Wolfgang Iser. Towards Literary Anthropology. Introduction

In this article you find the editorial remarks of this special issue on “Wolfgang Iser. Towards Literary Anthropology”, edited by Laura Lucia Rossi. Alongside introducing the content of the issue, the author reflects on Wolfgang Iser’s influence and legacy and on the perspectives of the Iserian studies, in particular with regard to «literary anthropology»

A virtual roundtable on Iser’s legacy Part IV: a conversation with Federico Bertoni

In this article you find the fourth and last part of our ‘virtual roundtable’ on Wolfgang Iser’s legacy with Gerald Prince, Mark Fremman, Marco Caracciolo and Federico Bertoni. In part IV we discuss with Federico Bertoni the state of theories of reading and the centality of Iser’s work in the field, the ethical potential of literature, and the role of literary criticism and theory today

A virtual roundtable on Iser’s legacy Part I: conversation with Gerald Prince

In this article you find the first part of a roundtable on Wolfgang’s Iser legacy with Gerald Prince, Mark Freeman, Marco Caracciolo and Federico Bertoni. In Part I we discuss with Prof. Gerald Prince the influence of Iser’s aesthetic response theory on past and current reader oriented approaches, as well as Iser’s last insights on literary anthropology and the role of literary theory

A virtual roundtable on Iser’s legacy Part II: conversation with Mark Freeman

In this article you find the second part of a roundtable on Wolfgang’s Iser legacy with Gerald Prince, Mark Freeman, Marco Caracciolo and Federico Bertoni. In Part II we discuss with Prof. Mark Freem the role of narrative hermeneutics in understanding the human realm and the tenets of self-interpretation, as well as the necessity of literary antrhopology and literary theory

Che cos’è la letteratura comparata, di Mariangela Lopopolo

Review of Lopopolo, Mariangela. Che cos’è la letteratura comparata. Roma: Carocci, 2012. Print

Indeterminacy in the Italian Novel. Five Case Studies from Tozzi, Landolfi, Vittorini, Gadda and Ortese.

This research analyses the manipulation of literary indeterminacy (i.e. the interpretative openness of a literary work) in the novel. It is based on reader-response theory and on the notion of literary indeterminacy as theorised by Wolfgang Iser and Roman Ingarden. Its objective is twofold. Firstly, it aims to explore how textual strategies manipulate indeterminacy, and how the latter triggers the reader’s interaction with the text. Secondly, it aims to examine how indeterminacy is handled in five Italian case-study novels, which critics have often described with terms belonging to the same semantic field as “indeterminacy” (for example: “openness” and “ambiguity”). Consequently, this research does not necessarily study how indeterminacy is increased or limited but, rather, the effects of its manipulation. The introductory chapter focuses on the notion of indeterminacy, its potentiality for textual exploration, and the research methodology. Moreover, it introduces the Italian context and the analysed corpus. Subsequently, one chapter is dedicated to each of the novels examined. Each individual analysis considers indeterminacy as operating in the text at different levels and with different strategies. In doing so, the case studies bring to light the different way in which each novel manipulates indeterminacy, as well as its links with each individual author’s poetics. In particular, we find: a textual vertigo effect in Federigo Tozzi’s Con gli occhi chiusi; an interplay with the fantastic mode in Tommaso Landolfi’s La pietra lunare; an open and dialogical structure in Elio Vittorini’s Conversazione in Sicilia; the use of accumulative devices in Carlo Emilio Gadda’s La cognizione del dolore; and an hybrid form with elements from literary nonsense in Anna Maria Ortese’s L’Iguana. In the conclusion, comparative remarks are drawn on how these novels manipulate indeterminacy to cope with the problem of realism in literature and how they elicit the reader’s intervention

Stefano Bartezzaghi, Scrittori giocatori

Review of Bartezzaghi, Stefano. Scrittori giocatori, Torino: Einaudi, 2010. Print.Questo articolo presenta la recensione dell’ultimo libro del semiologo, critico, enigmista Stefano Bartezzaghi dal titolo Scrittori giocatori in cui l’autore propone un itinerario attraverso le opere di alcuni scrittori (tra i quali Primo Levi, Italo Calvino e David Foster Wallace) che detengono un rapporto privilegiato con il gioco nelle sue varie accezioni: il gioco vero e proprio (scrittori scacchisti, enigmisti, tennisti ecc.), il gioco come elemento narrativo, il gioco linguistico e il gioco come paradigma teorico della letteratura. Stefano Bartezzaghi, Scrittori giocatori, Einaudi, Torino, 2010

Breve fenomenologia del lettore ai confini del nonsense (o Il lettore provocato)

In questo articolo esaminiamo alcuni generi letterari che sono stati spesso accostati al nonsense letterario. In particolare prendiamo in considerazione il ruolo del lettore all’interno di questi testi e ne proponiamo una sorta di fenomenologia. Invitiamo, infine, a riflettere su come considerare la dimensione del lettore all’interno di un genere letterario possa condurre a risultati rilevanti circa la definizione del genere stesso.In this article we analyse some literary genres that have been often compared to the literary nonsense. We will particularly consider the role of the reader within these categories of texts and we will provide a sort of phenomenology of readers. Finally, we will invite to reflect upon how analysing the sphere of the reader within a literary genre can lead to relevant remarks concerning the definition of the genre itself

Silenzi d’autore di Bice Mortara Garavelli

In questo articolo si recensisce Silenzi d’autore di Bice Mortara Garavelli (Bari: Laterza, 2015)

Shape and Interaction Decoupling for Colloidal Pre-Assembly

Creating materials with a structural hierarchy that is independently controllable at a range of scales requires breaking naturally occurring hierarchies. Breaking natural hierarchies is possible if building block attributes can be decoupled from the structure of pre-assembled, mesoscale building blocks that form the next level in the structural hierarchy. Here, we show that pre-assembled colloidal structures achieving geometric and interaction decoupling can be prepared in emulsions of silica superballs, which are cubic-like particles with rounded edges. We show that, for clusters of up to nine particles, colloidal superballs pack consistently like spheres, despite the presence of shape anisotropy and facets in the cubic-like particles. We compare our results with clusters prepared with magnetic superballs and find good qualitative agreement, suggesting that the cluster geometries are solely determined by the shape of the constituent particles. Our findings demonstrate that highly shape-anisotropic building blocks, under suitable conditions, can be pre-assembled into structures that are not found in bulk, thereby achieving a decoupling that can be further exploited for hierarchical materials development.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figure