2003 / 10 Prospero. Rivista di culture anglo-germaniche

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.

Works by Hermann Kant, Christoph Hein, Helga Königsdorf, and Helga Schubert are here examined, particularly in consideration of the ambivalent relationships between the devotion to the ideological reasons of socialism, and the critical representation of the restrictions that affected civil life in the GDR. In the aftermath of the German reunification, the reflection on the ongoing social and political transformations produces some paradigm shifts in these author's use of the language; such changes are intended to highlight the potentiality that these texts have in presenting the radicality of these transformations.

By way of a revival/recovery of the defining traits of Medea prior to the Euripidean codification, Christa Wolf aims at bringing to life a mythopoeic tradition based on pre-rational foundations, and transmitted solely through the oral channel. The supremacy of the vocal tale dissolves the traditional narrative orders and, on an anthropological level, it redefines the necessary conditions for the communication of its sense. By connecting the characterisation of the protagonists to the uniqueness of their voice, the novel restores the reception modalities that are proper to the epic. In this essay, the author gives an account of several forms of vocal expression that stand at the basis of the plot, from the chant to the autobiographical record and the incoherent howl.

In this essay, a parallel reading of "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" by Choderlos de Laclos and "William Lovell" by Tieck is carried out. Structural correspondences (both are epistolary novels) are intertwined with the elements of a thematic continuity, linked to the logic of the intrigue. Nevertheless, while in Laclos the seductive strategy that pervades the plot develops according to a linear pattern and finds its accomplishment in the realisation of the erotic desire, in Tieck the fulfilment of the sexual tension is overturned in a nihilistic disenchantment devoid of any possible remedial.