The article presents the story of the death of Carlo and Giovanni Carafa, leading figures at the papal court, condemned to death by Pius IV, in 1561. Article analyses three unpublished texts (from the 16th and 17th century) that reconstruct the facts, focusing on their different perspectives and functions.

The aim of thise paper is to show how the setting out of the narrative voice determines the historical discourse. The analysis of the narrative voice leads to some considerations about memory and to the examination of recollection in these two novels. That, in turn, allows an exploration of the way in which the historical discourse is constructed. In those cases where the voice in the historical discourse is given to subaltern subjects, they contribute to a more plural history.

The paper contains some partial findings of a comparative research on the chivalry romance Buovo d’Antona as printed in Bologna and in Venice in the 1480s in a number of different, yet quite similar one to another, incunables; and its ottava rima adaptation in yiddish-taytsh, made by Elye Bokher (Elia Levita) in Padua around 1507, and then published as Bovo-Buch in Isny, Württemberg, as late as 1541. Respectively, the narratives implicitly deliver two different ideologies, meant as consequent sets of socially shared convictions about the good living. In particular, the place of women in society and the family, or better said, the male representation thereof, substantially differs in the Yiddish adaptation compared to the Venetian original.

From the second half of the 20th century, the issue of women’s writing has been of considerable interest in literary studies, highlighting the need to know women as writers and as literary subjects, in order to understand female experience first-hand. This approach to written texts is based on two fundamental aspects of study: women as writers and the representation of women in the text. This has made it possible to examine how women are represented and what topics women writers prefer, for example, motherhood, a literary topos par excellence in Italian literature. Despite this, although motherhood is present in numerous works, the voices of actual mothers are largely absent: mothers and motherhood are in fact narrated from the point of view of daughters. In view of that, there are two main aims of this study: (1) to examine the possible reasons for the absence of the mother’s point of view and (2) to analyze some contemporary Italian literarature narrated by mothers themselves.

This article examines the literary series of Inquisitore Eymerich by Valerio Evangelisti, a variegated macronarrative, which, resisting generic classification, introduces innovation to the panorama of contemporary Italian fantasy. Departing from the analysis of the salient features of the series such as intertextuality, hybridization, storiographic metafiction, and transfictionality, the article examines closely the areas of postmodern narration and inquires into the role of the fantastic element in Italian literature. Evangelisti makes the most of postmodern narrative strategies and of fantasy’s ability to penetrate various media in order to provide a tool of critical reflection on human history with an emphasis on the phenomenology of power. By interweaving different literary genres and inviting readers to produce their own interpretations in form of fan fiction, Evangelisti creates a new type of committed narrative, post-fantasy, which presents a new conception of postmodern narrative, one that overcomes the barrier between the literary fiction and the genre fiction.

The aim of the present article is to analyze the relationship between the city and the protagonists of Giuseppe Culicchia’s texts. The methodological perspective is that of cultural anthropology, in particular the concept of mente locale, discussed by Franco La Cecla. Mente locale, as a relationship between space and human mind, is vital in the act of getting lost in space (perdersi), which leads to getting to know it (orientarsi) and finally initiating the profound relationship based on emotivity. Culicchia’s texts are set in Turin, and the study points out the different ways of perception of the city. The analyzed texts represents the gradual acquisition of knowledge about the city that corresponds to the theoretical thesis that is how the anthropology of space and place illustrates the conceptual and material dimensions of space which is central to the production of social life, bringing classics of cultural anthropology together with new theoretical approaches.

Oriana Fallaci had the opportunity to closely observe the efforts the US made during the Space Race which was sealed in 1957 by the launch of the first Russian Sputnik. The journalist knew dozens of NASA workers (including astronauts, engineers and doctors) and others (external scientists, advertisers, writers). Based on the interviews and articles printed in L’Europeo, Fallaci published two books Se il Sole muore (1965) and Quel giorno sulla Luna (1970). Recently, the publishing house Rizzoli collected some of Fallaci’s texts that appeared in this weekly newspaper (L’Europeo) between 1964 and 1980 in the volume La Luna di Oriana (2018). It would be worth analyzing the cornerstones of Fallaci’s narrative approach, resembling in many ways the American New Journalism – with its tension between information and emotion, interpretation and persuasion – in her work before the famous war reports.

In recent years, due to the rise of cultural productions through different media, an increase in the number of journalistic publications of hybrid texts has been observed, which results from the fusion of the narrative and informative functions. The spaces traditionally devoted to different types of journalistic texts which – apart from those merely informative, may include cultural-related and opinion articles – make possible the appearance of articles which distinguish themselves trough entailing both characteristics. Therefore, this paper analyses two articles written by J. Carrion and published in the Spanish edition of The New York Times in 2018. The articles will be scrutinised in relation to the narrative and essayistic works of the author. We illustrate some characteristics of what is generally referred to as narrative journalism, as defined by Herrscher (2012) and Casals Carro (2005), among others. This will allow us to trace a profile of the author, journalist and writer which is linked to the social environment and of his work.

This article analyzes the presence of propaganda and its persuasive strategies in the narration born on the occasion of the famous escape in 1912 by Charles Lux, captain of the French army, from the several Prussian fortress of Glatz, present-day Kłodzko (Poland). In particular, through the analysis of the articles published by the French press after his escape, as well as the captain memoirs, it can be seen how the persuasive technique acquires a particular meaning in the narration.

In the early 19th century, the Italian literature did not have a mature novel, as is known today. The Italian novelist, Manzoni, and his masterpiece The Betrothed, set a solid basis for the contemporary Italian novel; thanks to its’ narrative characteristics that helped the novelist in achieving different reformative goals, woven stupendously with fictional, historical and realistic threads. The main purpose of this study is to apply an analytical and thematic approach on the structure and narrator of the novel. Furthermore, the research aims to distinguish the main artistic characteristics adopted from the European historical novel. The study then focuses on analyzing the function of the anonymous author’s fictional frame and how it created a diversity in the narrative levels. The research also highlights the importance of the omniscient narrator, the strong relations between the narrator and the narratee, the different narrative perspectives, and finally the polyphony: techniques that enhanced the realistic dimension of the novel.

From the moment of his literary debut in 1989, Michele Mari is considered to be the representative of classic tendencies in contemporary Italian literature. One of the most noticeable characteristics of his writing is the presence of autobiographic elements which appear in all his works with different intensity, but also the archaization of style and language, literary references and metaliterary reflexions. This article aims at showing how the 1992 novel La stiva e l’abisso connects two of those aspects of Mari’s writing: intertextuality and literary references to adventure novel genre, as well as it reflects on the role and value of the literature for the contemporary people. It analyses basic narrative instances, that is the narrator, narrative structure, place and time of events, in order to show how they result in metaliterary reflexion.