This study takes as its starting point the artist's elusive pictorial surfaces in order to address changing notions of interiority in early sixteenth-century Italy. Correggio's innovative treatment of these surfaces -- what is referred to in the critical tradition in terms of softness, melting, and erasure -- enacts the desire to grasp a divinity at once human and ineffable. As such, it evokes the lyrical self-expression of the language of the Italian reform movements. A varied collection of voices, these currents of religious reform share an emphasis on achieving the ecstatic effects of authentic devotional feeling. The articulation of intense longing characteristic of this discourse coincides with similar modes of expression woven into the criticism around Correggio's painting. The language of Italian reform in this way offers a conceptual frame for understanding the resonance of the artist's distinct pictorial touch. At the same time, Correggio's melting surfaces represent an ideal metaphor for a mode of engagement that can be said to define what might otherwise be characterized only as a loosely connected series of devotional declarations. By tracing the parallels between artistic and spiritual practices, I offer new insights into facets of Italian Renaissance culture that have remained to a large extent unexplored.

This study examines the ways that Dante uses concepts of the masculine in his early work to offer an analysis of the masculine ideals which lie at the basis of Dante's construction of himself as an author in the lyric poems and in his discussions of Latin and Italian. I describe ideals and conceptions of masculinity current in Dante's era, particularly the socially-adjudged behaviors and attitudes that underpin honor-culture, in order to delineate the ways in which Dante uses these conventions in lyric poems to make the poems themselves entries in an honor exchange among men. I also examine the opposed qualities coded as masculine and feminine in the classical literary and philosophical tradition, particularly mutability and constancy, and transmitted as a code of masculine ethical superiority in the Latin pedagogy of Dante's day, to define how masculine ideals determine Dante's initial definition of Latin as the nobler language in Convivio, as well as his reversal of that language hierarchy in De vulgari eloquentia.

This dissertation presents the first full length study of Antonello da Messina's portraits. While Antonello has been justly acknowledged as the first Italian painter to consider the portrait an independent work of art, his portraits are often characterized as imitations of Netherlandish models, and they are rarely discussed outside of the context of Venetian or Netherlandish portraiture. This study reintegrates Antonello's portraits in the wider context of fifteenth century Italy and argues that his portraiture is deeply rooted in the interests of the most prominent early Renaissance theories of painting. Antonello is among the first Italian painters to claim the face as a locus for identification, and to answer the demand that painting capture both the physical and mental aspects of the sitter. The first chapter analyzes the recent literature on the portraits and demonstrates how they have been marginalized by scholarship despite being lauded as highly influential. The second chapter evaluates the portraits as a body of work from the standpoint of form and technique, and incorporating the most recent technical analyses, demonstrates how Antonello achieved certain effects to arrive at what may indeed be considered a wholly independent work of art. The third chapter relates how Antonello's innovations in portraiture corresponded with a growing desire for a new kind of painted portrait in the mid fifteenth century. It reconsiders the origin of the painted, three quarter view portrait in Italy and explains how ancient authors presented a challenge for the painted portrait that could only be met in fifteenth century Italy by an entirely new form and style, represented in the work of Antonello da Messina. The fourth chapter examines the portraits in the context of Venetian patronage, looking more closely at his only known portrait sitters, Alvise Pasqualino and Michele Vianello, and the social and personal identities of Venetian citizens and nobles. This chapter relates how the theoretical demands of humanists translated for real patrons and collectors, and clarifies Antonello's relationship to extant portraiture in Venice at during the last decades of the fifteenth century, particularly the work of Giovanni Bellini. Ultimately Antonello da Messina's portraits had far reaching influence because they addressed some of the fundamental problems and challenges of representation in the early Italian Renaissance, for the first time, in portraiture.

This dissertation is organized around main axes: the literary and critical concept of the Double and the analysis of Antonio Fogazzaro’s 1881 novel, Malombra, in which the Double plays a complex thematic role. In the first chapter, I address the concept of the Double as a critical category, assessing its meaning across three different levels of reality: in terms of the cultural specificity of the representation (the 19th century and Romantic literature), in terms of the theoretical approach (whether it is construed as a transcendental figure, as in Freudian theory, or a transgressive figure, as in Jungian theory, etc.) and in terms of its placement relative to the other themes in the text. In the second chapter, I take up the analysis of three Italian texts from the second half of the 19th century which privilege the theme of the Double and invest it with idiosyncratic meaning: Uno spirito in un lampone by Iginio Ugo Tarchetti (1867), Due anime in un corpo by Emilio de Marchi (1877) and Le storie del castello di Trezza by Giovanni Verga (1875). My reading of these texts draw on diverse psychoanalytic perspectives, namely those of Jung, Lacan and Abraham and Torok. In the third chapter, I carry out an extensive analysis of Fogazzaro’s Malombra. The first part of the analysis, which focuses on the novel’s two primary characters, Marina and Silla, shows how these characters’ unconscious conflicts animate the narrative, shape its itinerary and anchor it in a phantasmatic past; the second part examines the ways in which the primary aspects of the plot work in tension with, and are offset by, the novel’s two subplots; the third part looks at points of comparison between Malombra and the three texts discussed in the second chapter, both in relation to the theme of the Double and to more general literary signifiers.

Orientador: Angélica Terezinha Carmo Rodrigues / Banca: Cristina Martins Fargetti / Banca: Cristina dos Santos Carvalho / Resumo: Esta pesquisa visa a estudar, na língua italiana, a ocorrência de um tipo particular de construção, a saber, as construções verbais paratáticas (CVPs, daqui em diante). As construções focalizadas nesta pesquisa formam-se a partir de dois ou mais verbos flexionados, conectados ou não pela conjunção e, como por exemplo: se ne va e piange ("vai-se chora"), prendo e me ne vado ("pego e vou-me embora"). Nossa investigação inicial consistiu na documentação destas construções a partir de corpora do italiano. Todavia, considerando que o estudo das CVPs é incipiente no italiano, sua descrição e análise ainda carecem de um estudo exaustivo, que vise à análise de sua estrutura e função. Desse modo, nosso objetivo é aprofundar o trabalho iniciado em nível de iniciação científica, com foco nas seguintes questões: estatuto categorial das CVPs como um tipo de predicação complexa não previsível no âmbito da gramática do italiano contemporâneo (a saber, serialização verbal); e gramaticalização, tendo em vista os processos de mudança envolvidos na emergência dessa construção. Nossa hipótese é a de que as CVPs sejam consideradas como construções de foco. Adotamos os pressupostos teóricos da gramática funcional, visto que esta pesquisa tem por objetivo estudar a língua em uso. Dentro do funcionalismo, cabe estudar outros pontos caros a este trabalho, como: a estrutura informacional, a categorização, a gradiência da predicação complexa, a auxiliaridade e a serialização verbal. A metodologia empregada aqui consta da análise dos dados coletados a partir dos corpora CORIS e LABLITA (do projeto C-ORAL-ROM), além de buscas na web a partir do site google, sendo que foi efetuada uma pesquisa quantitativa sobre estes dados com uso do programa GOLDVARB. A análise efetuada a partir destes corpora focou na estrutura das CVPs; na sua função, haja vista que propomos sua interpretação como construções... / Abstract: This work aims to study, in Italian, the occurrence of a particular type of construction, which are the paratactic verbal constructions (PVCs, henceforth). The constructions focused in this research are formed by two or more verbs inflected, connected or not by the conjunction and, as in: se ne va e piange ("go and cry"), prendo e me ne vado ("I take and go away"). Our initial investigation consisted in the documentation of these constructions through corpora from Italian. However, considering that the study of the PVCs are incipient in Italian, its description and analysis still need an exhaustive study, which aims the analysis of its structure and function. Therefore, our objective is to deepen the work begun in scientific initiation level, focusing in the following questions: categorial status of the PVCs as a type of complex predicate not predictable in the ambit of the contemporary Italian grammar (as verbal serialization); and grammaticalization, due to the processes of change involved in the emergence of this construction. Our hypothesis is that the PVCs are considered as focus constructions. We adopt the theoretical presuppositions of the funcional grammar, since this research has as an objective to study the language in use. In the funcionalism, there are some other issues relevant to this work, as: the informational structure, the categorization, the gradience of the complex predicates, the auxiliar constructions, and the verbal serialization. The methodology employed here is constituted by the analysis of the collected data through the corpora CORIS and LABLITA (from the C-ORAL-ROM project), besides a search on the web through Google, and a quantitative research was carried out about these data using the GOLDVARB programme. The analysis made through these corpora focalized in the structure of PVCs; in their function, since we propose their interpretation as focus constructions; in their categorization, due to the fact ... / Mestre

Orientadora: Gabriela Kvacek Betella / Banca: Francisco Claudio Alves Marques / Banca: Altamir Botoso / Resumo: Baseado em O lago dos cisnes, de Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky em 1877, o longa metragem Cisne negro (2010), dirigido por Darren Aronofsky, é a combinação de um drama psicológico com a dramaturgia que atuam reciprocamente na vida da protagonista. O lago dos cisnes, conto escrito pelo alemão Johan Karl August Musäus no século XVIII, ganha vida e potencialidade no filme em uma estrutura que mescla subjetividade e estranhamento, produzindo no espectador os mais variados sentimentos. No que concerne aos estudos literários, o filme é pouco explorado visto que seu maior foco versa sobre a presença psicanalítica à ele empregada. Desse modo, isolando parcialmente a carga psicológica, percebemos a presença de traços literários que se encaixam pertinentemente, construindo uma trama complexa entre os planos da realidade e do psicológico. Tendo como base a literatura do escritor italiano Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936), considerado um dos maiores dramaturgos da literatura mundial, usaremos as obras Seis personagens à procura de um autor (1921) e Assim é (se lhes parece) (1917) para discutir os seguintes pontos: 1) a personagem dramatúrgica pirandelliana e cinematográfica voltando-se para a protagonista Nina; 2) o teatro pirandelliano focado no drama moderno e no conceito de 'teatro no teatro' e como se dão no filme e 3) Cisne negro como tragédia moderna valendo-se de pressupostos teóricos de Aristóteles, Arnold Hauser, Raymond Williams e Luigi Pirandello para exemplificações. No campo teórico, nos apoiaremos também em Antonio Candido, Peter Szondi, Sergei Einsenstein entre outros para a construção de um estudo conciso e objetivo do corpus proposto / Astratto: Basato su Il lago dei cigni, da Piotr IIyich Tchaikovsky nel 1877, il lungometraggio Cigno nero (2010), sulla regia di Darren Aronofsky, è la combinazione di un drama psicologico con la drammaturgia che, allo stesso tempo, fanno parte della vita della protagonista. Il lago dei cigni, racconto scritto dal tedesco Johan Karl August Musäus nel secolo XVIII, aquista vita e potenza nel film componendo una struttura che mescola soggetività e stranezza, provocando molteplice sentieri nello spetattore. Al rispetto degli studi letterari, il film è poco esplorato giacché il suo fuoco maggiore si trova nella presenza psicoanalistica esistente. Così, allontanando parzialmente l'aspetto psicologico, rendiamo conto della presenza di tracce letterari che s'incastrano con pertinenza, construendo una tramma complessa tra le atmosfere della realtà e dello psicologico. Con la conoscenza della letteratura dello scrittore italiano Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936), così detto uno dei maggiori drammaturghi della letteratura mondiale, useremo le opere Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore (1921) e Così è (se vi pare) (1917) per dicutere i punti che seguono: 1) il personaggio della drammaturgia pirandelliana e cinematografica volgendosi alla protagonista Nina; 2) il teatro pirandelliano mettendo a fuoco il dramma moderno e il concetto di teatro nel teatro' e come si trova nel film e 3) Cigno nero come tragedia moderna, utilizzando le teorie di Aristotele, Arnold Hauser, Raymond Wiliams e Pirandello per gli esempi. Nel campo teorico, ci baseremo anche in Antonio Candido, Peter Szondi, Sergei Einsenstein tra gli altri che costruiranno uno studio conciso e oggetivo del corpus proposto / Mestre

Romance inovador, sobretudo graças à incorporação da psicanálise à literatura, La coscienza di Zeno, de Italo Svevo, é também a obra-prima de um autor situado em diversas intersecções: ele escreveu de um local de fronteira entre várias culturas; numa língua que era sua por adoção; na transição entre dois séculos; em meio à alteração das configurações políticas e econômicas da Europa; em um período de intensa transformação das idéias e da forma de narrar. Este estudo busca levantar subsídios para melhor situar o romance em relação a seu tempo e ao complexo ambiente intelectual do fim do século XIX (caracterizado pelo conflito e pela coexistência de cientificismo e irracionalismo, positivismo e pessimismo), bem como em relação à tradição do romance europeu. Para isso, conta com o auxílio da crítica literária e sócio-histórica, além dos artigos e ensaios de Svevo. / A breakthrough novel specially regarding its incorporation of psychoanalysis into literature , La coscienza di Zeno, by Italo Svevo, is also the masterpiece of an author placed in many intersections: he wrote from the boundaries of different cultures; in an adopted language; during the transition of two centuries; amid changes at the political and economical settings of Europe; and through the transformation of ideas and the narrative. This study aims to gather elements to better relate La coscienza to the complex intelectual environment of the late 19th century (marked by the conflict and the coexistence of scientism and irrationalism, positivism and pessimism), as well to the tradition of european novel. To this purpose, it benefits from the literary and sociohistorical criticism, and from Svevos articles and essays.

This thesis investigates the idea of music-making as mode of cultural expression among Italian prisoners of war imprisoned in South Africa during the Second World War. In addition to readings of some of the music performed, there are accounts of the prominence of music as a theme in the mythology generated by the prisoners. Viewing music as a framing mechanism for the narration of experience is central to understanding the resulting group identity of these prisoners. This in turn leads into an examination of the continuing function of the myths as markers of identity; highlighting cultural production as a defining characteristic of Italian South African identity in the present. Through the investigation of various forms of archive, analyses of a variety of non-musical cultural products are included for their ability to articulate some specific Italian cultural values promoted in the mythology.

The translations of Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata by Richard Carew (1594) and Edward Fairfax (1600) import the hybrid genre of the Italian romance epic into the evolving literary polysystem of the English Renaissance. These two significant translations present an intriguing struggle between fidelity to the source text and freedom, which mirrors the friction between epic and romance at the heart of the Gerusalemme liberata. This friction takes shape most clearly in the treatment of the power dynamics of the crusaders vis-à-vis Godfrey and in the translation of the ‘forma altera’ of Armida. While Carew attempts an ‘epic’ translation conforming to the source text, creating a Gerusalemme conquistata-type of translation, Fairfax submits to the allure of Armida and to the romance of translator errancy. To translate this unique hybrid genre is to encounter translation’s process double; in a fundamental sense, translation is romance, and the romance epic is translation.

abstract: Over the centuries, definite articles in Romance languages have expanded their use to include generic, collective, and abstract nouns, essentially becoming noun markers. This usage is not confined to just a few languages, either, but is found in most, if not all, Romance languages, major and minor. This thesis examines the question of how this came to be, whether through diffusion from one language to all others, or through independent parallel development. I first trace the history of definite articles in three major Romance languages, French, Spanish, and Italian, starting with the emergence of the definite article in Late Latin as it derived from Classic Latin demonstratives. It includes an analysis of the use of definite articles in six works of literature, one in each language from the late thirteenth century, and one in each language from around the year 1500. The results show definite articles were used more frequently than expected in the earlier Spanish work, perhaps hinting at diffusion from Spain. Nevertheless, placing these results in historical context, I argue that this use arose through independent parallel development through the process that gave birth to definite articles in the first place - grammaticalization. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Linguistics and Applied Linguistics 2019