bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Semantic Distance as Reaction to Pestilence in Medieval Italy: Evidence from the Story Collections of Boccaccio, Sacchetti, and Sercambi
Authors: Marafioti Martin
Published: March 2013

In his Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio prescribes storytelling as a means of distraction from the anxieties and suffering associated with the mortifera pestilenza of 1348. Boccaccio pays careful attention to semantics in his work; he confines the discussion of pestilence to the frame tale and avoids evoking the plague thematically, symbolically, and linguistically in the one hundred novelle. This essay examines the power attributed to language in times of epidemic outbreak, in particular, the fear of pronouncing the name of an illness, as if somehow, words possessed the power to make one more susceptible to the malady or to infect. This linguistic aversion to pestilence is analyzed in the story collections of Giovanni Boccaccio, Franco Sacchetti, and Giovanni Sercambi.
PAOLO ANTONIO ROLLI PRIMO TRADUTTORE DI MILTON UN POETA, EDITORE, POLEMISTA E MAESTRO D'ITALIANO NELL'INGHILTERRA DEL SETTECENTO
Authors: Alcini Laura
Published: March 2013

Il saggio intende ricostruire la vicenda biografica e letteraria di Paolo Antonio Rolli, intellettuale eclettico nella Londra del secolo diciottesimo, a cui spetta il merito, scarsamente riconosciuto, di precursore e fautore degli scambi letterari tra Italia e Gran Bretagna. Per almeno trenta anni Rolli fu infatti uno dei più autorevoli rappresentanti della lingua e della cultura italiana a Londra, diventandone principale ambasciatore. Oltre al Rolli poeta arcade, librettista ed editore-filologo esiste anche un Rolli docente di lingua italiana la cui vocazione maieutica si esprime nell'intento, assolutamente moderno, di rendere più vicini il mondo letterario inglese e quello italiano. Egli si colloca d'altronde nella scia di quella corrente culturale che, già dal secolo XVII, aveva visto la lingua italiana diventare fulcro della formazione culturale anglosassone. Tendenza che in John Milton aveva trovato il suo più illustre rappresentante.

L'attività di traduttore, dai classici e dai moderni, costituisce senza dubbio la parte fondamentale della produzione di Paolo Rolli, particolarmente intensa durante la permanenza inglese. Il più importante lavoro traduttivo rimane la versione italiana del Paradise Lost di J. Milton che impegnò il poeta per circa quindici anni. L'opera, pionieristica per l'epoca, rappresenta una pietra miliare della critica italiana in rapporto alla letteratura inglese.
The Fascist Canon Renzo De Felice and the Writing of History
Authors: Finchelstein Federico
Published: March 2013

In recent years, particularly after Renzo De Felice's death in 1996, the perception of this historian's historiographical role as foundational for Italian history has been expanded to the extent that his oeuvre has now been canonized in Italy as the expression of a putatively hegemonic historiography on fascism. This paper argues that this canonization process should be analyzed in critical terms since, as with any canon, De Felice's work has — beyond its indisputable analytical coherence — ambivalent functions. These functions are related, not only to problems inherent in the historical discipline and its tendency to present historiographical frameworks as hegemonies, but also to dimensions of the canonical text itself. Thus, an explicit aim of this paper is to develop a reading that counteracts the excesses of canonization in Italian historiography.
Fascinating Fashion: Visual Pleasure in IL PORTIERE DI NOTTE
Authors: Patti Lisa
Published: March 2013

The theoretical, critical and popular responses to Liliana Cavani's 1974 film Il Portiere di Notte link the film's visual appeal to its alleged political and historical transgressions; according to many viewers, the film's attractiveness fuels its repulsiveness. This essay challenges this indictment of the film's beauty, analyzing the film's surfaces in order to reframe the relationship between the film's visual style and its political interventions. In Il Portiere di Notte, Cavani transforms the holocaust from an event into a mise-en-scène. For Cavani, costumes emerge as a mediating term between the surfaces of the mise-en-scene and the cinematic screen. A close reading of the role of costume and fashion in Il Portiere di Notte, particularly the role of the SS uniform, destabilizes the assumptions about spectacle and power that circulate in the film's reception and points to the possibility of recuperating Cavani's film as both an example of a feminist countercinema and a theorization of cinematic spectatorship.
SIERI RIGENERANTI E ALTRA FANTASCIENZA INGLESE IN UN RACCONTO DI ITALO SVEVO
Authors: Francone Graziana
Published: March 2013

Several critics have argued that Italo Svevo's Lo specifico del dottor Menghi follows some well-known science fiction works, which were published in Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth century.

This essay intends to discuss an unexplored influence of this literary genre on Svevo's short story, in particular the influence of Edward George Bulwer-Lytton's The Coming Race (1871), a work in which science fiction combines with utopian and esoteric ingredients.

In spite of the ideological and stylistic differences between the two works, a comparative study shows that The Coming Race and Lo specifico del dottor Menghi share two basic themes: the manipulation of the body by means of serums and fluids in order to prolong life, and the potential evil resulting from these pseudo-scientific experimentations. In fact, on the one hand, these substances seem to be elixirs of life, since they enhance mental and physical activities and weaken the emotional sphere; on the other hand, they can produce degenerative effects, as they paralyze feelings and actions and thus become fatal poisons, especially in the case of Menghi's specific.
BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI'S LA STRATEGIA DEL RAGNO: HISTORICIZING OEDIPUS AT THE DAWN OF ITALY'S ‘STRATEGIA DELLA TENSIONE’
Authors: Bouchard Norma
Published: March 2013

As is the case of many of Bernardo Bertolucci's films of the 1960s and 1970s, La strategia del ragno (1970) has elicited a number of readings from the framework of auteur-theory at the expense of a meaning-production generated in the larger social and political context where texts and spectators meet. Without denying Bertolucci's modernistic auteurial signature nor downplaying the Freudian concerns that run throughout La strategia, this essay accounts for the relationship between the film's formal and thematic structures and the wider socio-political, and historical context of Italian Fascism of the 1930s, the time of the film's diegesis, and its resurgence in the 1960s, the time of the film's production. When viewed at the intersection of historically situated and embodied subjects, the enunciating structures La strategia stage question the alliance with the anti-fascist Resistance that was cultivated by post-war Italian political institutions while revealing a cultural preoccupation with the re-emergence of the castrating authority of Italy's right-wing politics that was occurring at the time the film was being produced: the early years of a very dark period of Italian history that would later be known as the epoch of “la strategia della tensione” [strategy of tension].
Et in Arcadia Ego: Gina Lagorio's L'RCADIA AMERICANA as the Reflection of a European Literary Self
Authors: Alfano Barbara
Published: March 2013

In L'arcadia americana (1999) Gina Lagorio reproposes the myth of Arcadia, in particular the “Et in Arcadia Ego” theme as the metaphor that serves her description of American university campus life and of the United States at large.

Traveling through a world that he feels is impermeable to real life — university campuses in the United States — the first-person narrator of L'arcadia americana relates to American Academia as the Ego of the Arcadian tomb, a reminder of death and of historical time. Assuming the position of the outsider inside the picture, the protagonist himself remains impermeable to the landscape that he describes, so that the America we see through his eyes amounts to a reflection of his often prejudicial constructs, partly made of the dreamy America belonging to his youth, and partly of reiterated stereotypes immediately recognizable by the novel's implied reader, the Italian audience.

Although he crosses the Ocean for a photographic reportage of US campuses, the narrator clings to Europe with all the cultural might he feels capable of, and thus never really leaves the Old World.
APPUNTI SUL PAESAGGIO LIRICO VENETO
Authors: Maculan Simone
Published: March 2013

Il saggio è dedicato alla letteratura veneta del Novecento, in particolare alla poesia in lingua del ventennio 1945–1965. Fa luce su una tradizione tutto sommato poco conosciuta e periferica rispetto ai grandi centri culturali del XX secolo. La prospettiva assunta, piò che storico-letteraria, può definirsi tematica: infatti il fil rouge che contrassegna il percorso è il paesaggio, così come viene rappresentato e inteso da ciascuno scrittore. La prima parte ricostruisce la fortuna delle notazioni paesistiche nella lirica veneta: a partire da Ippolito Pindemonte, attraverso alcuni celebri poeti del XIX secolo, fino al primo Novecento con Marino Marin e Lionello Fiumi. Da qui, sotto l1egida di Diego Valeri, si ipotizza una linea caratterizzata da un ripiegamento intimistico che fa del paesaggio il luogo d1elezione (Antonio Chiarelotto e Bino Rebellato). L1intimismo astorico viene messo in discussione dai repentini mutamenti culturali degli anni Cinquanta e Sessanta, tanto che la fictio subisce variazioni anche radicali: nella direzione di un realismo che contempla gli stridenti contrasti dello sviluppo (Giulio Alessi, Bortolo Pento); ammettendo, entro i contorni del quadro visivo, le tracce della grande storia (Fernando Bandini, Carlo Della Corte); esasperando l1artificiosità di una qualsivoglia rappresentazione letteraria (Andrea Zanzotto, Cesare Ruffato)
Demeter at Auschwitz: The Use of Mythology in Primo Levi's IL SISTEMA PERIODICO
Authors: Scheiber Elizabeth S.
Published: March 2013

Il sistema periodico can be read as Primo Levi's symbolic memoirs. In all these stories, he creates analogies between chemical elements and his life, thereby unifying through narrative his different selves: student, chemist, Holocaust survivor, writer. In three stories, Levi expands his symbology to embrace classical mythology. These connections serve as a universalizing gesture that informs our understanding of Levi's life lessons. “Vanadio” takes its name from the Norse goddess Vanadis and provides a symbol for the imperfection of memory and literature. “Cerio” references the Roman goddess Ceres and the Greek goddess Demeter, which give depth to the theme of denial Levi portrays through Alberto and his mother. In “Uranio,” the myths of Uranus and Cadmos shed light on Bonino's narrative. In each case, the mythical stories symbolize the difficulty of arriving at and portraying truth in life and literature.
A Cracked Mirror, a Fragmented History and a Path That Always Comes Back to the Beginning: Giose Rimanelli's BENEDETTA IN GUYSTERLAND
Authors: Postman Sheryl Lynn
Published: March 2013

Benedetta in Guysterland, Giose Rimanelli's first English novel, is not a simple text. The reader is immediately propelled into a continuously changing whirlpool of the 1960s, a significant and antagonistic era in America, and it manifests by the use of a language that explores, evolves and expands with each chapter. To focus the loss of hope of that era in his new social environment (America), Rimanelli interweaves, within this narrative, parallel situations of terror that hurled the Italian peninsula, thirty years earlier, into its atrocious infernal of the Civil War. The author, relying on his classic, Italian medieval literary tradition, contrasts this contemporary historical period with the horrifying realism of the Fascist era. In so doing, Rimanelli is crystallizing the abyss that exists between two very different generations that manifested itself as the “generation gap,” a socio-political dilemma that occupied the country and threatened a war-like confrontation between the groups. The momentum for this clash was a defining moment in American international policy: the Vietnam War. He then, carefully, juggles two different historic periods within two diverse universes at two extremely critical moments in their social and political developments. In so doing, the distinctions and barriers that separate these two realities wear away and coalesce into one, showing that they actually flow from one sphere of existence into the other, thereby creating that which the author calls a “liquid novel.”
LORENZO DA PONTE TRA PRIMA E SECONDA EDIZIONE DELLE MEMORIE
Authors: Paolino Laura
Published: March 2013

Le Memorie del poeta veneto Lorenzo Da Ponte (1749–1837) furono composte e pubblicate negli Stati Uniti in due edizioni, la prima nel 1823–26, la seconda nel 1829–30. Il presente articolo ricostruisce la storia della composizione dell'opera e della sua laboriosa revisione attestata dall'epistolario dello scrittore. Tale revisione introdusse nelle Memorie alcune modifiche di contenuto necessarie per evitare al libro la censura da parte dei governi europei, ma anche molte correzioni linguistiche. Nell'articolo si dimostra che tali correzioni furono introdotte da Da Ponte in aperto ossequio ai dettami dei più importanti linguisti italiani del primo Ottocento e, molto probabilmente, tenendo in considerazione le prescrizioni del Vocabolario della Crusca pubblicato a Verona tra il 1806 al 1811.
IL METATEATRO PIRANDELLIANO E LA TEATRALITÀ fascista
Authors: Santuccio Maria Elena
Published: March 2013

La “riteatralizzazione” dello spettatore svolta da Pirandello nelle opere metateatrali presenta caratteristiche opposte rispetto alla ridefinizione del ruolo del pubblico/massa realizzata dal teatro-rito nazionalista e fascista. Il metateatro pirandelliano assegna all'audience un ruolo attivo, incoraggiando una distanza critica che era estranea alla struttura consensuale della teatralità fascista e della drammaturgia dannunziana.
BARBAROUS BRAHMINS, CONQUEST, AND ITALIAN IDENTITY IN PETRARCH'S DE VITA SOLITARIA
Authors: Palumbo Patrizia
Published: March 2013

This essay analyzes Petrarch's views of the Indian Brahmins, elaborated by the author in De vita solitaria. In spite of the lack of previous critical attention to the subject, Petrarch's image of the Hindu sages as barbarous savages is an extremely significant repudiation of a centuries-old tradition of Christian authors, who mostly elevated the Brahmins to a model of asceticism, as opposed to the laxity of people of their own faith. Omitting the similarity between ideals of Christian and Hindu asceticism implicit in the writings of his Christian predecessors, Petrarch is able to fashion a less stern model of solitary life compatible with the dignity he attributed to earthly human existence and the scholarly persona without openly disparaging the severe ideals of renunciation circulating within Christianity since antiquity. In De vita solitaria, Petrarch's Brahmins, and India in general, lose the transcendental aura attributed to them by centuries of Orientalist discourse and are ultimately presented as a cultural curiosity gratifying the congenital inquisitiveness of the Italians and their colonizing ambitions.
Machines are Us: Joseph Papaleo and the Literature of Sprawl
Authors: Barone Dennis
Published: March 2013

This essay examines the work of Italian American fiction writer Joseph Papaleo in the context of suburbanization, globalization, and ethnic heritage and identity. In doing so I demonstrate that Papaleo's fiction provides understanding of how Italian Americans have looked at Italy as they experienced the alienation of a consumer culture. Papaleo's fiction presents a mixed nostalgia for what Italy represents and recognition that it, too, like the United States, confronts continuous auto-dependent sprawl. Papaleo adds a suburban focus to the more frequently urban-centered literature of Italian Americans and he adds an ethic perspective to the predominantly Anglo American literature of the suburbs. His 1970 novel Out of Place depicts a materially successful Italian American, Gene Santoro, who cannot fill a deeper spiritual need in either the United States or Italy.
RAPPRESENTAZIONI LETTERARIE DELL'EMIGRAZIONE ITALIANA IN CALIFORNIA TRA OTTOCENTO E NOVECENTO
Authors: Martelli Sebastiano
Published: March 2013

L'emigrazione italiana in California ha alimentato al di là e al di qua dell'oceano una storiografia e un immaginario piegati al mito della sua diversità. Un corposo filone storiografico, definito di «storiografia sorridenteraquo;, ha trasmesso l'immagine di «una “colonia modello”, cui si è contrapposto l'altro, «Struggle and Success», che invece focalizza i limiti della condizione e della integrazione della colonia italiana tra Ottocento e primo trentennio del Novecento. Questo studio utilizza fonti letterarie (romanzi, autobiografie) poco note e in qualche caso del tutto sconosciute, concernenti l'emigrazione italiana in California dall'ultimo ventennio dell'Ottocento al primo trentennio del Novecento, come l'autobiografia in forma di romanzo Un italiano in America di Virgilio Luciani, frutto dell'esperienza dell'autore emigrato dalla Toscana a San Francisco nel 1910. Il grado di istruzione, la vivacità di sguardo, le competenze linguistiche e di scrittura dell'autore fanno di questa autobiografia una straordinaria fonte per la conoscenza della colonia italiana di San Francisco nel ventennio seguito al terremoto del 1906; una densa testimonianza di prima mano che più di ogni altra fonte riesce a rappresentare quella complessità e diversità propria dell'emigrazione italiana in California.
UCCELACCIE E UCCELLINE and the Ambiguities of Bakhtin's Carnival
Authors: St Ours Kathryn
Published: March 2013

Pasolini's 1996 film is widely recognized as an expression of the filmmaker's desire to revitalize Marxian ideals in the industrialized, consumerist country that the Italy of the nineteen fifties and sixties had become. The filmmaker seeks the cinematic expression of many of the ideas already expressed in his essays. In this article, the theories of Bakhtin provide the framework for the study of the film as the carnivalization of orthodox Marxism. In effect, one of the functions of Bakhtin's carnivalesque is the promotion of historical change in real time. Clearly, the filmmaker was wrestling with issues that continue to be pertinent today in the midst of the worldwide crisis of capitalism and globalization.
PETROLINI DRAMMATURGO. LOGICA ANTILOGICA E RELATIVISMO DAL VARIETÀ ALLE COMMEDIE
Authors: Soriani Simone
Published: March 2013

La critica più recente ha focalizzato la propria attenzione soprattutto sulla produzione primonovecentesca di Ettore Petrolini — quindi sulle macchiette e le filastrocche, le parodie e le battute che costituivano il suo repertorio ai tempi in cui si esibiva nei cafè-chantant e nei teatri di Varietà — ed ha parallelamente prestato maggiore attenzione al suo lavoro di attore piuttosto che alla sua parallela attività drammaturgica, così da relegare in secondo piano le “commedie regolari” degli anni ′20-′30. Eppure, la produzione petroliniana risulta più omogenea e coerente di quanto possa apparire ad una prima lettura: sul versante delle forme per il sistematico tentativo di abbattere la “quarta parete” ed interagire con la sala (negli “slittamenti” con cui usciva dal personaggio per dialogare con il pubblico) e per la persistenza di una certa “discorsività antilogica” per cui nel teatro di Petrolini — destrutturato il nesso fonetica-semantica — la comunicazione si realizza non in modo diretto attraverso il significato, ma indirettamente attraverso il significante. Sul versante delle tematiche, per la coerenza di un “relativismo fatalista” — memore della lezione di Pirandello, si direbbe — che nega qualsiasi verità assoluta e dogmatica e, implicitamente, si contrappone al facile ottimismo del “pensiero forte” d'inizio secolo: un relativismo che trova espressione ora nelle modalità della derisione satirica — come nei numeri di Varietà — ed ora dell'elegia crepuscolare ed umoristica, come nelle ultime commedie.
IL LINGUAGGIO COME FUNZIONE DEL FANTASTICO NELLA NARRATIVA DI TOMMASO LANDOLFI
Authors: Castaldi Simone
Published: March 2013

Il mio contributo verte su una ridefinizione in chiave linguistica del fantastico in Landolfi e ne suggerisce una lettura attenta ai profondi legami con il dibattito novecentesco sulla crisi della parola narrativa. Prendendo avvio da una lettura ravvicinata dei testi landolfiani questo articolo sottolinea l'importanza che rivestono nell'opus dello scrittore i momenti di crisi della parola, le frequenti istanze di linguaggio non-referenziale, e il dramma che rappresenta per i suoi personaggi la constatazione del fallimento della lingua come strumento di padroneggiamento sul reale. L'obbiettivo è quello di riscattare Landolfi dall'immagine, forzatamentente costruita dalla critica coeva, di uno scrittore sostanzialmente ottocentesco. Molto più vicina a Carlo Emilio Gadda che non a Hoffman o Lewis, e per molti aspetti anticipando alcune tematiche poi proprie della neoavanguardia (il linguaggio come mistificazione, la letteratura come menzogna— ed è, infatti, Giorgio Manganelli il grande erede landolfiano del secondo novecento), Landolfi appartiene alla categoria del tutto novecentesca del fantastico linguistico, un fantastico in cui le infrazioni sulla sfera normativa del reale sono del tutto linguistiche, del tutto parola.
NELLA MENTE DEI MORTI LO SPAZIO LETTERARIO DELL'ULTIMO OCCHIATO
Authors: Giiordano Emilio
Published: March 2013

È una lettura — condotta soprattutto lungo i sentieri di una densa intertestualità che ridà nuova vita a topoi antichi e moderni, senza trascurare altri particolari importanti presenti in quello spazio letterario — di L'ultima erranza (Edizioni Rubbettino, 2007), il terzo romanzo di Giuseppe Occhiato (Mileto, 1934 – Firenze, 2010), scrittore calabrese ancora (colpevolmente) poco noto in Italia, ma protagonista di una vicenda umana e culturale che lo pone in modo perentorio accanto a Stefano D'Arrigo: come autore, cioé, di un romanzo immenso e straordinario ( Oga Magoga, 2000, pp. 1385), opera mondo capace di rubare i pensieri e le forze di un'intera esistenza, uno sguardo penetrante rivolto alla guerra, al mondo contadino e ai miti antichi del Mediterraneo.
GUIDO PIOVENE NELL' AMERICA DI TRUMAN
Authors: Luconi Stefano
Published: March 2013

Questo articolo esamina le considerazioni espresse da Guido Piovene nel De America (1953) sulla situazione politica degli Stati Uniti all'inizio degli anni Cinquanta. Nonostante il maccartismo, le tensioni razziali, un pesante clima antisindacale e i crescenti condizionamenti delle lobbies sul sistema politico, lo scrittore formulò un giudizio sostanzialmente positivo sulla società americana e sul suo livello di democraticità. Tale valutazione, però, fu il risultato di una serie di omissioni e reticenze che portarono Piovene a ignorare o a ridimensionare gli aspetti più negativi e deleteri degli Stati Uniti alla fine della presidenza di Harry S. Truman.
Authenticating, Authorizing, Politicizing: Paratext and First-wave Italian Amercian and African Italian Autobiographies
Authors: Wren-Owens Elizabeth
Published: March 2013

This article aims to explore the agency of the migrant to speak in the destination culture through an examination of the way in which first-generation autobiographies are introduced. It will compare Italian American autobiographies produced at the beginning of the twentieth century with African Italian autobiographies penned in the early 1990s, arguing that striking similarities between the respective literary forms of the texts, and the political climates in which they were produced, prompt an exploration of whether factors such as class, gender and the act of literary collaboration with an established cultural figure hold shifting or static values in permitting the migrant's voice to be heard.
TRENTA POESIE: IL BAEDEKER LIRICO DI GOFFREEO PARISE
Authors: Colucci Dalila
Published: March 2013

Parise traccia dei segni in un codice poetico un po' vecchiotto, nella lingua del Novecento. Ma i segni sono schizzati senza curarsi di se stesso, senza curarsi di niente. Parise non li guarda, li traccia sbadatamente girandosi di fianco sul lettuccio di un ospedale o di una prigione. A nessuno di quei segni Parise affida niente di se stesso. A che cosa servirebbe? Non c'è più niente da difendere. Così le parole derisorie e oscene scendono giù insieme al cuore trafitto dalla freccia, graffite senza memoria e senza rimorso, abbandonate al muro.1
TRADUZIONE E TRADIZIONE: VARIANTI D'AUTORE NEL PARADISO PERDUTO DI PAOLO ANTONIO ROLLI
Authors: Alcini Laura
Published: March 2013

Il saggio ripercorre in sintesi le linee guida della prima edizione critica del Paradiso Perduto di Paolo Antonio Rolli, prima traduzione italiana del Paradise Lost di J. Milton. Le varianti traduttive d'autore, che evidenziano il lungo work in progress del Rolli, sono state analizzate attraverso una capillare analisi sinottica della tradizione del testo di arrivo e del testo di partenza. Ciò costituisce il fondamento della suddetta edizione volta a rappresentare un'ipotesi d'indagine filologica che, a differenza delle recenti edizioni di testi tradotti, operi in parallelo su entrambi i testi in osservazione: il testo tradotto e l'originale; nell'ambizione di segnare l'inizio di un nuovo modo di studiare le opere straniere tradotte.
The Role of the Holy Place in Memory and Nostalgia: The Immigration of Italian Jews to Israel before and after WWII
Authors: Bettin Cristina
Published: March 2013

Holy places have always played an important role in the preservation of different identities, including religious, cultural, and national identity. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate, through the study of Italian Jews who immigrated to Israel from the early 1930 to the beginning of the 1950s, that their attitudes to Italy were similar to those of other Italians who emigrated from Italy to countries around the world. Like many Italians who reestablished or reconstructed their places of worship in their newly adopted countries, Italian Jews who came to Israel did the same, with the same modalities and aim, which was to preserve their Italian national and cultural identity.
STELLA
Authors: Betocchi Carlo
Published: March 2013

Di Carlo Betocchi si vuol ricordare il primo libro di poesie, pubblicato a trentatré anni, Realtà vince il sogno (Il Frontespizio, 1932), e le due recenti raccolte di poesie, L'estate di San Martino (Mondadori, 1961), Un passo, un altro passo (Mondadori, 1967).

Il mondo poetico di Betocchi è stato descritto da Mario Luzi come “La profonda letizia cristiana che erompe … con festosa naturalezza dal male conosciuto e sofferto” (La Fiera Letteraria, 17 Giugno, 1956). Un altro poeta fiorentino, il giovanissimo Silvio Ramat, nella presentazione, fatta al Vieusseux, di Un passo, un altro passo, parlando del cristianesimo betocchiano ha affermato che bisogna intenderlo non come “una struttura dogmatica, ma solo come tensione alla verità, alla perfettibilità.” Come manifestazione di simpatia per quella nuova iniziativa culturale americana, che è Forum Italicum, il grande poeta fiorentino ha voluto offrire questa sua recente, inedita poesia.
DA UN COMMENTO AL CANZONIERE DEL PETRARCA
Authors: Noferi Adelia
Published: March 2013

Si danno qui degli exempla di un Commento al Canzoniere petrarchesco a cura di Adelia Noferi, con la collaborazione di Enza Biagini. Nella comune direzione di ricerca e di interpretazione, le annotazioni sono di piena responsabilità di ciascuna delle curatrici, che si spartiscono i testi da annotare, firmando debitamente il proprio commento.

Sarà utile tener presente che, provenendo da un unicum che li contiene, gli estratti possono mancare sia dei riferimenti esterni che dei rimandi teorici: nel commento, i primi dipendono dalla varia contiguitá dei componimenti e i secondi sono presentati globalmente come guida alla lettura.

I testi sono disposti secondo l'ordine numerico dei componimenti.
MARCELLO PARLAGRECO: DA “IL BOMBARDINO”
Authors: Parlagreco Marcello
Published: March 2013

Titolo forse ancora provvisorio, Il bombardino è l'opera prima di Marcello Parlagreco (nato a Caltanissetta nel '44), di prossima pubblicazione presso l'editore Vallecchi, che cortesemen'teci autorizza a pubblicarne fin d'ora questo capitolo. Naïf e disperato, il romanzo di Parlagreco dovrebbe, senza eccessivo bisogno di supporti critici, far presa grazie alle sue sole forze sul lettore, con la ormai sorprendente capacità dell' autentico, dell'inerme, del semplicemente vivo.
BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI E LE “SUE” DONNE: LA LUNA
Authors: Campani Ermelinda M.
Published: March 2013

Ho fatto per la prima volta un personaggio femminile, cosa per me molto difficile, e un punto di forza poteva essere quello di darle un retroterra in cui io potessi trovare una certa identificazione, di offrirle, in un certo senso, la mia memoria.
An Analysis of Preference Relative to Teacher Implementation of Intervention
Authors: Johnson LeAnne D. , Wehby Joseph H. , Symons Frank J. , Moore Tara C. , Maggin Daniel M. , Sutherland Kevin S.
Published: March 2013

The purpose of this study was to conduct a preference trial as a preliminary test of preference effects on teacher behavior relative to implementation (adoption, adherence, quality). Teachers were randomly assigned to “preference” or “no-preference” groups and then trained to implement the intervention. Direct observation occurred immediately after initial training, after 6 weeks of coaching support, and after 4 weeks of no support. Results showed that, when compared with the no-preference group, teachers who had the opportunity to exert a preference adopted the intervention sooner and sustained higher fidelity and quality of implementation independent of coaching. Furthermore, though most teachers in the no-preference group did adopt the intervention and demonstrate high fidelity following coaching, implementation did not sustain after the withdrawal of coaching.
Igniting food assemblages in Sri Lanka: Ritual cooking to regenerate the world and interrelations
Authors: Daele Wim Van
Published: March 2013

Food, human beings, ritual events and the world exchange components while their interaction alters their heterogeneous constitution as an assemblage. I intend to revise and vitalise assemblage theory by foregrounding the role fire plays in shaping exchange and transformation by the very process of ‘cooking’. I elaborate these modifications and alchemic transformations of existing theory by exploring the ritual cooking of coconut milk and the offerings made in a harvest rite in Sri Lanka. The offerings of coconuts enable participants to transfer merits as well as to purify themselves in this surrogate self-sacrifice while reconfiguring the positions within the cosmology. The boiling over of coconut milk acts as a centripetal force around which the ritual evolves, drawing together spectators, historical origins, myths, actions and intentionalities. Heated by fire, the ritual ‘cooks’ these components, from which emerge renewed assemblages of the world, human beings and food. Hence, ritual cooking of food becomes an allegorical materialisation of a ‘cooking’ of the world and interrelationships.
Towards a comprehensive model of caste
Authors: Lindt Benjamin
Published: March 2013

This article attempts to pioneer a better theoretical understanding of the social institution of caste. It argues that caste, in contrast to more conventional perspectives, is not a monolithic institution, but rather a compromise between economic, biological and ideational aspects of human existence. In its most abstract and basic form, caste systematically connects competing rationales—economic interdependence with biological separation—by a specific form of rationalisation. However, within the process of modernisation, the economic element is increasingly losing its importance, while the biological aspect of caste survives only in connection with a reduced, non-systematic form of rationalisation.

 In its theoretical design, this model offers an opportunity to understand caste quite differently from that presented by conventional definitions. By breaking this institution into its essential ingredients, it is receptive to the inherent breaks and frictions of caste and hence, can account for the changes that caste is going through. Applied to the existing theories of caste and empirical research, it can provide the theoretical tools for a meta-analysis of all interpretations of caste and a guideline for empirical research on caste in modernity.
Treatment integrity of interventions with children in School Psychology International from 1995–2010
Authors: Sanetti Lisa M. Hagermoser , Dobey Lisa M. , Gallucci Jennifer
Published: March 2013

Over the past two decades, the role of school psychologists internationally has shifted from a more narrow focus on assessment to a broader emphasis on problem solving and delivering intervention services via consultation. Defining interventions is important for replication and translation of practice. Further, to make valid, data-based decisions about intervention effectiveness, school psychologists need to consider student outcomes in light of treatment integrity data. Reviews of treatment outcome research in many applied fields indicate that although many researchers operationally define interventions, a majority of researchers fail to report treatment integrity data. The purpose of this study was to review the treatment integrity data reported in intervention studies published in School Psychology International between 1995–2010. Results indicate a majority of published studies include neither a definition of the independent variable nor quantitative treatment integrity data. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
Responses to Endorsement of Commonality by Ingroup and Outgroup Members: The Roles of Group Representation and Threat
Authors: Gómez Ángel , Dovidio John F. , Gaertner Samuel L. , Fernández Saulo , Vázquez Alexandra
Published: March 2013

Two experiments integrated research on the roles of common identity and social norms in intergroup orientations. Experiment 1 demonstrated that learning that ingroup members categorized the ingroup (Spaniards) and outgroup (Eastern European immigrants) within a common identity (European) produced more positive intergroup orientations toward immigrants. By contrast, learning that outgroup members held the same position elicited less positive orientations compared with a condition in which the information came from a neutral source. The effects were mediated by one-group representations. Experiment 2 also found that endorsement of a common identity generated more positive intergroup orientations when it was expressed by ingroup than outgroup members and revealed how this effect may be sequentially mediated by personal one-group representations and symbolic threat.
Optimism Following a Tornado Disaster
Authors: Suls Jerry , Rose Jason P. , Windschitl Paul D. , Smith Andrew R.
Published: March 2013

Effects of exposure to a severe weather disaster on perceived future vulnerability were assessed in college students, local residents contacted through random-digit dialing, and community residents of affected versus unaffected neighborhoods. Students and community residents reported being less vulnerable than their peers at 1 month, 6 months, and 1 year after the disaster. In Studies 1 and 2, absolute risk estimates were more optimistic with time, whereas comparative vulnerability was stable. Residents of affected neighborhoods (Study 3), surprisingly, reported less comparative vulnerability and lower “gut-level” numerical likelihood estimates at 6 months, but later their estimates resembled the unaffected residents. Likelihood estimates (10%-12%), however, exceeded the 1% risk calculated by storm experts, and gut-level versus statistical-level estimates were more optimistic. Although people believed they had approximately a 1-in-10 chance of injury from future tornadoes (i.e., an overestimate), they thought their risk was lower than peers.
Multiparametric Attenuation and Backscatter Images for Characterization of Carotid Plaque
Authors: Bridal S. Lori , Beyssen Bernard , FoRNÈs Paul , Julia Pierre , Berger Geneviève
Published: March 2013

The goal of this study was to develop methods for quantitative ultrasound imagery suitable for noninvasive assessment of carotid plaque composition prior to the selection of the technique for revascularization. Using two broadband transducers (5–12 MHz and 12–28 MHz), backscattered radio frequency signals were acquired from entire lengths of 15 carotid endarterectomy specimens. Spectral analysis methods with correction for system response and beam diffraction were applied to radio frequency signals from local volumes of plaque having a 2 mm slice thickness, 1 mm width and axial depth of 480 μm and 240 μm at 10 MHz and 20 MHz, respectively. From these spectra, local values of four ultrasound parameters (integrated backscatter, frequency dependence of backscatter, integrated attenuation and slope of attenuation) were estimated and used to construct quantitative images. To combine information from these different parameter images, a two-step approach was followed. First, in 59 independent quantitative images of highly stenotic plaque, the average parameter values in a central five-by-three pixel region were correlated with plaque composition as assessed by histology to investigate the relationship between parameter values, frequency bandwidth and plaque composition. Discriminant analysis of parameter values vs. plaque composition was made to find a set of predictive equations to classify sets of measurements. Correct classification was obtained for 100% of calcified, 75% of intraplaque hemorrhage and 71 % of lipidic plaques of the input data set. Second, each set of pixels from different parameter images was classified using the predictive equations, and a single, local tissue composition image was constructed. Examples of tissue composition images are presented in comparison with corresponding histologic sections. Both agreement and disagreement between image pairs are discussed.
A Finite Element Model of Remote Palpation of Breast Lesions Using Radiation Force: Factors Affecting Tissue Displacement
Authors: Nightingale Kathryn R. , Nightingale Roger W. , Palmeri Mark L. , Trahey Gregg E.
Published: March 2013

The early detection of breast cancer reduces patient mortality. The most common method of breast cancer detection is palpation. However, lesions that lie deep within the breast are difficult to palpate when they are small. Thus, a method of remote palpation, which may allow the detection of small lesions lying deep within the breast, is currently under investigation. In this method, acoustic radiation force is used to apply localized forces within tissue (to tissue volumes on the order of 2 mm3) and the resulting tissue displacements are mapped using ultrasonic correlation based methods. A volume of tissue that is stiffer than the surrounding medium (i.e., a lesion) distributes the force throughout the tissue beneath it, resulting in larger regions of displacement, and smaller maximum displacements. The resulting displacement maps may be used to image tissue stiffness.

A finite-element-model (FEM) of acoustic remote palpation is presented in this paper. Using this model, a parametric analysis of the affect of varying tissue and acoustic beam characteristics on radiation force induced tissue displacements is performed. The results are used to evaluate the potential of acoustic remote palpation to provide useful diagnostic information in a clinical setting. The potential for using a single diagnostic transducer to both generate radiation force and track the resulting displacements is investigated.
Calibrated Parametric Medical Ultrasound Imaging
Authors: Valckx F.M.J. , Thijssen J.M. , Van Geemen A.J. , Rotteveel J.J. , Mullaart R.
Published: March 2013

The goal of this study was to develop a calibrated on-line technique to extract as much diagnostically-relevant information as possible from conventional video-format echograms. The final aim is to improve the diagnostic potentials of medical ultrasound. Video-output images were acquired by a frame grabber board incorporated in a multiprocessor workstation. Calibration images were obtained from a stable tissue-mimicking phantom with known acoustic characteristics. Using these images as reference, depth dependence of the gray level could fairly be corrected for the transducer performance characteristics, for the observer-dependent equipment settings and for attenuation in the examined tissues. Second-order statistical parameters still displayed some nonconsistent depth dependencies. The results obtained with two echoscanners for the same phantom were different; hence, an a posteriori normalization of clinical data with the phantom data is indicated. Prior to processing of clinical echograms, the anatomical reflections and echoless voids were removed automatically. The final step in the preprocessing concerned the compensation of the overall attenuation in the tissue. A ‘sliding window’ processing was then applied to a region of interest (ROI) in the ‘back-scan converted’ images. A number of first and second order statistical texture parameters and acoustical parameters were estimated in each window and assigned to the central pixel. This procedure results in a set of new ‘parametric’ images of the ROI, which can be inserted in the original echogram (gray value, color) or presented as a color overlay. A clinical example is presented for illustrating the potentials of the developed technique. Depending on the choice of the parameters, four full resolution calibrated parametric images can be calculated and simultaneously displayed within 5 to 20 seconds. In conclusion, an on-line technique has been developed to estimate acoustic and texture parameters with a reduced equipment dependence and to display acoustical and textural information that is present in conventional echograms.
Feasibility of Biomedical Applications of Hall Effect Imaging
Authors: Wen Han
Published: March 2013

Hall effect imaging is a new technique for mapping the electrical properties of a sample. Its principle has been demonstrated in two- and three-dimensional phantom images. Based on the experimental data and theoretical understanding of this technique developed over the past few years, this paper addresses the most relevant question for biomedical applications: whether Hall effect imaging is ultimately applicable to complex biological systems such as the human body. The arguments are given at the basic physics level, so that the conclusion is independent of current technology status. These arguments are corroborated with imaging data of an aorta sample. The conclusion is that Hall effect imaging is not suited for quantifying the electrical constants in complex biological samples. This technique is able to produce high-resolution volume images of samples in vitro that reflect their electrical heterogeneity. However, quantitative measurements of electrical constants are not practical for complex samples.
A Dynamic Focusing Technique for Delta-Sigma-Based Beamformers
Authors: Li Pai-Chi , Huang Jing-Jung , Liu Hsin-Lin , O'Donnell Matt
Published: March 2013

Beamformation using oversampling delta-sigma (ΔΣ) modulators has been proposed for diagnostic ultrasound. Such a beamformer can reduce the size, complexity and cost of an imaging system while providing adequate signal-to-quantization noise ratio (SQNR). High quality images can also be generated if dynamic receive delays are applied correctly. Several dynamic focusing techniques were previously proposed. Generally, an additional bit or extra compensation circuit is required to preserve the power and frequency distribution of the signal. Without preserving the power and frequency distribution, the image background noise is increased. In this paper, an alternative technique is presented. The new technique exploits the symmetry of focusing delays relative to the center of a transducer array. By properly synchronizing the delays and selecting the inserted values, no noise is added to the beam sum signal and the image background level is not increased. Using real ultrasound data, it is shown that the proposed technique provides the same imaging performance as the previous approaches with reduced system complexity by using only a single bit to encode the output of the ΔΣ modulator.
A Study of the Display Pixel-Based Focusing Method in Ultrasound Imaging
Authors: Hwang J. S. , Song T. K.
Published: March 2013

This paper presents a new beamforming technique, in which ultrasound waves are focused at the display pixels on the Cartesian coordinates, rather than sampling points located on the uniformly-separated scanlines on either the polar or Cartesian coordinates. Consequently, this method does not require a digital scan converter (DSC) and therefore completely eliminates the distortions due to the DSC. A new imaging system based on the proposed method is also presented, which is advantageous over conventional systems in hardware complexity, especially when high-density imaging is required. The new method can also be used effectively to achieve high frame rates for real-time 3D imaging and cardiac applications. To verify the proposed method, we modified a commercial ultrasound scanner and performed experiments with a 3.5MHz convex array and a 7.5MHz linear array. The experimental results with in vivo and in vitro data show that the proposed technique provides much smoother and finer images than the conventional dynamic focusing methods.
High Frequency Acoustic Parameters of Human and Bovine Articular Cartilage following Experimentally-Induced Matrix Degradation
Authors: Joiner G.A. , Bogoch E.R. , Pritzker K.P. , Buschmann M.D. , Chevrier A. , Foster F.S.
Published: March 2013

Matrix degradation and proteoglycan loss in articular cartilag eare features of early osteoarthritis. To determine the effect of matrix degradation and proteoglycan loss on ultrasound propagation in cartilage, we used papain and interleukin-1α to degrade the matrix proteoglycans of human and bovine cartilage samples, respectively. There is also minor collagen alteration associated with these chemical degradation methods. We compared the speed of sound and frequency dependent attenuation (20–40 MHz) of control and experimental paired samples. We found that a loss of matrix proteoglycans and collagen disruption resulted in a 20–30% increase in the frequency dependent attenuation and a 2% decrease in the speed of sound in both human and bovine cartilage. We conclude that the frequency dependent attenuation and speed of sound in articular cartilage are sensitive to experimental modification of the matrix proteoglycans and collagen. These findings suggest that ultrasound can potentially be used to detect morphologic changes in articular cartilage associated with the progression of osteoarthritis.