Giustizia e letteratura II

The book explores and links different cultures, disciplines and perspectives, with a far more original and broad approach to the relations between “Justice” and “Literature” than more traditional works focused on “Law” and “Literature”. The many contributions from writers, literature and movie critics, psychologists, and criminal law practitioners and scholars, draw a complex and interdisciplinary path through primary texts of Italian and international literature, with the aim of prompting readers’ reflections about core issues related to law, crime, and responsibility. Through the analysis of masterpieces of literature, theatre and cinema, this book aims at stimulating dialogue and debate, as well as critical abilities and a deep-rooted sense of justice, amongst both law professionals and citizens at large. Literature and other forms of narration are presented here as a privileged key to approach long-standing questions about (amongst other) causes and consequences of crime; victimization and coping mechanisms; the role of criminal law and criminal proceedings; legalism and equity; law and ethics; the ‘time’ of justice; freedom, responsibility, culpability and forgiveness; rules, legality, socialization and culture; language and images as mediums for justice issues; the impact of prejudice and of existing balances of power on the application of the law; social and legal mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion; gender issues and legal systems; and so on. A whole section (Part V) is devoted to crimes against humanity and how the literary testimony may be understood both as a strategy to resist injustice and to seek justice, and as a way to prevent further horrors. Through this quest for justice in literature and arts, the volume proposes a wider cultural and research project which defies traditional formalistic and retributive approaches to criminal law, in order to open new perspectives for restorative and reintegrative strategies

Una poesia nuova, cio\ue8 antica: Foscolo dalle \uabPoesie\ubb ai \uabSepolcri\ubb

The essay focuses on the relations between the Poesie (the twelve sonnets and the two odes) and the Sepolcri by Ugo Foscolo, emphasising their strong similarities on the form of the content (see, for instance, the crucial role of the antithesis both as a rhetoric figure and as a linguistic and literary form of Foscolo\u2019s thought) and on a line of development along which the first works represent a preparatory stage for the second. Indeed, it is in the Sepolcri that Foscolo fully expresses his idea of lyric as a poetry which \uabcanta con entusiasmo le lodi de\u2019 numi e degli eroi\ubb. This idea could also be found in the Poesie, but, specially in the sonnets, it still coexisted with other characteristics of the \uabmelica\ubb. The features of this original conception of the lyric (where \u2018original\u2019 does not mean new but indicates its similarity to the one of the origins) include a tension toward the sublime, expressed in the Sepolcri by means of two stylistic choices at least: the strong semantic value of the grammatical elements of the discourse and the utilization of the antithesis, by assigning opposite meanings to the same word. Thanks to these techniques, the author accomplish the effect that the sublime should have on the readers: make them strongly think

Il romanzo della speranza. Enzo Noè girardi studioso di Manzoni

This essay aims to chronologically analyze Girardi’s studies on Manzoni. In accordance with Girardi’s theoretical assumptions, these studies were mostly focused on I promessi sposi, where reality and the ideal textually converge. The study takes into account his main novelties, that today are still as fruitful as ever: the dualism as a fundamental element of Manzoni’s whole literary history and in particular of his I promessi sposi; the recognition of the 17th century chroniclers’ Christian realism on the novel’s composition; the dislocation of the sacred as a narrative procedure; the definition of «romanzo della speranza» (hope novel) that gets over the infertile contraposition between Manzoni’s optimism and pessimism