Kritik. Rivista di letteratura e critica culturale

Prefazione

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Introduzione

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L’isola disabitata. Approdi, memoria e topophilia

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A journey in the history of a small inhabited island, once connected to the island of Procida: Vivara. This island – a protected area on private land – is part of a volcanic crater now submerged, covers an area of 34 hectares and is characterized by the presence of archaeological, historical and cultural evidence in a wonderful natural environment. Vivara, 3500 years ago, was the seafaring destination of the earliest Western Mediterranean trade routes and an example of a community that, although in a limited period of time, was certainly capable of developing a common Mediterranean language, whose cultural heritage was the principal interest of the archaeological project – characterized by a strong interaction land-sea – at Procida-Vivara.

Il viaggio a Procida tra Ottocento e Novecento: suggestioni e confronti tra ambiente, architettura e letteratura

2023-11-19T14:21:43+00:00

In this short contribution, which develops between periegetic and historical iconography, is the proposal of a reading of the island through the continuous comparison of frames (historical and contemporary). But knowledge of the island is also a metaphor for a microcosm characterized by signs of continuous identification for what represents an extraordinary Mediterranean context.
Procida is an island of volcanic origins where the artifice-nature pair is exalted; the environmental context is linked to the architectural heritage of the maritime villages in the sign of continuous stratification, aspects and themes that also emerge in the passages about the island from the literary production of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The island’s variously colored churches, aristocratic palaces and marinas represent a unique heritage, still enhanced by striking features of “spontaneous architecture.”

Evoluzione e resilienza nello spazio flegreo: la collina di Posillipo e l’isola di Procida tra fonti bibliografiche e iconografiche

2023-11-19T14:26:21+00:00

The contribution analyzes the aspects and issues related to the evolution and resilience in the urban environment in Campi Flegrei, with particular attention to the hill of Posillipo and the island of Procida. The contemporary image of these areas, result of numerous urban transformations, it is well delineated by documentary, iconographic and bibliographic sources, such as the historical guides of Carlo Celano and Francesco Alvino in the case of the Posillipo Hill and the travel reports of foreing authors such as Turpin de Crissé and local historians such as Michele Parascandola and Michele Parascandolo in the case of Procida. In this way, not only the landscape descriptions that demonstrate the persistence of tree essences and the resistance to change, but also anthropological aspects linked to local folklore, such as religious celebrations, in particular the feast of San Michele Arcangelo and that of Corpus Domini.

Un album da riempire. Procida tra cartoline e copertine Bell’Italia

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In this essay I tried to re-examine, analyzing some ancient and modern paintings, the iconographic history of Procida starting from the second half of the 18th century. The theme is still little known and deserves to be investigated in a systematic way.

Tra Graziella e Antoniella: la Procida di Lamartine

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Alvio Patierno’s work evokes the Lamartinian Procida arising from the fortunate biographical-literary combination of the two periods spent by the author in Naples (in 1811-1812 and in 1844). Fearful of openly recalling the flirtation with the cigarette maker Antoniella, Lamartine renames her Graziella, thus combining all the elements necessary to create a romantic identity, as to say the popular myth of Graziella which is still alive today. In this respect, Alvio Patierno considers the relationship between Graziella and the primacy of nature, as well as the Lamartinian oxymoron between literary falsehood and romantic truth, the oxymoron capable of crystallizing the narration of people’s life and work that is represented by Procida. The tableaux-vivants novel, certainly centred on a romantic love story, is conceived, through the desire to restore the chorality of Procida’s people, as an anthropologic interpretation of the humble with an important page focussing on work: from fishing to coral manufacturing, an activity to which Graziella proudly dedicates herself and whose appearance in the novel, besides metaphorically reflecting the landscape of the island in her facial features, corresponds to the happiest moment of the story.

Il figlio di Goethe e il naufragio al largo Procida

2023-11-19T14:31:55+00:00

Starting from the lack of odeporistic sources on Procida in the German Literature, the aim of this article is to retrieve August von Goethe’s 1830s travel diary Auf einer Reise nach Süden, which, in recalling his brief landing on the island of Campania, represents a reversal of his father’s travel. The voyage of Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s son, in fact, unlike that of his father’s, which was kept at a distance from the sea and possible shipwrecks, takes place as a romantic navigatio vitae that encounters risks and unknowns along sea paths. Italy in August’s eyes is no longer Arcadia, the land of art and ancient nature, travelled by his ancestors, his father Johann Wolfgang and his grandfather Johann Caspar, Italy is a romantic nocturnal, melancholic, bacchic and lethal land. Having reached the far end of the peninsula, heading towards Ischia, August stops off in Procida, amuses himself in a typical ‘osteria di lazzaroni’ and then resumes his voyage through a Bacchic sea that intoxicates in the presence of shipwreck and death, romantic drifts of a Wertherian nihilism that differs from his father’s Humanistic-Renaissance Classicism.

Rileggere la Procida di Elsa Morante

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While rereading the classical Arturo’s Island novel, set on Procida, I focus on the way in which Elsa Morante challenges the system of literary genres (confusing and mixing Bildung with anti-Bildung) and in which she tackles the gender binarity of her characters (first replacing the female character by a male protagonist, and then supplanting the male characters in favour of androgynous figures). The writer refuses the established system of genres (and genders) to expose it to hybridizations and ambiguity.

Il filo astrale del racconto. L’isola “celeste” della Morante

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The multiplication of the island-ego in a chain of visual and sound resonances expands each episode remembered by Arturo in a mythicizing, over-temporal memorial projection, weaving a fabulous web around everything, even the most concrete details. The vision of this slender thread reverberates in the game of mirrors of the Morantian self, binding itself many times to the tissue of the starry sky. By entrusting all the weight of the narrative to the “memoirs of a child”, Elsa Morante recovers, in the heart of the twentieth century, the “famous thread of the story” which, if Arturo is lying down with his head thrown back towards the celestial vault, manifests as a long astral thread, a cosmic web. If the boy-star weaves his mythical destiny, if he knots destinies, stars and everyday things, it is because he has the pages of books around him, the first circle of his transfiguring power. It is Morante herself who protects her “passionate boy”, falling him asleep in her story-telling, exotic and familiar plot, which freezes the natural movement of the Bildungsroman. Arturo, right in the first pages, gives us the clue to keep tight to get out of limbo: “I read lying down”, he tells us, lying down like the Guttuso’s Boy asleep on boat, chosen for the cover, lying down like when we contemplate the stars.

I passi di Arturo nell’isola di Elsa. Per una topografia reale

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The contribution by Michele Paragliola and Michela Iovino takes inspiration from the “spatial turn” confronting imaginary and real geography as seen in L’Isola di Arturo of Elsa Morante.
In particular this essay analyses the space where Elsa Morante wrote the majority of her work (Villa Eldorado), the probable setting of Arturo’s house “casa dei guaglioni” (L’Hotel La Vigna) and the space where Arturo’s illusions were unveiled (Penitentiary of Terra Murata).
The article walks the reader through the places of the novel, reconstructed by way of testimonies, that suggest that the landscape of the island is the alter ego of Arturo himself; the map of Procida reflects the sentiments of the protagonist when he was an adolescent.
In fact, Arturo leaves the island when he becomes an adult with lost illusions and a discovery of reality, thereby definitely breaking ‘the ideal’.

Giuseppe Marotta e Alberto Moravia, sguardi altri su Procida

2023-11-19T14:44:06+00:00

Almost a hypertrophy of media narratives characterizes the island of Procida in 2022, the year in which it is elected Capital of Culture. Natascia Festa thus examines the case of Giuseppe Marotta and Alberto Moravia. The first, coming from the success of L’oro di Napoli, in 1948 published in «Le vie del mondo» the reportage Procida, the girlfriend of the sea with photographs of an almost metaphysical beauty by Bruno Stefani. Even before describing the landscape, in the reportage Marotta compares himself with the literary image layered on it: it is the houses that inhabit the landscape. The island “that cannot be seen”, however, is that of Alberto Moravia: Procida hides, disappears, loses its monochromatism and becomes total white, as if it were a piece of the Orient set in the Mediterranean.

Dalla bottega al software. La storia tedesca e il lavoro nella scrittura artigianale di Uwe Timm

2023-11-19T14:57:19+00:00

Work (and specifically: craftsmanship) is one of the central themes of Uwe Timm’s novels and essays on poetics, and plays a key role in his reconstruction of German history. Whether he describes techniques of stuffing animals and sewing furs, or writing techniques (from manual to computer), Timm’s work as a whole takes the form of a transgenerational novel about work in Germany, from the 19th century up to digital procedures and new technologies. At the same time, his texts are a kind of literary laboratory in which he experiments with writing modes that are consistent with craft practices. Thus, both on the level of cultural theory and literary practice, Timm offers a critical discourse on craftwork as a transformation of materials – including narrative ones.

Biografie

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