Nota introduttiva

Abstract

In the last years, the tendency to value the spatial dimension in the description and interpretation of cultural facts, has emerged and strengthened. On the one hand, this tendency has undoubtedly reached a high degree of intensity because of the loss of plausibility of historically and teleologically oriented representations of literary and cultural phenomena, while, on the other hand, this trend is nourished by the awareness that every expressive fact as well as every knowledge about the world cannot but revolve around a particular and contingent ‘here and now’. This issue of “Prospero” offers a series of articles which, crossing a broad spectrum of linguistic and cultural areas and providing a wide historical perspective, direct their studies towards the literary representations of places which are or have been characterised by the presence of multiple languages, cultures, and nationalities.