2000 / 7 Prospero. Rivista di culture anglo-germaniche

In the texts by Horváth that precede the “turn” of 1932, the representation of the woman's social condition is symbolically reflected in the choice of names that are deeply grounded in the religious tradition. Both in "Sechsunddreißig Stunden" (1929) and in "Geschichten aus dem Wiener Wald" (1931) the use of strongly connoted names such as Agnes or Marianne clearly prefigures the ideological and social horizon/perspective in which these figures and their vicissitudes are situated. Nevertheless, at a later moment in time, female characters often undergo processes of depersonalisation that are reflected in the substitution of the proper names with mere typological denominations.

Scandinavian adaptations centred on the figure of Tristan are on the whole characterised by an attempt to incorporate the cultural differences between the context of production and that of reception in a structure that results suitable to the expectations and habits of the public. This tendency pervades the Norwegian "Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar" (1226), the Icelandic "Tristrams saga ok Ísoddar" (half of the 14th Century) as well as a broad group of ballads of Danish origins.

Domestic themes made their appearance in English literature during the 16th and the 17th Centuries as a result of a cultural campaign that identified family and State. Marriage, being considered the foundation of the family, was at the core of the political, ecclesiastical and cultural projects of the time. Several plays reflect the widespread concern for the interrelation between family life and the preservation of social order and stability. In such a context, Middleton’s play is of particular interest, as both the main plot and the subplot focus on stories of degradation and mockery of the institution of marriage. In "Women Beware Women", Middleton presents a family without paternal guidance that is at the mercy of the threatening external world, and emphasises the childish behaviour of both Leantio and Bianca, their disarming blindness (which foretells the tragic epilogue), and Leantio’s mother realistic concerns.

Since the end of the 19th Century, Shakespeare’s poems have been entirely translated into Italian; the first translation is by Angelo Olivieri (1890), and the last one is authored by Elio Chinol (1996). In order to give an overview of different styles of translation, sonnet LXXIII will be used, as it is considered by critics to be amongst the best ones written by Shakespeare. The sonnet’s theme is the advancing of old age and the approaching of death, expressed by using three metaphors: the winter, the dusk, and the quenching of a fire. The nine chosen translations are not discussed in chronological order; they are divided into three groups depending on their underlying translation style.

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.

"Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1966. The play belongs to the post Osborne and Beckett theatrical generation in which authors could no longer be pigeonholed neither from the political nor from the stylistic point of view. Stoppard later transformed the play into a film script which won the Golden Lion at the XLVIII Venice International Film Festival in 1990. The reason behind the success of this tragedy is the popularity of "Hamlet". Written during the last years of the Elizabethan era, it shows the gradual dissolving of its core values: the fact that nothing seems to have sense any more is deeply rooted into the Shakespearean tragic hero, and his dilemma mirrors the fear of the modern man of losing his own role and, with it, his own identity. Stoppard re-writes the Shakespearian drama not by altering the plot, but by presenting it through the eyes of two minor characters, thus by performing a ‘poetical misunderstanding’ of Hamlet – a device that, with its discussion, parody, ridicule, and, sometimes, celebration of the typical values of traditional culture, belongs to the common practices of postmodern authors in their depiction of reality.

The image of the Italian language emerging from Joyce’s works is rougher than the smooth, polite and gentile one used in the opera and in the Dantean tradition, but mirrors the experience Joyce had with Italian during his stays in Trieste. Having studied languages at University College and being well-versed in French, Joyce had to get accustomed to the different registers of Italian that were in use in contemporary Trieste, where Italian was spoken in formal and literary settings, but everyday conversation in the family and on the streets was conducted in Triestine dialect. Disproving the traditional image of Italian – the language of love and poetry – Joyce shows, by drawing on the more lively sources of the language (the spoken one and dialect), the great sensibility of its creative, innovative potential. In "Finnegans Wake", readers can find some distortions due to overlappings between Italian and other Latin-based languages, along with irreverent quotations from the Roman Catholic liturgy, possibly aimed at creating comic effects, although they could also be considered a means used by the author to wider cultural intercourse. Sometimes, the presence of Italian is due to Joyce’s determination to bring forth plurilingual variations.

Constance Fenimore Woolson travelled through the United States first, and later reached Europe, never to come back to America again. She, just like her guide and mentor Henry James, was always looking for the picturesque, reading the due Baedeckers, and visiting the places that any cultured tourist was bound to see. "The Front Yard” owes its originality to the fact that its main character, Prudence, is the exact opposite of what the typical American tourist was, since she is not interested in the slightest in the wonderful Umbrian landscape that surrounds her abode, and finds the picturesque repugnant. Her greatest wish is to recreate the New Hampshire front yard she left behind when she came to Europe, and thus to feel at home again. Nathaniel Hawthorne and Mark Twain shared this same attitude towards ‘alterity’: they visited the Old World experiencing contempt for some of its traits and nurturing a deep longing for the American landscape with its straight lines, and right angles.

This paper proposes some considerations on kalokagathia and the relation between seeming and being in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s "Parzival". As far as the Urjâns-episode of the poem is concerned, we see the unworthy Urjâns wearing a helmet through the eyes of the deceived Gawan. Nevertheless, Wolfram illustrates that an unworthy knight remains unworthy even if he has a worthy appearance – chivalrous romance doesn’t know the modern distinction between reality and appearance of the protagonists. Urjâns’ ugly appearance remains an interpretative challenge: Wolfram opens a gap in the text letting his audience take part in his play with perspectives.

The representation of the feminine in the works by Evelyn Schlag is intertwined with two of the leading themes of her writing: couple relationships and the experience of illness. At the basis of this narrative there surely is a poetological interest for the word as bearer of vitality and authenticity aimed at the expression of affectivity and of the life in a relationship.