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This article presents Benedetto Varchi's collection of poems for Laura Battiferri, composed between 1558 and 1559 and mostly unpublished. While some scholarly attention has been given to the collection, recent scholarship has failed to notice its unity because the quires were misplaced in the library housing Varchi's papers. The article also explores the macro-textual strategies and dialogical aspects of Varchi's poetry, particularly the poetic exchange with future cardinal Silvio Antoniano. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both the American books reviewed in this paper - Nicholas Carr's The shallows. What the Internet is doing to our brains, and David Weinberger's Too big to know. Rethinking knowledge now that the facts aren't the facts, experts are everywhere, and the smartest person in the room is the room - deal with the issue of how the internet is changing the way we learn and communicate. Still, they come at diametrically opposite conclusions. Carr claims that the excessive use of the Internet may limit our concentration and understanding abilities, making it more and more difficult for many of us reading and writing those long and complex texts that are the basis of human culture. On the other side Weinberger thinks that the Internet - thanks to the multiplication and celerity of its communication channels - is unfolding new and exciting perspectives for human knowledge, no longer adequately supported by traditional documents and "experts". In the author's opinion both these theories are erroneous, being too radical and sharing a number of fallacies, e.g. a technological determinism, and the tendency to consider certain characteristics as peculiar of a very few media, while they actually belong to a lot of different media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]