English Department

The hermeneutic category of queer has established itself as a powerful tool of social criticism and political action. Questioning and crossing identitarian barriers, and drawing attention to the ways to which non-normative identities are repressed by mainstream culture is queer’s central theoretical vocation. This paper aims to extend its application by considering the case of humans who cross the most entrenched identitarian barrier upheld by all human societies and in the whole course of history by identifying prioritarily with non-human animals. The paper starts with a critique of the language in which the oppressive relationship of our species to other ones is encoded, examines the consequences of this oppression for both human and animal identity, highlights its function as the hidden foundation of human intraspecific violence, and closes by showing the deep consonance between the two most radical proposals in the fields of queer and animal rights respectively, Edelman’s critique of “reproductive futurism” and the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.

This article offers a definition of some basic concepts of artistic theor y in Personal Construct Psychology (PCP) terms and gives full directions, as well as an
elucidation of the underlying theor y, for a two-day workshop addressed to amateur and professional artists in which various PCP techniques are used to elicit
constructs related to the exercise of creativity in the visual arts and the elicited constructs are applied to the exploration of new avenues of stylistic development.

Through an analysis of some key theoretical texts of historical Surrealism, this article elucidates the connection between the theor y and practice of artistic
Surrealism and the Kellyan concept of reconstruction. Its main thesis is that Surrealism originates in a reconstruction of the most superordinate construct in
both Western aesthetics and Western ontology—the construct real/unreal—and that the ultimate aim of Surrealist poetics is to provoke a similar reconstruction in the audience.

This paper is part of an ongoing reflection about the way PCT (Personal Construct Theory) can illuminate
artistic theory and practice, and aid progress in artistic pedagogy. It is, quite uncharacteristically, written
from my own perspective as a practicing artist, and attempts to map the construct system which forms the
foundation of my aesthetic world and to link it to my personal construct system in general. Why do I like what
I like? Why do I make art the way I do? How can my work can be understood as an attempt to elaborate and
define my construct system?

This paper originates in my long-standing skepticism about so-called sexual liberation, in my considerable perplexity about the state of sexual discourse and of sexual relations in present-day society, and in my belief that constructivism as an ontological and gnoseological position can help understand the present state of affairs, pinpoint its shortcomings and articulate an alternative.

Questo lavoro offre un'interpretazione del metodo e di alcuni dei risultati fondamentali della branca della linguistica pragmatica nota come Analisi della Conversazione e della corrente dell'etnometodologia chiamata Membership Categorization Analysis pensata per un pubblico costruttivista, e in particolare mirata a suscitare l'interesse dei terapeuti per l'applicazione dell'analisi della conversazione alla psicoterapia. Parole chiave: analisi della conversazione, membership categorization analysis, costrutti-vismo This paper presents an interpretation of the methodology and of some fundamental results of a branch of pragmatics, Conversation Analysis, and of a subdivision of ethnomethodol-ogy, Membership Categorization Analysis. The account is written for an audience of con-structivists, and its main purpose is to arouse the interest of therapists for the application of Conversation Analysis to psychotherapy. Questo che segue è il testo dell'intervento che ho ...

This paper investigates two key features in the phenomenology of aesthetic experience and categorization: the mutually opposite but complementary processes of 'aestheticization' (i.e. the turning of the non‐aesthetic to the aesthetic, as a result of an individual/ collective practice of cultural sacralization) and of 'de‐aestheticization' (i.e. the downgrading of the aesthetic into the unaesthetic, in this case as a result of a cultural desacralization). This investigation proceeds on the basis of the application of a theoretical framework ('Displacement‐distortion theory'), which originates in a number of recent studies on visual perception and cognitive neuroscience, and provides crucial insights into the multifaceted perceptual, affective and cognitive phenomena involved in our experience and subsequent categorization of the world in aesthetic/non‐aesthetic terms. The validity of the application, here propounded, of this analytical framework from the domains of visual perception and cognitive neuroscience to that of aesthetics, is tested by the analysis of a brief poem which represents an interesting case study for the exploration of the phenomena of aestheticization and de‐aestheticization: Thomas Hardy's " Neutral Tones " .

The relationship between Keats and the green realm is more complex than it appears at first sight. His references to plants are more than occasional pieces of botanical poetry, denotatively conveying his highly specialized expertise in plant taxonomy and the officinal use of herbs, nor can they be always interpreted as symptoms of Keats's allegiance to the conventions of Romantic organicism. On the contrary, they are part of a macrotextual semiotic strategy extending for the whole arch of the poetic production of this author and informing the more profound, structural levels of his poems. Moreover, the phenomenon structurally transposes Keats's ecological and ethical perspectives on the man-nature relationship, on poetry as a life-sustaining agent, on the poet's responsibility in coping with human suffering to preserve life and health.

Il seguente lavoro ha come argomento principale la letteratura postcoloniale in lingua inglese a Hong Kong. Il lavoro è suddivido in due parti: nella prima parte si delineeranno gli elementi guida relativi al contesto storico, sociale, culturale e letterario di Hong Kong e verranno presentate le caratteristiche principali e gli studi riguardanti la letteratura postcoloniale in lingua inglese. Nella seconda parte verrà proposta la traduzione di sei racconti tratti dall'opera Access dell'autrice Xu Xi, di cui verrà presentato il relativo commento focalizzato sulle difficoltà e strategie del processo traduttivo

At first glance, H.G. Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) seems to question the boundary between humans and animals only to reaffirm its inescapable naturality, as Moreau attempts to turn animals into humans by altering their physiology and his creatures ultimately revert to their original animality. Yet, through the interpretive frame of animal queer and Harvey Sacks’s Membership Categorization Analysis, my paper aims to show how other elements of the text actually counter this perspective, thus suggesting a performative notion of humanity in its opposition to animality. By focusing on the role of the ritual recitation of the Law and on how the narrator’s experience on the island of Doctor Moreau radically affects his views on humanity, I will argue that the novel challenges well-established essentialist conceptions of the human-animal divide and boldly explores the disquieting possibility that humanity is nothing but a performance.

At the beginning of "The Fall of Hyperion" the poet-narrator comes upon the remnants of an abandoned feast in a luscious garden, where, after indulging in the delicious “summer fruits” (I, 29), he drinks from “a cool vessel of transparent juice” (42). The “domineering potion” (54) induces a “cloudy swoon” (55), from which he awakes to find himself in a desolate marble temple in the presence of its solitary priestess Moneta. The present article aims to analyse the fundamental role that the “transparent juice” plays in Keats’s unfinished poem with a special focus on its transparent quality, which has been so far overlooked by critics, even though it significantly constitutes the only occurrence of the term in Keats’s poetry. The potion, which causes the poet-narrator to fall into a death-like state but, at the same time, allows him to have access to the visionary experience of Moneta’s revelations, will be understood through the concept of pharmakon. Being both poison and cure, this notion effectively conveys the idea that healing and poisonous properties can co-exist in the same substance, an idea which was present in the medical theories Keats studied during his training at Guy’s Hospital. In this case, the pharmakon-like juice, which the poet calls “parent of my theme” (46), will turn out to be a meaningful image for the ambivalent power of imagination as both the visionary source of poetry and something potentially detrimental that needs to be saved from its “sable charm” (10) through “the fine spell of words” (9). The transparency of the drink will thus be seen to evoke an equally complex – at times even contradictory – constellation of ideas: not only the immediacy of vision characterising the mind-to-mind communication between the poet and Moneta, but also the aspiration to a perfect translation of vision into poetry through the mediation of transparent language.

Serpent symbolism plays an important role in Keats’s rich animal imagery both on a quantitative and a qualitative level. Through images of dazzling, twisted, suffocating snakes Keats gives form to some of his most important ideas as well as anxieties about poetic creation. In particular, snakes convey the tension between the more unconscious and the more conscious elements of the creative psyche, which is reflected in the linguistic texture of the poems. Besides, serpent symbolism shows how Keats’s initial complete adhesion to the predominant Romantic view of the time is complicated and reinterpreted in highly personal terms. By recovering some Augustan notions, Keats attempts at a partial, problematic re-appropriation of the recent past Romanticism had utterly dismissed.

Though it has been called "one of Letitia Elizabeth Landon’s most enigmatic and disturbing poems" by Kari Lokke, "The Fairy of the Fountains" has not yet received the critical attention recently attracted by Landon's other works. First published in 1834, the poem is a highly original retelling of the medieval legend of Melusine, the half-human, half-serpent fairy that inspired more famous Romantic tales such as Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué's "Undine" (1811) and John Keats's "Lamia" (1820). This article investigates how Landon boldly rewrites her source by replacing Melusina's traditional desire to become a woman fully integrated into human society with her subversive decision to embrace, instead, her fairy nature and the power that derives from it. Melusina's choice is interpreted as a radical queer gesture that defies commonly held expectations about the naturalness of humanity’s position at the pinnacle of the hierarchy of worth and thereby upends the reassuringly conservative message of the other versions of the tale. By giving prominence to the Gothic, disrupting, undomesticated side of Melusina's fairiness, without demonising it, Landon will be shown to challenge contemporary basic assumptions about the desirability of being human and of women’s place in society.

Among recent adaptations of the Frankenstein story, one of the most compelling is found in "Penny Dreadful" (2014-2016), a British-American TV series created by John Logan. Starting from the problematisation of the definition of monster and human in Mary Shelley's novel, Logan explores and further develops this theme in his series by making Frankenstein and the creature overlap. This convergence is achieved through various elements deviating from the original story, such the different vocatives with which the creature calls his creator and the different configuration of the space in which they move. Most interestingly, the absence of Victor’s family and Elizabeth in "Penny Dreadful" corresponds to the triplication of his creatures, including a female one, for whom he eventually feels the same desire as his first-born. Not only is Frankenstein called a "monster" just like his creature, but he also shares his profound isolation and his yearning for companionship. The present chapter analyses the implications of these dynamics and how they relate to the overall poetics of the series in its definition of a positional – rather than essentialist – conception of monstrosity. By making the creature and the creator come together under the sign of a common experience of rejection and loneliness,  Logan presents their shared monstrosity less as an unalterable nature than as the outcome of relational patterns. The overall aim of the chapter is to shed light on the so far overlooked central role that Frankenstein’s narrative plays in the series as a whole and on the intelligence and originality through which Logan's series engages with the most thought-provoking elements of the novel, thus doing justice to Shelley’s bold vision.

In the middle part of "Isabella, or the Pot of Basil" (1818), Keats stages a night encounter between Isabella and her dead lover Lorenzo, who appears to her as a spirit endowed with remarkable – and disturbingly accurate – corporality. The present chapter looks at the way in which "Isabella" investigates and represents the boundary between life and death – with a focus on their embodied aspects – as well as the possibility of overcoming it. In order to do so, I explore how Keats’s medical training at Guy’s Hospital and his familiarity with medical theories of the time deeply influenced his understanding and literary depiction of death, its effects, and the material reality of bodies. Particular attention will be devoted to Keats’s use of the multifaceted notion of sympathy and the interplay between its different early nineteenth-century definitions in the poem. In "Isabella", Keats has recourse not only to the reassuring idea of sympathy as fellow-feeling and imaginative identification that was typical of moral and psychological theories of the time but also to more disquieting medical and physiological conceptions of sympathy as the actual transmission of physical sensations between bodies, a transmission that is more unsettling in this case as it takes place between a living and a dead body. As a result of the sympathetic connection which allows her to feel what dead Lorenzo feels even on a strictly physical level, in fact, living Isabella will undergo a bodily approximation to his condition that will ultimately lead to her own death. The present chapter ultimately shows how, in "Isabella", Keats engages in the coeval cultural debate around sympathy and, thanks to his medical education, exposes its deleterious, pathological consequences, when the obliteration of the boundary between self and other turns into the usurpation of vital energy and life itself.

Though a surging interest in communication with the Other World is typically associated with the Spiritualist frenzy of the second half of the nineteenth century, the theme already haunted the imagination and literature of earlier decades. This book investigates how communicating across unfathomable metaphysical distances was envisioned and represented in the fifty years before the advent of Spiritualism and more mundane forms of telecommunications like telegraphy. Looking at novels and short stories from both sides of the Atlantic through an approach combining communication theory and cultural history, it explores the prominence and significance of otherworldly communication in early nineteenth-century fiction, its relationship with popular theories of the time such as animal magnetism and sympathy, and the fundamental questions it raised about identity, power, and the negotiation of the boundary between self and other.