Aesthetics

Paura di cambiare. Crisi e critica del concetto di cultura

November 1, 2011

by Francesco Erspamer
Donzelli, 169 pp., € 16.00

JOHN WELSH - The Invention of Culture

It is a conversation all too familiar for anyone involved in the humanities. It happens most frequently in situations of involuntary socialization—parties, receptions, dinners—but it can happen anywhere you find yourself in the company of strangers. Sooner or later, the question comes up. “So, what do you do?” You respond. You’re a student, perhaps a graduate student or a young teacher. “What do you study?” Philosophy maybe...

Storia culturale della fotografia italiana. Dal Neorealismo al Postmoderno

May 13, 2012

by Antonella Russo
Einaudi, 428 pp., ill., € 35.00

CECELIA OLIVERIO

Though the mere reference to the term “cultural history” is sometimes enough to push even the most tolerant of history buffs toward an apoplectic anxiety, fear not Antonella Russo’s ever so meticulously curated history of photography. For a bricolage of findings on post-World War II Italian photography or an ode to methodological eclecticism this book is most certainly not. Cultural insofar as the rich and nuanced picture of Italian photography that is achieved by Russo is...

Italo Calvino's Architecture of Lightness: The Utopian Imagination in an Age of Urban Crisis

October 3, 2012

by Letizia Modena
Routledge, 267 pp., $146.00 ($99.75 ebook)

DAN TURELLO

“If you choose to believe me, good. Now I will tell you how Octavia, the spider-web city, is made. There is a precipice between two steep mountains: the city is over the void, bound to the two crests with ropes and chains and catwalks.” It is one of Marco Polo’s accounts to the Kublai Khan, from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. The Kublai Khan, wrote Calvino in the introduction, was viewing an empire that was “an endless, formless ruin,” in which “corruption’s...

Roland Barthes, le métier d'écrire

January 26, 2013

by Éric Marty
Seuil, 335 pp., 23.30 €

JOHN D'AMICO - « Images » de Roland Barthes

Roland Barthes, le métier d’écrire, paru en 2006 aux Éditions du Seuil, est qualifié d’« essai », genre assez vague pour permettre à son auteur, Éric Marty, d’englober sous cette étiquette trois chapitres de nature très différente, qui construisent un portait hybride. Malgré leur hétérogénéité générique, ces trois parties distinctes forment un ensemble fragmentaire cohérent qui vise à créer « une image » – ou...

Menzogna

May 21, 2013

di Franca D'Agostini
Bollati Boringhieri, 133 pp., 9.00 €

DALILA COLUCCI - Per un'eudemonia della verità

“C’è una teoria della verità di cui bisogna dare conto, ed è quella lanciata da Nietzsche negli ultimi decenni dell’Ottocento, e che ha avuto una certa fortuna, specie negli ultimi decenni del secolo successivo. Essa consiste nel sostenere che il concetto di verità è una specie di trappola del linguaggio, che vincola i pensieri e i discorsi, impedendoci di pensare e vivere liberamente. Ispirandosi a Nietzsche, o...

Narratore notturno. Aspetti del racconto nella Gerusalemme liberata

May 21, 2013

di Francesco Ferretti
Pacini, 393 pp., 25 €

DALILA COLUCCI - Era la notte : Spunti (mancati) per la decifrazione di un tema

“Era la notte, e ‘l suo stellato velo /chiaro spiegava e senza nube alcuna...”: le ripetute evocazioni di paesaggi notturni – siano essi idillici, come il fondale della fuga d’Erminia, o funesti, come “l’ombre” fiammeggianti che preparano l’attacco a sopresa di Solimano al campo crociato – punteggiano la Gerusalemme Liberata di languidi riflessi lunari, dando voce a una poesia vaga e sublime...