Alessio Aletta

This article delves into the elusive setting of Luigi Pirandello's enigmatic last play, I giganti della montagna. The study first examines the evolution of the play's setting across various drafts, from an initial mention of Sardinia to a more abstract "provincial town". The second part of the article presents an array of arguments drawn from intratextual, intertextual, and extratextual elements that support the implicit identification of the play's setting with Sicily. Finally, this article elucidates how the identification of Sicily as the setting of I giganti della montagna holds significant implications for the interpretation of the work. The interplay with themes such as insularity, the North-South divide, the Foucaultian concept of heterotopia, and Sicily as a realm "bordering between fable and reality" shed new light on the play's intricate narrative and its timeless relevance.

As noted by Giovanni Macchia, Pirandello’s characters have a tendency to ‘reincarnate’. One of the most peculiar (and less studied) cases is the intertextual relation between Bombolo, from the short story “La lega disciolta”(1910), and the more famous Cotrone in I Giganti della Montagna. Bombolo  is a charismatic man who mysteriously made his  fortune  in the Levant;  his  diversity  is marked by his Eastern affectations and, above all, by th ered fez perpetually on his head. Bombolo acts as a  sort  of  benevolent mafioso, according  to his personal  idea  of justice; he will  eventually choose  to disappear  back  into  the  East,  disgusted  by  the  Sicilians’ lack  of  honour .The magician Cotrone shares some superficial similarities with Bombolo: they both flaunt a fez, and the etymology of  their  name  is analogous  (both cutrune and bummulu are  Sicilian  words  for  a  clay  pot).  More importantly, they are both Muslims, but interestingly, their professed religion has less to do with faith and more with a desire to signal their refusal of the Christian (and for Cotrone, by extension, even human) society. In this sense, these characters are yet another iteration of Pirandello’s “foreigner to life”, hybridised with the atavistic ideaof the Turk as the quintessential “Other”. This paper focuses on the peculiarities of of Bombolo as archetypical outsider, touching on the way this  character  is  portrayed in  the TV adaptation  (D’Amico  1968)  and  the continuity  with  Cotrone from I Giganti della Montagna.

[ENGLISH] The essay examines Rebibbia Quarantine, a series of animated shorts released by renowned Italian comic artist Zerocalcare (Michele Rech) both on his social network channels and via television broadcast in the Spring of 2020. The series chronicles the consequences of the lockdown on the author himself and the people of his neighbourhood, Rebibbia (a suburban district of Rome). While these shorts are comedic in tone, I argue they can actually be considered as an example of 'graphic journalism', albeit combined with a semi-autobiographical, diaristic narrative. This paper engages in a close reading of Zerocalcare's pandemic related shorts, exploring their peculiarities as regards to content, style and format, and underlining their importance in the Italian media covering of the Covid-19 crisis.

[ITALIANO] Il saggio esamina Rebibbia Quarantine, una serie di cortometraggi animati pubblicata dal noto fumettista italiano Zerocalcare (Michele Rech) sui suoi canali social e in televisione nella primavera del 2020. La serie documenta le conseguenze del lockdown sia sull'autore in prima persona che sugli abitanti del suo quartiere, Rebibbia. Sebbene i corti siano di tono comico, si propone qui di considerarli un esempio di graphic journalism, per quanto ibridato con una narrativa semi-autobiografica e diaristica. Attraverso un close reading dei corti di Zerocalcare sul tema della pandemia, questo contributo ne esplora le peculiarità relative ai contenuti, allo stile e al mezzo espressivo, sottolineandone l'importanza nella narrazione mediatica italiana della crisi generata dal Covid-19.

Con "La terra dei figli" (Gipi, 2016), "Macerie prime" (Zerocalcare, 2017-8) e "La fine della ragione" (Recchioni, 2018), tre dei maggiori fumettisti attivi nella scena italiani decidono di confrontarsi col genere post-apocalittico, in maniera indipedente e quasi simultanea. Alla luce di questa peculiare coincidenza, questo paper indaga i vari modi in cui questi fumetti affrontano il tema dell'apocalisse attraverso un'analisi comparativa dei testi e delle dichiarazioni rilasciate dai rispettivi autori in proposito. Sebbene i fumetti presentino differenze notevoli sia nel genere che nel tono, emergono significative analogie, specialmente per quanto riguarda le implicazioni sociali, politiche e generazionali della catastrofe.

“Disegnare l’apocalisse. Il senso della fine nel fumetto italiano degli ultimi anni” [“Drawing the Apocalypse. The Meaning of the End in Recent Years’ Italian Comics”], in "Il Futuro Della Fine: Rappresentazioni Dell'apocalisse Nella Letteratura Italiana Dal Novecento a Oggi", Eds. Alessandro Baldacci et al., Peter Lang, 2020. Pp. 229-240.

In "Poi piovve dentro a l’alta fantasia. Dante e i fumetti", Eds. Mario Tirino and Lorenzo di Paola, Alessandro Polidoro Editore. Pp. 291-318.

Questo contributo riprende, con le opportune revisioni, il saggio in inglese: Aletta, A. (2020), “From the Dark Wood to the Asphalt Jungle: Adaptation and Appropriation in 'Detective Dante'”, Between, 10(20), 267-299. https://doi.org/10.13125/2039- 6597/4220. Traduzione dall’inglese dell’autore.

"La miniserie 'Detective Dante', secondo Alessio Aletta [...] si propone come interessante caso di studio per il peculiare modo di riferirsi a personaggi e atmosfere della Commedia, oltrepassando le griglie dell’adattamento fedele ma, al contempo, facendo ancora fruttare la visionarietà dantesca." (dall'Introduzione al volume, p. 22)

Per scaricare l'articolo completo: http://siba-ese.unisalento.it/index.php/h-ermes/article/view/23083

On the basis of Bolter and Grusin’s definition of ‘remediation’ as ‘the representation of one medium in another’, this paper analyses the various ways in which digital comics have tried to rethink the comics ‘grid’ for computers and smaller devices, following three main approaches: digitalized comic, ‘infinite canvas’ and ‘panel delivery’. In particular, this study discusses the problems that may arise when comics created for the screen are published on paper (an issue which is much less explored in the literature).The analysis focuses on the interactions between ‘traditional’ and digital comics in the latest works of Italian cartoonist Leo Ortolani. Over the last few years this author, despite being famous mostly for having created the popular superhero parody Rat-man, has experimented a variety of different approaches on e-comics. Most recently, Ortolani worked on a series of ‘mobile comics’ in which he chronicled the developing of Covid’s first wave in the Spring of 2020. This series was later published in a volume titled Andrà tutto bene(‘Everything will be fine’), which imitates the original ‘panel delivery’ format by printing one panel per page. This peculiar typographical choice, which seems to embody the very idea of ‘remediation’, muddles the separation between ‘traditional’ paper comics and e-comics. Furthermore, by trying to preserve the ‘mobile comic’ layout, Ortolani seems to legitimize the peculiarity of e-comics as an independent medium with its own potentialities.

Available to download at: https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between/article/view/4220

Detective Dante (2005-2007) is a comic book miniseries written by Lorenzo Bartoli and Roberto Recchioni. The eponymous hero, Henry Dante, is a violent policeman who, haunted by the ghost of his wife, moves from New York to the fictional 'Paradise City'. The series, composed by 24 issues divided in three cycles (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso), is noticeably influenced by the Divine Comedy both in its general outline and in some single episodes; nevertheless, it ultimately tells an original story. Through a close reading of the first issue as well as more general considerations about the series in its entirety, this paper investigates the intertextual relations between Detective Dante and the Divine Comedy. In the context of Dantean comics, this series exhibits a number of unusual traits: its references are thematical and structural, rather than graphic; it contaminates elements from the Commedia with a modern and noir setting, generating unique combinations; perhaps most importantly, it refutes the subservience to the literary source typical of many comics adaptations.

This paper aims to investigate Pirandello's translation of Goethe's Roman Elegies, a work often neglected by Pirandellian scholars. The most interesting problem faced by the translator is finding a suitable equivalent for the German neoclassical elegiac couplet, a metre which is not part of the Italian lyrical tradition. The issue is of particular importance, since both Goethe and Pirandello underline in their writings the pre-eminence of form over content in poetry; furthermore, in the Roman Elegies Goethe resumes a classical metre precisely to establish a connection with what he perceives as a typically Roman, "pagan" sensibility. Pirandello's solution is a necessary approximation: he resorts to adopting Carducci's metrica barbara,. Our comment on Pirandello's translation takes into account the influences of previous Italian renditions, such as the ones by Andrea Maffei and Domenico Gnoli, as well as the theory of translation expressed by Pirandello himself, long after having published the Elegie Romane, in his famous essay Illustratori, attori e traduttori. Despite the temporal distance, one can observe a remarkable continuity between the principles expressed in the essay and the praxis followed in the translation, especially as regards the idea that the translator's priority should be to recreate the "effect" the author intended rather than trying to preserve the sense of the original expression.

Fin dal titolo e dalla premessa, provocatoriamente intitolata L'emulo di Cornelio Nepote, le Vite degli uomini illustri di Campanile esplicitano il riferimento parodistico alla biografistica classica. Il De viris illustribus infatti è tra l'altro uno degli esempi più rappresentativi di quel tipo di biografia "esemplare" e paideutica che, sfociando spesso nell'aneddotica, conobbe grande fortuna nell'Italia postunitaria e fascista. Proprio questa impostazione è fatta oggetto dell'ironia di Campanile (cresciuto appunto in quel contesto culturale), il quale fa anche lui ampio ricorso all'aneddotica. Se infatti nei casi più semplici l'effetto comico nasce da un puro gioco linguistico (vedi i virtuosismi sulla polisemia dei nomi di Tasso o Volta), per molti personaggi l'autore si concentra invece su un dettaglio aneddotico che viene esaminato con logica tanto implacabile da risultare assurdo e quindi ridicolo ("Il pappagallo di Alessandro Magno", "Dante e l'uovo"). Non mancano comunque biografie vere e proprie, sebbene stravaganti: biografie paradossali perché interamente sottoposte a questo caustico scetticismo ("Palamede", "Casanova") o perché rilette in funzione di un solo dettaglio ("Vita di Socrate", "Lord Brummel"), o addirittura rovesciate ("La scoperta dell'Europa"). Nel nostro intervento ci proponiamo di esaminare questi vari procedimenti e di valutare la loro componente autenticamente "biografica" e il loro rapporto con la tradizione delle biografie moralistiche. ALESSIO ALETTA, La demitizzazione della biografia moralistica nelle Vite degli uomini illustri di Campanile, in Racconti di una vita. La narrazione biografica breve nella tradizione contemporanea, a cura di Giacomo Raccis e Damiano Sinfonico, «Nuova Corrente», 65, n.162, luglio-dicembre 2018, pp. 135-150.

While Sicily is rightfully considered to be an essential element of Pirandello's human and artistic background, in his works and especially in the Novelle per un anno ['Short Stories for a Year'] his native island never really figures as a whole: as regards the setting of the tales, 'Sicily' is actually broken down into a number of locations (Palermo, Girgenti and especially the rural communities surrounding Girgenti), each with its specific connotations. The only times when Sicily emerges as a proper, unitary 'place' are when it is opposed to the Continent. This term appears a dozen of times in the Novelle, always with a capital 'C', to signify its prominence: indeed, the direct referent is continental Italy, but also the whole of Europe, in a broad and even ideological acceptation. In this sense, the contrast between Continent and Island (and, consequently, between North and South) defines Sicily as the land of backwardness, naiveté and narrow-mindedness, while continental Italy...

Luca Martera. Harlem. Il film più censurato di sempre. Milan: La Nave di Teseo, 2021. 345 pp.; ill. EUR 22.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-88-346-0501-1.
Reviewed by Alessio Aletta (University of Toronto)
Published on H-Italy (May, 2022)
Commissioned by Matteo Pretelli (University of Naples "L'Orientale")

URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=57791

Since their very origins on the pages of the Corriere dei Piccoli, which featured more or less Italianized American imports such as Happy Hooligan or Foxy Grandpa, Italian comics have owed an immense debt to their American counterparts. Translated, adapted, edited for different formats and audiences, over the years American comics not only provided examples of narrative techniques, of artistic styles, of graphic concepts that Italian writers and artists could mould to their own needs, but also a storehouse of stock characters, settings and situations that could be re-arranged in never-ending narrative patterns. The infinite spaces of the far west, the crime-ridden metropolises, the possible futures that closely resemble those imagined by American science-fiction, the idyllic middle-America of Paperopoli or Topolinia have for over a century provided the background to a broad swath of Italian comics series and graphic novels, especially within the domain of popular culture, from Dick Fulmine to Pecos Bill, from Tex to Nathan Never. Likewise, many of its typical characters – the tough but fair frontier lawman, the freedom fighter of the Revolutionary wars, the hardboiled detective, the intrepid explorer of strange new worlds – continue to appear regularly, sometimes updated to reflect the mores of the times, in old and new comics series.



This two-day online conference organized by the Toronto Italian Comics Study group (TICS) aims to examine the permutations of the myth of America in Italian comics from their origins to today. Topics may include:

The myth of the frontier and the enduring popularity of the Western genre;
The critique/parody/subversion of American genres;
The influence of American cinema on Italian comics;
The representation of the urban environment;
The translation and adaptation of American comics;
Writing history through comics (e.g., La storia del West)
An Italian-made America: The case of Disney comics
Americanism, anti-Americanism, representation of US politics in Italian Comics;
Collaborations, exchanges and cross-overs;
Italian reinterpretations of the American superhero archetype; (e.g. Ratman, PKNA, To Be Continued).

[ENG - ITA]

Introducing the concept of “mapping narratives”, Robert Tally states: “Narratives are in some ways devices or methods used to map the real-and-imagined spaces of human experience. […] These narratives, which are also maps, must be understood as themselves objects to be mapped” (2014: 3).

The double meaning of narratives creating their own maps and/or demanding to be mapped is (literally) everywhere in Italian literature, from the Divine Comedy’s carefully structured Otherworld to the urban setting of 20th century novels, from the varied spatiality of Renaissance epic poems to the ‘projected’ places of emigrants, immigrants or second-generation Italians. The relationship between text and spatiality is arguably even stronger in visual media such as comics, cinema and tv.

Despite the growing interest in this field, especially in recent years (in no small part related to the implementation of GIS mapping), the geography of Italian narratives remains largely unexplored.

This panel invites papers on any text, author, or broader corpora and phenomena dealing with Italian literature and media in a spatial or geographical perspective, with a preference for literary cartography but including the many approaches which go under the umbrella of literary spatial studies (geocriticism, ecocriticism, geopoetics, imagology…). General contributions concerning the state of the art and the application of such methodologies in the field of Italian Studies are also very much welcome.
Communications may be in English or Italian. Paper proposals, including an abstract (150-300 words) and a short bio (100-150 words) should be sent at [email protected] by March 20 2023.

Vernon Press invites chapter proposals for a forthcoming edited collection on Italian Comics in the New Millennium.
f you are interested in contributing to the book, you are welcome to submit a 250-word abstract and a 150-word bio (both in English) at [email protected] by September 30, 2022. If your paper proposal is accepted, we will ask you to submit the full chapter by March 2023.