Irony: metafiction in Luigi Malerba’s works. In this thesis I examine irony and metafiction in some novels by Italian writer Luigi Malerba (1927-2008). Metafiction characterizes all of Malerba’s works; this dissertation shows how Malerba’s works constantly draw attention to themselves and consequently encourage readers to pose questions about the existing relationship between fiction and reality. Similarly, irony fosters further investigation of language as sign system; through recurrent word games, Malerba removes the certainty of a univocal existing correspondence between signifier and signified. In the first chapter I discuss the very first works by the author: Le lettere di Ottavia, Il serpente, Salto mortale and Il protagonista. The entire chapter revolves around the construction of possible worlds and, therefore, of fictional worlds. Through this analysis the borders between fiction and reality appear to be quite weak; they are indeed proved to be an illusory construction of contemporary human beings who tend to think according to binary oppositions, such as reality and dream, reality and fiction. I proceed by examining Storie dell’anno mille, Il pataffio, I cani di Gerusalemme and Le maschere; these novels are imbued with history. The central theme of the entire chapter is history and fabulation and their relationship to each other. History is shown to be part of human discourse: historical events are made out of pure chronicles by a process called emplotment. The form that the historical narration takes on inevitably influences the meaning of the events narrated. In the third chapter I analyze Le pietre volanti, La superficie di Eliane and Il circolo di Granada. Here I demonstrate how Malerba uses detective novels in a non-canonical way, turning his own works into anti-detective novels. In these works, the investigation does not reach any rewarding ending; even at the conclusion of the story, the detective’s hypothesis cannot be completely ruled out and the reader is left with what Stefano Tani calls a “fiction of possibilities”. Fantasmi romani occupies the whole chapter four. In this final chapter I discuss why this work, the very last one before the author’s death, can be considered his literary testament. In this novel, Malerba’s readers can find all the peculiarities which have distinguished the author’s writing for more than four decades. Along with recognizing his style, readers will appreciate new developments in his narration. This work encourages readers to investigate the consuming relationship which can be established between a writer and his reader. In the end of this thesis, some considerations for further investigation are made; these considerations focus on Luigi Malerba’s writing for children, an area of study that has received little critical attention.

This dissertation examines Leonardo da Vinci’s literary writings, namely those known as the Bestiario, Favole, Facezie, and Profezia, as compelling expressions of how Leonardo envisioned the role and influence of morality in human life. Through an analysis of these four literary collections from the perspective of their genre history, literariness, and philosophical dimension, it aims to bring to light the depth with which Leonardo reflected upon the human condition. The Bestiario, Favole, Facezie, and Profezia are writings that have considerable literary value in their own right but can also be examined in a wider historical, literary, and philosophical context so as to reveal the ethical ideas that they convey. By studying them from a historical perspective, it is possible to contextualize Leonardo’s four collections within the tradition of their respective genres (the bestiary, fable, facetia, and riddle) and thus recognize their adherence as well as contribution to these traditions. The literary context brings to light Leonardo’s intentionality and ingenuity as a writer who uses generic conventions in order to voice his ethical views. Assessed from a philosophical standpoint, these four literary collections prove to be meaningful reflections on the moral state of humanity, thereby justifying the characterization of Leonardo as a moral philosopher. Current scholarship on the Bestiario, Favole, Facezie, and Profezia generally views these writings as minor Leonardo works and treats them as ancillary parts of his production. This dissertation, conceiving Leonardo as a moral philosopher, provides interpretations that lead to the conclusion that his thought pervades both his major and minor works and that these literary writings must be viewed as an extension (and result) of Leonardo’s greater notions of the world and of how all parts relate to one another. The Bestiario, Favole, Facezie, and Profezia are works that deserve greater attention reflecting as they do the thought of this Renaissance man.

This study investigates the changing understanding of the role of the ???architect??? in Italy during the sixteenth century by examining frontispieces to published architectural treatises. From analysis of these illustrations four attributes emerge as important to new societal understandings of the role of ???architect.??? The first attribute is the desire to delineate the boundaries of knowledge for architecture as a discipline, relevant to sixteenth-century society. The second is the depiction of the ???architect,??? as an intellectual engaged in the resolution of practical, political, economic and philosophical considerations of his practice. The third represents the ???architect??? having a specific domain of activity in the design of civic spaces of magnificence not only for patrons but also for the city per se. The fourth represents the ???architect??? and society as perceiving a commonality of an architectural role beyond the boundary of individual locations and patrons. Five treatises meet the criteria set for this study: Sebastiano Serlio???s Regole generali di architetura sopra le Cinque maniere de gli edifici cio??, Toscano, Dorico, Ionico, Corinthio, et Composito, con gli essempi dell???antiquita, che, per la magior parte concordano con la dottrina di Vitruvio, 1537, his, Il Terzo libro nel qual si figurano, e descrivono le antichita di Roma, 1540, Cosimo Bartoli???s translation of Alberti???s De re aedificatoria titled L???architettura di Leonbattista Alberti, tradotta in lingua fiorentina da Cossimo Bartoli, Gentilhuomo, & Academico Fiorentino, 1550; Daniele Barbaro???s translation and commentary on Vitruvius??? De???architetura titled, I dieci libri dell???architettura di M. Vitruvio tradutti et commentati da monsignor Barbaro eletto Patriarca d???Aquileggia, 1556; and Andrea Palladio???s I quattro libri dell???architettura, 1570. A second aim for the study was to review the usefulness of frontispieces as an historical archive. It was found that frontispieces visually structure important ideas by providing a narrative with meaning as an integral part of the illustration. In this narrative frontispiece illustrations prioritise concepts found in the accompanying text and impose a hierarchical structure of importance for fundamental ideas.

Whole document restricted at the request of the author. / Within a context of Italian women's literary, intellectual, and feminist thought, the dissertation employs two specific literary texts that transgress generic borders, Clara Sereni's Casalinghitudine (1987) and Fabrizia Ramindino's Althénopis (1988), to elucidate paternal and maternal negotiations as a projected model of writing home. Motivated by feminist trespasses upon and resistances to the "fathered" academic canon, the dissertation provides a third literary example through my renegotiation of the theoretical argument in poetic form. Printed on tracing paper, my poetic text overlays and haunts the dissertation with subjective intersections, poetry, and prose that emerge from my research and that constitutes a significant part of my poetry collections published to date. My academic argument draws upon an interdisciplinary heritage by enlisting the thought of French, Italian, and Anglo/American feminisms alongside Italian cultural, literary, and history studies. Part One locates the mother and the maternal in the context of Western feminist theories, Italian feminist thought, and Italian culture. With close reference to the primary texts, it analyses the implications of the missing mother, the surrogate mother, the uncanny in the mother/daughter relationship, maternal kinesis, maternal thresholds, and maternal junctures in terms of a woman writing home. Part Two considers the ramifications of the father figure in the work of six intellectuals (Simone de Beauvoir, Adrienne Rich, Nancy Chodorow, Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous, and Luce Irigaray), in an Italian cultural, historical, legal, political, and literary context, and in the light of Italian feminist approaches to the father. Maintaining close links with the two primary texts, I analyse the missing father, the father as authority, and the manner in which in writing home, writing the father traverses and transgresses thresholds such as the cooking pot, the body, and the written page. With a debt to Rosi Braidotti and Adriana Cavarero, I conclude that in writing home, a woman renegotiates both the maternal and paternal through what I have named the practice of equilibrium writing. For the woman writer, equilibrium writing comprises writing out of her roots, writing as both weaving and unweaving, writing out of kinetic movement in order to write a provisional and subjective centre, and writing conjunctions and coalitions. In an extension of Italian feminist approaches to "authority," I contend that such a textual negotiation of the mother and the father constructs a state of auto/authority for the woman writing.

Whole document restricted at the request of the author. / Within a context of Italian women's literary, intellectual, and feminist thought, the dissertation employs two specific literary texts that transgress generic borders, Clara Sereni's Casalinghitudine (1987) and Fabrizia Ramindino's Althénopis (1988), to elucidate paternal and maternal negotiations as a projected model of writing home. Motivated by feminist trespasses upon and resistances to the "fathered" academic canon, the dissertation provides a third literary example through my renegotiation of the theoretical argument in poetic form. Printed on tracing paper, my poetic text overlays and haunts the dissertation with subjective intersections, poetry, and prose that emerge from my research and that constitutes a significant part of my poetry collections published to date. My academic argument draws upon an interdisciplinary heritage by enlisting the thought of French, Italian, and Anglo/American feminisms alongside Italian cultural, literary, and history studies. Part One locates the mother and the maternal in the context of Western feminist theories, Italian feminist thought, and Italian culture. With close reference to the primary texts, it analyses the implications of the missing mother, the surrogate mother, the uncanny in the mother/daughter relationship, maternal kinesis, maternal thresholds, and maternal junctures in terms of a woman writing home. Part Two considers the ramifications of the father figure in the work of six intellectuals (Simone de Beauvoir, Adrienne Rich, Nancy Chodorow, Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous, and Luce Irigaray), in an Italian cultural, historical, legal, political, and literary context, and in the light of Italian feminist approaches to the father. Maintaining close links with the two primary texts, I analyse the missing father, the father as authority, and the manner in which in writing home, writing the father traverses and transgresses thresholds such as the cooking pot, the body, and the written page. With a debt to Rosi Braidotti and Adriana Cavarero, I conclude that in writing home, a woman renegotiates both the maternal and paternal through what I have named the practice of equilibrium writing. For the woman writer, equilibrium writing comprises writing out of her roots, writing as both weaving and unweaving, writing out of kinetic movement in order to write a provisional and subjective centre, and writing conjunctions and coalitions. In an extension of Italian feminist approaches to "authority," I contend that such a textual negotiation of the mother and the father constructs a state of auto/authority for the woman writing.

Whole document restricted at the request of the author. / Within a context of Italian women's literary, intellectual, and feminist thought, the dissertation employs two specific literary texts that transgress generic borders, Clara Sereni's Casalinghitudine (1987) and Fabrizia Ramindino's Althénopis (1988), to elucidate paternal and maternal negotiations as a projected model of writing home. Motivated by feminist trespasses upon and resistances to the "fathered" academic canon, the dissertation provides a third literary example through my renegotiation of the theoretical argument in poetic form. Printed on tracing paper, my poetic text overlays and haunts the dissertation with subjective intersections, poetry, and prose that emerge from my research and that constitutes a significant part of my poetry collections published to date. My academic argument draws upon an interdisciplinary heritage by enlisting the thought of French, Italian, and Anglo/American feminisms alongside Italian cultural, literary, and history studies. Part One locates the mother and the maternal in the context of Western feminist theories, Italian feminist thought, and Italian culture. With close reference to the primary texts, it analyses the implications of the missing mother, the surrogate mother, the uncanny in the mother/daughter relationship, maternal kinesis, maternal thresholds, and maternal junctures in terms of a woman writing home. Part Two considers the ramifications of the father figure in the work of six intellectuals (Simone de Beauvoir, Adrienne Rich, Nancy Chodorow, Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous, and Luce Irigaray), in an Italian cultural, historical, legal, political, and literary context, and in the light of Italian feminist approaches to the father. Maintaining close links with the two primary texts, I analyse the missing father, the father as authority, and the manner in which in writing home, writing the father traverses and transgresses thresholds such as the cooking pot, the body, and the written page. With a debt to Rosi Braidotti and Adriana Cavarero, I conclude that in writing home, a woman renegotiates both the maternal and paternal through what I have named the practice of equilibrium writing. For the woman writer, equilibrium writing comprises writing out of her roots, writing as both weaving and unweaving, writing out of kinetic movement in order to write a provisional and subjective centre, and writing conjunctions and coalitions. In an extension of Italian feminist approaches to "authority," I contend that such a textual negotiation of the mother and the father constructs a state of auto/authority for the woman writing.

Whole document restricted at the request of the author. / Within a context of Italian women's literary, intellectual, and feminist thought, the dissertation employs two specific literary texts that transgress generic borders, Clara Sereni's Casalinghitudine (1987) and Fabrizia Ramindino's Althénopis (1988), to elucidate paternal and maternal negotiations as a projected model of writing home. Motivated by feminist trespasses upon and resistances to the "fathered" academic canon, the dissertation provides a third literary example through my renegotiation of the theoretical argument in poetic form. Printed on tracing paper, my poetic text overlays and haunts the dissertation with subjective intersections, poetry, and prose that emerge from my research and that constitutes a significant part of my poetry collections published to date. My academic argument draws upon an interdisciplinary heritage by enlisting the thought of French, Italian, and Anglo/American feminisms alongside Italian cultural, literary, and history studies. Part One locates the mother and the maternal in the context of Western feminist theories, Italian feminist thought, and Italian culture. With close reference to the primary texts, it analyses the implications of the missing mother, the surrogate mother, the uncanny in the mother/daughter relationship, maternal kinesis, maternal thresholds, and maternal junctures in terms of a woman writing home. Part Two considers the ramifications of the father figure in the work of six intellectuals (Simone de Beauvoir, Adrienne Rich, Nancy Chodorow, Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous, and Luce Irigaray), in an Italian cultural, historical, legal, political, and literary context, and in the light of Italian feminist approaches to the father. Maintaining close links with the two primary texts, I analyse the missing father, the father as authority, and the manner in which in writing home, writing the father traverses and transgresses thresholds such as the cooking pot, the body, and the written page. With a debt to Rosi Braidotti and Adriana Cavarero, I conclude that in writing home, a woman renegotiates both the maternal and paternal through what I have named the practice of equilibrium writing. For the woman writer, equilibrium writing comprises writing out of her roots, writing as both weaving and unweaving, writing out of kinetic movement in order to write a provisional and subjective centre, and writing conjunctions and coalitions. In an extension of Italian feminist approaches to "authority," I contend that such a textual negotiation of the mother and the father constructs a state of auto/authority for the woman writing.

Thesis (MA (Hons) Visual Arts) -- University of Western Sydney, Nepean, 1998. / "Submitted in part fulfillment for the degree of M(Hons) in Visual Arts, University of Western Sydney, Nepean" Bibliography : p. 40-42.

Thesis (Revise). / Sassetta, near Livorno (Tuscany). Includes index (p. 185-202), bibliography (p. 203-216) and bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--La Trobe University, 2004. / Research. "A thesis submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, [to the] School of European and Historical Studies, Faculty of Humanities, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 187-197). Also available via the World Wide Web.