive du lecteur et que le « clicking and browsing reading » 1 peut renforcer son autonomie d'interprétation (Fitzpatrick, p. 45), tous les textes ne sauraient être interrogés de la même manière. Certains d'entre eux manifestent leur modernité dans une nature ouverte, hypertextuelle, dans une virtualité de sens et une variabilité de forme en principe infinie. La Recherche de Marcel Proust est à notre avis l'un de ces textes. Comme la plus récente critique 1 Je traduis : « un nouveau type de lecture, ou l'on clique et navigue à travers le texte ». Digital reading is not just a matter of new media; it is a new cognitive activity that Proust’s writing seems to have anticipated. Our goal is to demonstrate that the “branching and responding text” that was announced by Ted Nelson in Litary Machines corresponds in its very logic and patterns to the new writing style that is to b...
A mystical fire thief: Péladan’s Prometheus and the Salvation
Péladan’s Prométhéide was written... more A mystical fire thief: Péladan’s Prometheus and the Salvation
Péladan’s Prométhéide was written in 1893 and published in 1895. In the Preface of the trilogy Péladan had inserted a letter of Émile Burnouf, a famous French scholar of ancient Greek literature, in which the latter testified to the philological correctness of the play. Burnouf proclaimed his certainty that Ae-schylus’s work was an esoteric introduction to mysteries, a mystical ritual of which the main goal was the revelation of religious truth to the public. As it is known, only one of the three Aeschylus’ tragedies on the Titan is left, Prometheus Unbound. Péladan pretended to have “restored” the two lost tragedies, the Fire Thief and Prometheus released, and to have translated the only one we do have. Yet his interpretation of Aeschylus’ work is an esoteric one, in which he tries to balance the values of ancient Greek culture and the Christian Revelation: Péladan’s Prometheus is the creator and savior of humankind, Christ’s precursor (or the precursor of Christ). Prometheus’ sacrifice is interpreted by Péladan as an anticipation of Christ’s suffering for the salvation of mankind/humankind, as his Aeschylus ‘translation’ demonstrates: the Greek Prometheus suffers “for the destiny of his brothers”, while Péladan’s hero suffers “in his brothers". His suffering is, furthermore, a “suffering for justice”, an expression that finishes the three Péladan’s tragedies and exhibits the deep sense of his work. His Prometheus is moreover a Symbolist character, without a rea-listic personality and without a real risk of dramatic conflict: an absolute character, indee
Our goal in this essay is to analyse the “dramatic archetype” of women’s sexuality in the realist... more Our goal in this essay is to analyse the “dramatic archetype” of women’s sexuality in the realistic French theatre of the late Nineteenth century. To this end, we have compared two apparently opposite dramas: The Lady of Camellias by Dumas fils (1852) and The Dupe by Georges Ancey (1891). The Lady of Camellias is a ‘canonical play’ for European culture, staged everywhere in the world during the last century in many languages. Since 1880, when Sarah Bernhardt first performed the heroine, most spectators interpreted the play as a melodramatic work. Marguerite’s character is normally understood in contemporary staging as the “victim of love”, even though she was created by the author as the guilty persona of the play. Marguerite’s death on the stage was meant by Dumas to admonish women adopting unregulated sexual behaviour: the courtesan could indeed be rehabilitated, but in return for her life. The Dupe by Georges Ancey is the high-water mark reached by the Naturalist avant-garde: the drama exhibits the bourgeois family’s values as a moral falsification, in which everyone searches only his or her own advantage. The main character Adèle is obliged (forced?) by her mother and her sister to marry Albert Bonnet without loving him. Five months after their marriage, she feels intensively attracted by her husband and falls in love with him. Albert betrays her and squanders the family’s patrimony with (or on?) his mistress. Adèle, nevertheless, keeps carries on loving him and doesn’t want to separate. After having forced her to marry him, her family then forces her to leave her husband. Adèle is alone and by now poor: her sister Marie and her mother have kept the majority of the money and she doesn’t even have the few attentions that Albert gave to her. As she clearly says to her sister, she “needs him” as a physical need. She is, therefore, “sensual”, which is the worst guilt for a woman. The spectators of 1891 derided her as “a head-case, perverted, licentious”: women’s sexual desire is still disquieting and dangerous. The Twentieth Century focus on this topic is based on this theatre, though it was expressed by different esthetics. Feminine sexuality also permeates Nineteenth Century dramatic production, the Symbolist one included: Berlin’s “Blue Angel” and the cold “men devourer” of Symbolist novels descends from the same sociological archetype.
“L’ombra delle colonne infami”. La letteratura e l’ingiustizia del capro espiatorio, 2022
In this essay we reinterpret Camus’s novel The Plague in light of the historic urgency that with ... more In this essay we reinterpret Camus’s novel The Plague in light of the historic urgency that with Covid 19 pandemia made us face a real pestilence, thus allowing us to read reality and fiction as even. Our rereading relativizes the traditional allegoric interpretation of critics, while at the same time it widens its perspectives. It is in fact in the universality of illness that evil acquires its authentic value in the novel, both in its ethical dimension than in its social and political stance. For our analysis we focus on the stylistic level, considered by Camus himself as the most appropriate key to understand the novel, built as a Greek tragedy and as such not reducible to specific ideological dimension.
in inglese: Windows, greenhouses, telescopes, fishbowls: the external perspective in proustian de... more in inglese: Windows, greenhouses, telescopes, fishbowls: the external perspective in proustian descriptions. n if few have read it entirely, Proust's novel is undoubtedly famous: to this day in France the number of publications on Proust each year exceeds the number ...
@nalises. Revue de critique et de théorie littéraire
Si l'émergence du numérique dans l'époque contemporaine peut modifier l'approche cogn... more Si l'émergence du numérique dans l'époque contemporaine peut modifier l'approche cognitive du lecteur et que le « clicking and browsing reading » 1 peut renforcer son autonomie d'interprétation (Fitzpatrick, p. 45), tous les textes ne sauraient être interrogés de la même manière. Certains d'entre eux manifestent leur modernité dans une nature ouverte, hypertextuelle, dans une virtualité de sens et une variabilité de forme en principe infinie. La Recherche de Marcel Proust est à notre avis l'un de ces textes. Comme la plus récente critique 1 Je traduis : « un nouveau type de lecture, ou l'on clique et navigue à travers le texte ». Digital reading is not just a matter of new media; it is a new cognitive activity that Proust’s writing seems to have anticipated. Our goal is to demonstrate that the “branching and responding text” that was announced by Ted Nelson in Litary Machines corresponds in its very logic and patterns to the new writing style that is to b...
A mystical fire thief: Péladan’s Prometheus and the Salvation
Péladan’s Prométhéide was written... more A mystical fire thief: Péladan’s Prometheus and the Salvation
Péladan’s Prométhéide was written in 1893 and published in 1895. In the Preface of the trilogy Péladan had inserted a letter of Émile Burnouf, a famous French scholar of ancient Greek literature, in which the latter testified to the philological correctness of the play. Burnouf proclaimed his certainty that Ae-schylus’s work was an esoteric introduction to mysteries, a mystical ritual of which the main goal was the revelation of religious truth to the public. As it is known, only one of the three Aeschylus’ tragedies on the Titan is left, Prometheus Unbound. Péladan pretended to have “restored” the two lost tragedies, the Fire Thief and Prometheus released, and to have translated the only one we do have. Yet his interpretation of Aeschylus’ work is an esoteric one, in which he tries to balance the values of ancient Greek culture and the Christian Revelation: Péladan’s Prometheus is the creator and savior of humankind, Christ’s precursor (or the precursor of Christ). Prometheus’ sacrifice is interpreted by Péladan as an anticipation of Christ’s suffering for the salvation of mankind/humankind, as his Aeschylus ‘translation’ demonstrates: the Greek Prometheus suffers “for the destiny of his brothers”, while Péladan’s hero suffers “in his brothers". His suffering is, furthermore, a “suffering for justice”, an expression that finishes the three Péladan’s tragedies and exhibits the deep sense of his work. His Prometheus is moreover a Symbolist character, without a rea-listic personality and without a real risk of dramatic conflict: an absolute character, indee
Our goal in this essay is to analyse the “dramatic archetype” of women’s sexuality in the realist... more Our goal in this essay is to analyse the “dramatic archetype” of women’s sexuality in the realistic French theatre of the late Nineteenth century. To this end, we have compared two apparently opposite dramas: The Lady of Camellias by Dumas fils (1852) and The Dupe by Georges Ancey (1891). The Lady of Camellias is a ‘canonical play’ for European culture, staged everywhere in the world during the last century in many languages. Since 1880, when Sarah Bernhardt first performed the heroine, most spectators interpreted the play as a melodramatic work. Marguerite’s character is normally understood in contemporary staging as the “victim of love”, even though she was created by the author as the guilty persona of the play. Marguerite’s death on the stage was meant by Dumas to admonish women adopting unregulated sexual behaviour: the courtesan could indeed be rehabilitated, but in return for her life. The Dupe by Georges Ancey is the high-water mark reached by the Naturalist avant-garde: the drama exhibits the bourgeois family’s values as a moral falsification, in which everyone searches only his or her own advantage. The main character Adèle is obliged (forced?) by her mother and her sister to marry Albert Bonnet without loving him. Five months after their marriage, she feels intensively attracted by her husband and falls in love with him. Albert betrays her and squanders the family’s patrimony with (or on?) his mistress. Adèle, nevertheless, keeps carries on loving him and doesn’t want to separate. After having forced her to marry him, her family then forces her to leave her husband. Adèle is alone and by now poor: her sister Marie and her mother have kept the majority of the money and she doesn’t even have the few attentions that Albert gave to her. As she clearly says to her sister, she “needs him” as a physical need. She is, therefore, “sensual”, which is the worst guilt for a woman. The spectators of 1891 derided her as “a head-case, perverted, licentious”: women’s sexual desire is still disquieting and dangerous. The Twentieth Century focus on this topic is based on this theatre, though it was expressed by different esthetics. Feminine sexuality also permeates Nineteenth Century dramatic production, the Symbolist one included: Berlin’s “Blue Angel” and the cold “men devourer” of Symbolist novels descends from the same sociological archetype.
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Péladan’s Prométhéide was written in 1893 and published in 1895. In the Preface of the trilogy Péladan had inserted a letter of Émile Burnouf, a famous French scholar of ancient Greek literature, in which the latter testified to the philological correctness of the play. Burnouf proclaimed his certainty that Ae-schylus’s work was an esoteric introduction to mysteries, a mystical ritual of which the main goal was the revelation of religious truth to the public.
As it is known, only one of the three Aeschylus’ tragedies on the Titan is left, Prometheus Unbound. Péladan pretended to have “restored” the two lost tragedies, the Fire Thief and Prometheus released, and to have translated the only one we do have. Yet his interpretation of Aeschylus’ work is an esoteric one, in which he tries to balance the values of ancient Greek culture and the Christian Revelation: Péladan’s Prometheus is the creator and savior of humankind, Christ’s precursor (or the precursor of Christ). Prometheus’ sacrifice is interpreted by Péladan as an anticipation of Christ’s suffering for the salvation of mankind/humankind, as his Aeschylus ‘translation’ demonstrates: the Greek Prometheus suffers “for the destiny of his brothers”, while Péladan’s hero suffers “in his brothers". His suffering is, furthermore, a “suffering for justice”, an expression that finishes the three Péladan’s tragedies and exhibits the deep sense of his work. His Prometheus is moreover a Symbolist character, without a rea-listic personality and without a real risk of dramatic conflict: an absolute character, indee
The Lady of Camellias is a ‘canonical play’ for European culture, staged everywhere in the world during the last century in many languages. Since 1880, when Sarah Bernhardt first performed the heroine, most spectators interpreted the play as a melodramatic work. Marguerite’s character is normally understood in contemporary staging as the “victim of love”, even though she was created by the author as the guilty persona of the play. Marguerite’s death on the stage was meant by Dumas to admonish women adopting unregulated sexual behaviour: the courtesan could indeed be rehabilitated, but in return for her life.
The Dupe by Georges Ancey is the high-water mark reached by the Naturalist avant-garde: the drama exhibits the bourgeois family’s values as a moral falsification, in which everyone searches only his or her own advantage. The main character Adèle is obliged (forced?) by her mother and her sister to marry Albert Bonnet without loving him. Five months after their marriage, she feels intensively attracted by her husband and falls in love with him. Albert betrays her and squanders the family’s patrimony with (or on?) his mistress. Adèle, nevertheless, keeps carries on loving him and doesn’t want to separate. After having forced her to marry him, her family then forces her to leave her husband. Adèle is alone and by now poor: her sister Marie and her mother have kept the majority of the money and she doesn’t even have the few attentions that Albert gave to her. As she clearly says to her sister, she “needs him” as a physical need. She is, therefore, “sensual”, which is the worst guilt for a woman. The spectators of 1891 derided her as “a head-case, perverted, licentious”: women’s sexual desire is still disquieting and dangerous. The Twentieth Century focus on this topic is based on this theatre, though it was expressed by different esthetics. Feminine sexuality also permeates Nineteenth Century dramatic production, the Symbolist one included: Berlin’s “Blue Angel” and the cold “men devourer” of Symbolist novels descends from the same sociological archetype.
Péladan’s Prométhéide was written in 1893 and published in 1895. In the Preface of the trilogy Péladan had inserted a letter of Émile Burnouf, a famous French scholar of ancient Greek literature, in which the latter testified to the philological correctness of the play. Burnouf proclaimed his certainty that Ae-schylus’s work was an esoteric introduction to mysteries, a mystical ritual of which the main goal was the revelation of religious truth to the public.
As it is known, only one of the three Aeschylus’ tragedies on the Titan is left, Prometheus Unbound. Péladan pretended to have “restored” the two lost tragedies, the Fire Thief and Prometheus released, and to have translated the only one we do have. Yet his interpretation of Aeschylus’ work is an esoteric one, in which he tries to balance the values of ancient Greek culture and the Christian Revelation: Péladan’s Prometheus is the creator and savior of humankind, Christ’s precursor (or the precursor of Christ). Prometheus’ sacrifice is interpreted by Péladan as an anticipation of Christ’s suffering for the salvation of mankind/humankind, as his Aeschylus ‘translation’ demonstrates: the Greek Prometheus suffers “for the destiny of his brothers”, while Péladan’s hero suffers “in his brothers". His suffering is, furthermore, a “suffering for justice”, an expression that finishes the three Péladan’s tragedies and exhibits the deep sense of his work. His Prometheus is moreover a Symbolist character, without a rea-listic personality and without a real risk of dramatic conflict: an absolute character, indee
The Lady of Camellias is a ‘canonical play’ for European culture, staged everywhere in the world during the last century in many languages. Since 1880, when Sarah Bernhardt first performed the heroine, most spectators interpreted the play as a melodramatic work. Marguerite’s character is normally understood in contemporary staging as the “victim of love”, even though she was created by the author as the guilty persona of the play. Marguerite’s death on the stage was meant by Dumas to admonish women adopting unregulated sexual behaviour: the courtesan could indeed be rehabilitated, but in return for her life.
The Dupe by Georges Ancey is the high-water mark reached by the Naturalist avant-garde: the drama exhibits the bourgeois family’s values as a moral falsification, in which everyone searches only his or her own advantage. The main character Adèle is obliged (forced?) by her mother and her sister to marry Albert Bonnet without loving him. Five months after their marriage, she feels intensively attracted by her husband and falls in love with him. Albert betrays her and squanders the family’s patrimony with (or on?) his mistress. Adèle, nevertheless, keeps carries on loving him and doesn’t want to separate. After having forced her to marry him, her family then forces her to leave her husband. Adèle is alone and by now poor: her sister Marie and her mother have kept the majority of the money and she doesn’t even have the few attentions that Albert gave to her. As she clearly says to her sister, she “needs him” as a physical need. She is, therefore, “sensual”, which is the worst guilt for a woman. The spectators of 1891 derided her as “a head-case, perverted, licentious”: women’s sexual desire is still disquieting and dangerous. The Twentieth Century focus on this topic is based on this theatre, though it was expressed by different esthetics. Feminine sexuality also permeates Nineteenth Century dramatic production, the Symbolist one included: Berlin’s “Blue Angel” and the cold “men devourer” of Symbolist novels descends from the same sociological archetype.