Book Reviews by Serena Demichelis
This call for papers is proposed by the PhD Students in Foreign Literatures and Languages of the ... more This call for papers is proposed by the PhD Students in Foreign Literatures and Languages of the University of Verona with the support of the Project of Excellence in Digital Humanities. The conference aims at bringing together current and prospective PhD Students and early-stage researchers who wish to share and discuss their work around the themes of past, history and memory.
Review of "Non praticare il cannibalismo.100 poesie", 2021
Iperstoria. Journal of American and English Studies, 2019
Iperstoria. Journal of American and English Studies, 2020
n 2007, Michaela Mahlberg entitled her contribution to Text, Discourse and Corpora "Corpus stylis... more n 2007, Michaela Mahlberg entitled her contribution to Text, Discourse and Corpora "Corpus stylistics: Bridging the Gap Between Linguistic and Literary Studies" (Hoey, Mahlberg et al., 2007, 219): the volume by McIntyre and Walker provides an insightful explanation of how such gap can be bridged. Defining in detail the scope and applications of the multi-purposed discipline of corpus stylistics, the authors stress major aspects of interest for experts and novices alike, offering a large number of practical examples together with an accurate theoretical background.
Iperstoria. Journal of American and English Studies, 2020
Allora dobbiamo chiederci di che cosa si sia occupata la tragedia fin dall'inizio; non sono stati... more Allora dobbiamo chiederci di che cosa si sia occupata la tragedia fin dall'inizio; non sono stati forse i limiti del mondo umano?" Nell'introduzione ad Ai limiti dell'impossibile.
Conference Presentations by Serena Demichelis
Book of abstracts of the doctoral conference "Past, History and Memory in Language and Literary S... more Book of abstracts of the doctoral conference "Past, History and Memory in Language and Literary Studies" held 23-25 June at the Department of Foreign Literatures and Languages of the University of Verona
with the support of the Project of Excellence in Digital Humanities. The conference aims at bringing together current and prospective PhD Students and early-stage researchers who wish to share and discuss their work around the themes of past, history and memory.
PALA 2021 Conference proceedings, 2021
Multi-focal and multi-vocal narratives can sometimes be displacing for readers and impeach their ... more Multi-focal and multi-vocal narratives can sometimes be displacing for readers and impeach their understanding; similarly, they are commonly regarded as a 'difficult' endeavor for writers, better handled by highly crafty authors like the traditionally equally 'difficult' Modernists. It is surprising how, in recent times, works that have been enthusiastically met and praised because of their content or the themes addressed have been criticized specifically for the managing or mismanaging of narrative voice (a case in point being the Costa Award winner The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry, which has even been adapted into a film [Howell et al., 2014]). Such an inconsistency in critical praise has been spotted by quantitative researchers as Howell et al. who, in their article for the DHQ, proposed a methodology for the exploration of voice markers. Just like it happened for The Secret Scripture¸ Rachel Kushner's The Mars Room was met with enthusiasm by critics, who almost unanimously praised the accuracy and depth of her depiction of life in a correctional facility for women. As for her style, however, comments on the adoption of voice or narrative person were not equally coherent (Allardice, 2018; Deutsch, 2018), clashing with the overall impression of the novel as offering an immersive experience for critics and readers alike. Because it is quite difficult to argue on the basis of impressions alone, this paper aims at testing claims on the style and structure of The Mars Room by adopting a double methodology, combining close reading with a quantitative approach via automated text analysis.
AISNA 2021 paper presentation, 2021
While building on layers of meaning encompassing multiple interpretative frameworks, J.D. Salinge... more While building on layers of meaning encompassing multiple interpretative frameworks, J.D. Salinger’s construction of an authorial alter-ego in the figure of Buddy Glass can shed much-needed light on the controversial relation between the writer and Jewishness, as well as on his stance on pressing cultural concerns of post-War America.In his 1959 novella “Seymour: An Introduction,” Salinger developed three axes of reflection ultimately converging on the question (underlying the whole Glass saga) of identity –anidentity resulting from the layering of a) existential, b) authorial and c) cultural concerns. The struggle of the grieving brother (Buddy) and ‘writer-in-distress’ (a Salingerian topos) with the “constraints of short story writing” works as a counterpart for the struggle of the half-Jewish American writer (and man) with his troubled sense of belonging and urgent need for action. Statements achieved via negation –both in the text and in the paratext, with Kafka’s quotations from the 1911 diaries guiding interpretation –succeed in picturing the complex prism of perspectives around the family binomial of the two (br)Others: one, Seymour, seemingly lost forever in the irreversible negation of not-existing;the other, Buddy, caught up in the endless litotic circle of “I” and “not-I.”Via a close reading of the novella aided by specific textual tools(i.e. software for automated text analysis), this paper aims at unveiling rather neglected aspects of Salinger’s fiction, often deemed distant from cultural concerns but indeed at times almost explicit inthe richness of itsstatements.
Papers by Serena Demichelis
Review of Non praticare il cannibalismo. 100 poesie by Ron Padgett. Edited by Paola Del Zoppo and... more Review of Non praticare il cannibalismo. 100 poesie by Ron Padgett. Edited by Paola Del Zoppo and Cristina Consiglio. Translated by Riccardo Frolloni
Brno studies in English, 2021
Herman Melville's Billy Budd is hostile to interpretation (Kelley 2008): ambiguous, posthumous an... more Herman Melville's Billy Budd is hostile to interpretation (Kelley 2008): ambiguous, posthumous and possibly incomplete, it has left criticism at odds-its symbolisms and allegories sending out messages at times coherent, at times deeply contradictory. Since its publication in 1924 at least two main strands have dominated the critical panorama on the novella, one focused on the legalistic aspects raised by the text and one centered on the homoerotic substratum of the characters' relations instead. Maintaining that, though not erroneous, such schemes tend to leave out portions of meaning in order to comply with an idea of interpretation, this paper aims at offering a third view towards the understanding of a conflictual text in light of desire theories: the role of envy as a leading passion will be analyzed, together with that of identification in the process of identity-making. The concepts of "flexible" and "rigid" identity (Bottiroli 2002; 2006) will be relied on in order to account for the behavior of the three main characters (Billy, Vere, Claggart), including their apparent contradictions and aporias.
Review of The American Short Story Cycle by Jennifer J. Smith
Review of American World Literature: An Introduction by Paul Giles
Review of The Languages of Dubbing: Mainstream Audiovisual Translation in Italy. Ed. by Maria P... more Review of The Languages of Dubbing: Mainstream Audiovisual Translation in Italy. Ed. by Maria Pavesi, Maicol Formentelli, Elisa Ghia
Review of Ai limiti dell’impossibile. Forme tragiche in letteratura . Joyce Carol Oates, Giulia ... more Review of Ai limiti dell’impossibile. Forme tragiche in letteratura . Joyce Carol Oates, Giulia Betti
Review of Contaminazioni. Un approccio interdisciplinare , edited by Valentina Romanzi, Alessand... more Review of Contaminazioni. Un approccio interdisciplinare , edited by Valentina Romanzi, Alessandro Secomandi and Danilo Serra.
Journal of Literary Semantics
Within the field of Holocaust Studies the last decade has witnessed a turn to the figure of the p... more Within the field of Holocaust Studies the last decade has witnessed a turn to the figure of the perpetrator, who had hitherto received little attention due to ethical, legal and psychological reasons. A similar turn can also be observed in connection with the study of empathy. In this context, the concept of “negative empathy,” intended as a sharing of emotions with morally negative fictional characters, has become an increasingly discussed topic. For research in this area, the novel The Kindly Ones (2006) by Jonathan Littell takes up a privileged position in light of its intrinsic literary quality and due to its commercial and critical success. This novel recounts the memories of an SS-officer, Maximilian Aue, who participated in the Shoah. We have carried out an experiment using some passages of this novel to test the empathic reactions of (104) readers. Passages were presented under either of two conditions: as a fictional text or as part of an autobiography. Results showed that ...
Brno Studies in English, 2021
Herman Melville's Billy Budd is hostile to interpretation (Kelley 2008): ambiguous, posthumous an... more Herman Melville's Billy Budd is hostile to interpretation (Kelley 2008): ambiguous, posthumous and possibly incomplete, it has left criticism at odds-its symbolisms and allegories sending out messages at times coherent, at times deeply contradictory. Since its publication in 1924 at least two main strands have dominated the critical panorama on the novella, one focused on the legalistic aspects raised by the text and one centered on the homoerotic substratum of the characters' relations instead. Maintaining that, though not erroneous, such schemes tend to leave out portions of meaning in order to comply with an idea of interpretation, this paper aims at offering a third view towards the understanding of a conflictual text in light of desire theories: the role of envy as a leading passion will be analyzed, together with that of identification in the process of identity-making. The concepts of "flexible" and "rigid" identity (Bottiroli 2002; 2006) will be relied on in order to account for the behavior of the three main characters (Billy, Vere, Claggart), including their apparent contradictions and aporias.
Call for papers - Doctoral Conference - Verona, 2022
This call for papers is proposed by the PhD Students in Foreign Literatures and Languages of the ... more This call for papers is proposed by the PhD Students in Foreign Literatures and Languages of the University of Verona with the support of the Project of Excellence in Digital Humanities. The conference aims at bringing together current and prospective PhD Students and early-stage researchers who wish to share and discuss their work around the themes of past, history and memory.
Mejo - The MELOW Journal of World Literature, 2022
Despite the fact that he describes his brother as a "Sick Man," Buddy Glass, J.D. Salinger's "alt... more Despite the fact that he describes his brother as a "Sick Man," Buddy Glass, J.D. Salinger's "alterego and collaborator" (Franny and Zooey), is not much healthierboth as a person and as an author. While the utter demolishment of his work as a 'standard short-story writer 'will not be complete until the two last Glass stories (Seymour) are published (1959 and 1965), Buddy/Salinger does not refrain from giving out signs of decadence and degradation in slightly earlier workssuch as "Raise High the Roof-beam, Carpenters" (1955), the famous account of Seymour's wedding day. In the novella, collected together with "Seymour" in 1963, a twenty-three-year-old Buddy is presented, exhausted and with pleurisy, arguing his case in favour of his beloved older brother, the absent focus of all his writing; by picturing himself as a young yet physically strained man, Buddy/Salinger is anticipating his upcoming struggles with a) genre constraints (cfr. "Zooey" and "Seymour" for an explicit mention, "Hap-worth" for an implicit surrender) and b) representation in toto, especially with regards to Seymour. The language of disease accompanying the action of the short story functions as a sign of deeper corruption, a failure in speech and writing when major ‘human ’issues like love, loss and death come to the fore. Exploiting the traditional topos of disease, Salinger introduces the figure of the ‘writer in distress ’that will inhabit, with varying degrees of physical impairment, his next and last fictional works. Such a statement also contributes to the reading of the whole Glass family saga as an ample reflection on literature and writing factualised through the existential and identity dilemmas of its characters.
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Book Reviews by Serena Demichelis
Conference Presentations by Serena Demichelis
with the support of the Project of Excellence in Digital Humanities. The conference aims at bringing together current and prospective PhD Students and early-stage researchers who wish to share and discuss their work around the themes of past, history and memory.
Papers by Serena Demichelis
with the support of the Project of Excellence in Digital Humanities. The conference aims at bringing together current and prospective PhD Students and early-stage researchers who wish to share and discuss their work around the themes of past, history and memory.