2022 / 27 Prospero. Rivista di letterature e culture straniere
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CONTENTS / SOMMARIO
Anglistica
Laurent Béatrice
Iannaccaro Giuliana
Missionaries, Literature, and Censorship in South Africa. Early Twentieth-Century Cultural Dynamics
Martino Pierpaolo
Philip Larkin and jazz: from journalism to poetry
Pataki Éva
Petrina Alessandra
Horcrux or Hallow? Magical projections of the psyche in Harry Potter
Germanistica
Gambino Renata
Das Feenland Dschinnistan: Ursprung und Fortleben eines literarischen Motivs
Schilling Erik
La pluralità politica come tentativo di mediazione ne La montagna magica di Thomas Mann
Pirro Maurizio
Paul Ernsts "Erdachte Gespräche" Zum Ausklingen einer beliebten Gattungstradition
Frare Giulia
Campobasso Maria Giovanna
“Erzherzog Friedrich rief Bumsti!”: Karl Kraus e la tragedia della responsabilità
Wildner Siegrun
Maierhofer Waltraud
Ottavio Francesca
Censura e responsabilità in Der Überläufer di Siegfried Lenz
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- Publication2022 / 27 Prospero. Rivista di letterature e culture straniere(EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2022)Prospero. Rivista di letterature e culture straniere è una rivista annuale a stampa e online ad accesso aperto del Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici dell’Università di Trieste (DiSU), pubblicata dal 1994 presso la casa editrice EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste. È apparsa in precedenza con il complemento di titolo Rivista di letterature e civiltà Anglo-germaniche e, dal 2005 al 2011, con quello di Rivista di Letterature straniere, Comparatistica e Studi culturali. La rivista pubblica contributi originali dedicati alle letterature di lingua inglese, tedesca e francese. Prospero ospita contributi inediti di studiosi italiani e stranieri che pongono il testo letterario e l’analisi testuale al centro di più ampie riflessioni di carattere ermeneutico, filologico e storico-culturale. In particolare, si apre alle convergenze di carattere interdisciplinare e transdisciplinare tra la letteratura e gli altri saperi. Numeri monografici curati da guest editors italiani e stranieri su temi specifici si alternano a numeri miscellanei.
128 4398 - PublicationCensura e responsabilità in Der Überläufer di Siegfried Lenz(EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2022)Ottavio, FrancescaDer Überläufer (The Turncoat, 2016) waited for sixty-five years before being published, two years after the death of its author, Siegfried Lenz. The novel had been submitted to the Hoffmann und Campe publishing house as early as 1951, but its content was considered unsuitable for post-war Germany, which was attempting to rise again from the ruins of more recent history by erasing its most controversial aspects. Particularly problematic were the issues related to the double desertion of the protagonist, who betrays his German comrades at the end of World War II and then refuses to yield to the oppressive system of Soviet rule in the GDR. As a member of the Group 47, which fell under American censorship in 1967, Lenz shared the Frankfurt School’s admonition to reflect on history and individual and community responsibilities in the reconstruction of a freer and more democratic Germany, refusing to give in to the publisher’s demands and preferring, on the contrary, to forego publication.
108 174 - PublicationDas Feenland Dschinnistan: Ursprung und Fortleben eines literarischen Motivs(EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2022)Gambino, RenataFairy tales belong to complex mythological and utopian worlds that settle in collective memory and cross fertilize literary works in different times. This is the case of the imaginary land of Jinnistan [Dschinnistan], introduced in the German literary debate during the last three decades of the XVIII century by Johann Gottfried Herder and then populated with characters and stories by the fantasy of Christoph Martin Wieland. The history of that Orient-related mythological landscape, will be interpreted as a “Denkbild”, and will be followed throughout the intertextual references present in the work of later authors Novalis and Karl May. Since images, and especially “images of thought”, are rooted in a complex biocultural network, such an investigation requires a broad outlook on those intertextual references in order to interpret the relevance of their traces within a literary anthropological frame. To this end, we will analyse the creation of the complex mythological world of Jinnistan referring to the framework of cultural studies and to the paradigm of cultural memory, understood as collective, identity shaping and embedded, to finally reflect on the anthropological value of this recurrent image of thought as a mean of resistance in times of crisis and of increased existential fear.
84 191 - PublicationDystopias of Family Planning in the Novels Corpus Delicti (2009) by Juli Zeh and Das weiße Schloss (2018) by Christian Dittloff(EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2022)Maierhofer, WaltraudMy contribution examines two recent German dystopian novels, Corpus Delicti (2009) by Juli Zeh and Das weiße Schloss (2018) by Christian Dittloff. I show how both take a careful, even warning stance with regard to possibilities offered by recent discoveries and developments in reproductive medicine and genetics. Zeh imagines a society that strictly controls who may reproduce by matching couples based on genetic compatibility, thus ensuring optimal health of the next generation. In Dittloff’s novel, couples select the ideal birth and surrogate mother in order to optimize their own life experiences and careers as well as the prospects of their child. The article argues that both novels feature extrapolations of issues seen in today’s societies in Germany and other high-income countries, namely consequences of hormonal contraceptives on mate selection, attempts to control the genetics of one’s child, and pregnancy by gestational carrier.
88 261 - Publication“Erzherzog Friedrich rief Bumsti!”: Karl Kraus e la tragedia della responsabilità(EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2022)Campobasso, Maria GiovannaThis study aims to reconstruct the literary rendering of Friedrich von Österreich-Toskana, Archduke of Teschen, in Karl Kraus’ writing dated between 1900 and 1930. The Archduke, Supreme Commander of the Austro-Hungarian army, is one of the many historical figures that Kraus transforms into tragicomic characters for Die Letzten Tage der Menschheit. Every mention of the Archduke in the drama and in the Fackel paints the portrait of a simpleminded man, who is, above all, guilty of lacking any interest in the human cost of his decisions as Supreme Commander: in both works, Kraus obsessively refers to an anecdote dating back to the beginning of the war, when the Archduke reacted to a war film showing a mortar in action with an infantile “Bumsti!”. Kraus frames the Archduke’s detachment from this spectacle of death as a symptom of the corrupted sense of solidarity among men brought on by the war. Speaking of the Archduke allows Kraus to express his dissent against the choices made by the Habsburgs during World War I and publicly ask for accountability when it comes to those in power during the conflict.
90 255 - Publication„Gute Taten, das bedeutet Ruin!“ – Zur Moralkritik in Bertolt Brechts Theaterstück "Der gute Mensch von Sezuan"(EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2022)Wildner, SiegrunIn his parable play Der gute Mensch von Sezuan [The Good Person of Szechwan] Bertolt Brecht raises the question whether good deeds and unselfish generosity can be unconditionally appreciated in the market-oriented society in which the protagonist Shen Te lives. Her altruistic acts of charity are shamelessly exploited by others and push her toward financial ruin. Shen Te’s dilemma: Goodness seems incompatible with economic survival in a capitalist society. While studies of the socio-economic forces and the exploitation of the individual in Brecht’s drama from Marxist and other perspectives are readily available, the author’s complex dramaturgical debunking of “goodness” as a viable moral principle in a modern industrial society still warrants closer examination. This study aims to offer clarification on Brecht‘s literary treatment of “goodness” within the context of philosophical thought. Specifically, it analyzes how Brecht probes the value and implications of “goodness” and social applicability in a variety of normative ethical contexts, such as deontological, eudemonistic, utilitarian, and Mohist thought. Brecht’s critical explorations, textual destabilizations, and exposure of different forms of moral hollowness also reveal his own intellectual struggle to find an acceptable solution to the ongoing dilemma that he puts forward in his still timely play.
213 1100 - PublicationHorcrux or Hallow? Magical projections of the psyche in Harry Potter(EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2022)Petrina, AlessandraAs Harry Potter and his friends grow, so do the intended readers, who supposedly mirror the protagonist’s age and expectations: no longer children eager for amusing, occasionally even gratuitous, bits of magic, the intended readers of the second half of the series are adolescents who set their own experience in the context of a wider perspective, absorbing everyday reality through the news and the media. Rowling’s consciousness of the shift is underlined by a greater stress on events set in the non-magical world in the opening pages of the volumes following Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The radical change of tone imposed by this structure cannot but bear deep implications for a number of factors in the narrative, from the development of the characters to the relation between events far apart in time; and since one of the most important factors in the novels is magic, it is interesting to explore what happens to it in this pattern of change that 290 entails the abandonment of illusions. Rowling’s departure within a wellestablished genre from the imaginary into the real, first observed in her decision to set her novels in contemporary England though focussing on a fantastical setting, makes her handling of magic an extremely delicate matter. The Harry Potter saga, for all its insistence on enchanted castles and scarlet steam engines, is in fact a study in Bildungsroman, and the characters’ psychology maintains primary importance in spite of the richness of details in the settings. It is only once Rowling makes magic part of the characters that it becomes structurally, not just superficially, satisfying. In the second part of the series magic becomes at last part of the story, while hitherto it had been used as an element of entertaining but almost superfluous decoration. The present paper studies this evolution, identifying in the dichotomy between horcruxes and hallows, highlighted in the final volume, an articulate metaphor of the ways in which good and evil are reflected in the individual psyche.
114 232 - PublicationHow the Victorians Saw Things(EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2022)Laurent, BéatriceIn the space of three eventful generations, the Victorians witnessed and contributed to profound transformations affecting industry, culture, art and science. Such upheavals required a permanent adaptation of the gaze to understand a changing world. This modified gaze was generated by new points of view, which displaced the observer from his traditional, physical or mental, distant and frontal position. The hegemony of the front-view linear perspective started to crumble in the nineteenth century. Things did not necessarily have to be seen at eye level, from a distance. Objects could now be seen from above, or in close-up, or from inside. These new perspectives affected as much as they were the result of, changing relations between the human subject and the outside world.
92 129 - PublicationMissionaries, Literature, and Censorship. Early Twentieth-Century Cultural Dynamics(EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2022)Iannaccaro, GiulianaSince the late 1990s, after the demise of apartheid, literary criticism concerning South African textual production has mainly focused on contemporary issues, with the question of apartheid censorship at the forefront. Black and white writers under the National Party underwent pre- and post-publication censorship from 1954 (with the first Commission of Inquiry against “Undesirable Publications”) to the Publications and Entertainments Acts of 1963 and 1974. Less attention has been paid to thepre-apartheid period, even if the first decades of the twentieth century are essential to grasp the meaning and the relevance of what happened in the near future. The aim of this article is to shed some light on the missionary societies’ publishing activities in the South African early twentieth-century context. I investigate the ambivalent relationship between black writers and the various European missions present on the territory. Like the Scottish Lovedale Mission Station, some educational institutions held the means of literary production (the printing presses) and acted as pre-publication censors, approving or refusing the manuscripts submitted for their acceptance. Yet, and somehow paradoxically, even missionaries could feel they were being controlled by a censorious governmental system when, for instance, their publications were stigmatised for taking too openly the side of the ‘natives’ – to the point of being confiscated for alleged subversive activities. Just because early twentieth-century South African cultural dynamics are many-sided and challenging, a brief investigation into some exemplary cases is meant to raise issues and promote further research.
116 154 - PublicationPaul Ernsts "Erdachte Gespräche" Zum Ausklingen einer beliebten Gattungstradition(EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2022)Pirro, MaurizioPaul Ernst published his Erdachte Gespräche in 1921. This first edition collects 44 texts, mostly short. In 1931 Ernst publishes the dialogues again in the sixth book of his Gesammelte Werke, which gathers his theoretical writings. Since Ernst writes each piece randomly over time and only publishes them later on, any attempt to recognize an unambiguous intention behind the texts is problematic, as that would imply the existence of an organic thought behind the entire body of work. However, Ernst’s intention to attribute a parareligious value to the form by reconstructing it through the exercise of the plastic skills of an exceptional group of personalities is clear. This aspiration is an element of continuity between Ernst’s later work, such as the Erdachte Gespräche, and the neoclassical cult of ancient tragedy that he cultivated in the turn of the century.
115 149 - PublicationPhilip Larkin and jazz: from journalism to poetry(EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2022)Martino, PierpaoloPhilip Larkin wrote about jazz at times in contradictory terms but with a passion and devotion which probably have no equals in Post-War Britain, and which convey the sense of richness and the very excitement and pleasure the writer associated with this music, as it is witnessed by his writings included in All What Jazz – the collected edition of the reviews originally published in The Telegraph, where he was jazz critic from 1961 to 1968. In the present paper, we will read Larkin’s poetic achievements and in particular two of his jazz-related poems – “For Sidney Bechet” (The Whitsun Wedding, 1964) and “Reasons for Attendance” (The Less Deceived, 1955) – showing how, in their dialogical complexity and polyphony, they present features that allow us to rethink and rearticulate the poet’s relationship with jazz, exceeding conventional readings which consider Larkin exclusively interested in (and influenced by) traditional jazz, to investigate similarities between his literary style and modern jazz, and more specifically with the cool jazz of Miles Davis’ late Fifties masterpiece Kind of Blue.
136 311 - PublicationLa pluralità politica come tentativo di mediazione ne La montagna magica di Thomas Mann(EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2022)Schilling, ErikThe historical context plays a decisive role for Thomas Mann’s “The Magic Mountain”. The novel is set in the years before World War I; the beginning of the war marks the end of the story. At the same time, Thomas Mann integrates essential political debates of the Weimar Republic into the pre-war debates, as represented by the characters Naphta and Settembrini in particular. This concerns above all the question of the best form of state – monarchy or republic – on which Thomas Mann himself had taken a stand in various publications. In his “Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man”, which appeared shortly before the end of the war in 1918, Thomas Mann had positioned himself in favor of the monarchy. As an antagonist, Mann used the so-called ‘Zivilisationsliterat’ [civilization’s literary man], a cosmopolitan and democratic character, as embodied in many respects by Settembrini in “The Magic Mountain”. At the same time, however, Mann’s position cannot simply be identified with that of Settembrini’s opponent Naphta; for Mann had distanced himself from his earlier position in his 1922 speech “On the German Republic” in which he called for the republic at least to be recognized as the actually existing form of state. Against the background of Thomas Mann’s political positionings, “The Magic Mountain” can be understood as a continuation of the debate by other – namely literary – means. In the political statements of his essays and speeches during World War I and the early Weimar Republic, Mann does not succeed in developing a coherent political position. In “The Magic Mountain”, by contrast, i.e., in the fictional work, the deficit of a clear-cut political position can be turned into an advantage: into an ambivalence that precisely does not take sides, but allows different voices to speak and contradict each other, without unifying or synthesizing them. “The Magic Mountain” can therefore be seen as Thomas Mann’s literary closing point of the political debates of the war and early postwar years – as an attempt of mediation between the different political positions by presenting a political plurality.
102 318 - PublicationI soggiorni duinesi di Rainer Maria Rilke: per una topografia della memoria tra storia e immaginazione(EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2022)Frare, GiuliaBetween 1910 and 1914 Rainer Maria Rilke spent several months in the Duino Castle as guest of Marie von Thurn und Taxis. His sojourns in the ancient fortress overlooking the Gulf of Triest inspired not only the poetry masterpiece which owes its name to that place, the Duino Elegies, but also other literary projects, such as The Life of the Virgin Mary, some translations of Italian texts and a series of single poems. The Duino experience proved significant for the Prague author from a personal point of view as well: this period was characterized by relevant encounters, fruitful intellectual exchanges, evocative memories and inspiring landscapes, but also by silence, concealment and solitude. Examining both Rilke’s and Marie von Thurn und Taxis’ papers as well as documents of local history, the present article aims at outlining Rilke’s relationship to Duino by tracing the places and identifying the people that marked, in different ways, the poet’s experience on the Adriatic coast of the Habsburg Empire. Real sites which are nowadays only partly recognizable (like the Duino Castle itself and the path on the cliffs along the sea), people present there at Rilke’s time and people belonging to the memory of his host’s family history come to recreate a sort of virtual socio-geographical map including biographical and topographical data, personal memories and artistically transfigured experiences. These elements will prove to be closely connected with the author’s literary production and his poetical considerations of those years and will therefore contribute to the interpretation of a crucial artistic phase in Rilke’s oeuvre.
112 680 - Publication“The Final Continent”: Geographies of Emotions and Emotional Geographies in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Short Fiction(EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2022)Pataki, ÉvaAccording to Davidson et al. (2007) emotional geography has “a common concern with the spatiality and temporality of emotions, with the way they coalesce around and within certain places.” A study of literary representations of the spatiality of emotions may be especially suitable for unraveling the complex emotional relations between people and environments, and may lead to a better understanding of geographies of emotions and emotional geographies, the ways feelings generate and mediate our behaviors in and attitudes to places and spaces through embodies and lived experience, and emotional associations. The paper maps the location and formation of emotions in people, places, and atmospheres, investigating the interconnections between individuals’ sense of place, remembering through place, and affective relationships in a selection of Jhumpa Lahiri’s short stories. My analysis primarily focuses on the development of emotional attachment and a concomitant sense of belonging and self in the characters, as well as of their evolving affective relationships with people and (remembered) places, and argues that the two processes intertwine, are mutually constructive and constantly changing, since emotions are fundamentally “relational flows, fluxes or currents, inbetween people and places” (Davidson et al, 2007).
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