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During the 1920s and 1930s the wordless novel – stories told in black-and-white wordless woodcuts – was established as a narrative genre. The genre was most popular in Germany, but was as well known in other parts of Europé and in the US. The wordless novel was characterized by the absence of words, the use of woodcut and other relief printing techniques, as well as themes of social critique and serious existential issues. The purpose of the book is to - through the wordless novels of the 1920s and 30s - explain the uniqueness of the wordless narrative and thus the autonomous narrative possibilities of the image. The method of the examination is a close reading of the German artist Otto Nückel's wordless novel Schicksal (Destiny 1926). A comparative material consists of the Czech artist Helena Bochořáková-Dittrichova's wordless novel Z Mého Dětství (From My Childhood, 1929). Wordlessness is studied through the image's characteristics as an intermediary of messages and narratives and through comparisons with other expressions - the silent film, cirkus, expressionist dance and visual art, as well as medieval woodcuts. Narratives – which are usually put together by verbal communication – are in this project a tool for seeing: the image sequences or the image groups that ""replace"" the words - not as a lack or implied meaning of words, but as a personal visual story.

The aim of this paper is to examine the influence of Dante Alighieri in the Macedonian cultural context through the translations and reception of his most important work, the Divina Commedia. The first part of the paper presents the translations of fragments of the poem published in the 1950s, translated by various Macedonian poets, and continues by presenting the translations by Georgi Stalev, who published parts of the poem in the 1960s, Inferno in 1967, and the whole poem (Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso) in 2006. The second part of the paper traces Dante’s impact on the literary works of Georgi Stalev, Bogomil Ǵuzel and Blaže Koneski as well as the poet’s influence in other domains of Macedonian culture.

This paper examines the reception of Dante among Serbs in the period between 1991 to 2021. It focuses on the complex state of Serbian Danteology in the crucial historical period in which Yugoslavia was beginning to crumble and Serbia was subjected to sanctions and isolated from the world, and which also includes the NATO bombings. The examination concludes in 2021, which coincides with the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death. The paper focuses primarily on translations of Dante’s works (mostly the Divine Comedy) by two Serbian translators, Dragan Mraović and later Kolja Mićević, but also on republished translations such as those by Dragiša Stanojević and Mihovil Kombol. The Serbian studies and theatrical performances of Dante’s work are also considered.

It is commonly known that Italian departments, or at least Italian literature courses, were inaugurated in Chinese universities in the 1980s. Less known is the period of the 1930s, in which a Chinese student who specialized in Foreign Literature at Tsinghua University obtained a scholarship by the Italian government to study in Italy for two years: Tian Dewang 田德望 (1909-2000) was the first Chinese student to study Italian literature in Italy. In the 1980s he became a famous professor and translator of Italian literature, and was the first to complete an entire translation of Dante’s The Divine Comedy into Chinese. This paper is aimed at reconstructing the relation between the Chinese student and his Italian professor, Attilio Momigliano, and how the ‘mobility experience’ of Tian Dewang in Italy inspired and influenced his future academic career.

This paper focuses on visions and representations of Italy that emerge from the travel writings and narrative intersections of Sino-Italian mobilities. Taking its primary example from the travels of Zou Taofen (1895-1944), who enshrined his memories of Italy in Pingzong jiyu 萍踪寄语 (Messages from an unending wandering) while exiled from China, this critical exploration of mobility traces the spread of ideas between the Italian Peninsula and the Republic of China. Zou’s new and original visions of Italy reached a broad readership during the republican period, spreading widely and making Zou a “central figure of the New Culture era." Despite his place as one of the most successful and influential journalists in the history of the Republic of China, Zou has not yet “received his full due” (Mitter 2004, 55).

The fictional works of the Chinese writer Xue Yiwei, who migrated to Canada in 2002, can be regarded as a byproduct of cross-border mobility and cultural displacement. This paper examines the relationship between the individual and the metropolis in four short stories from the collection Shenzheners, focusing on the impact of the writer’s transcontinental relocation on his representation of city dwellers and intercultural encounters. This research adopts an interdisciplinary framework, which merges textual analysis with the approaches of Cultural Studies and Literary Urban Studies, and places this theoretical construction within a transnational context. By investigating the multiple narrative forms Xue Yiwei uses to question stereotypical cultural boundaries and to build a bridge between Chinese and global literatures, the connection between his experience of mobility and his hybrid fictional microcosm will be explored.

In 1982, the Italian television network RAI produced a TV series by Giuliano Montaldo on the travels of the Venetian merchant Marco Polo. Broadcast in forty-six countries, the Emmy Award-winning cinematic project, which involved partners from the United States, Japan, Germany, and France, stood as the first film co-production between Italy and China and represented a relevant step in the consolidation of the Sino-Italian friendship after the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1970. This paper aims to research the transnational dynamics enacted by Marco Polo during the Sino-Italian co-production and presents the making of the TV series in China from ideation to distribution. The study includes an original interview with the director Montaldo (2022).

When speaking of narrativity, a widely held idea in various disciplinary fields that identity is essentially narrative is often called into question. Numerous linguistic, literary, neuroscientific, and evolutionary studies corroborate this idea. In reality, narrativity in these different fields of study often means different objects of inquiry, which have different definitions and describe different processes and, therefore, different cognitive capacities. In this paper, we will consider the notion of narrativity as a cognitive process, that is, as a component of the human mode of knowledge construction. As such, narrativity would constitute a cognitive universal. From this definition, we will show how narrativity is an eminently linguistic process made possible by the body technology of language and voice in particular. Finally, we will argue for the constitutive and bodily role of language for narrativity in ontogenetic development and inner speech.

The present paper is dedicated to 16th-century Croatian author Petar Zoranić’s (Zadar / Zara, 1508 – 1569?) direct and mediated echoing of Dante’s oeuvre. Zoranić’s pastoral novel Planine (Mountains) belongs to the consistent tradition of reuse, quotation and translation that the Italian poet’s legacy has enjoyed in Croatia from the 14th century to the present day. Building on the work of the humanist writer Marko Marulić (Marcus Marulus Spalatensis, Split / Spalato, 1450-1524), who aspired to do for the Croatian vernacular what Dante did for the Italian volgare, Zoranić adapted Dante’s example to his own purposes not only in the promotion of the Croatian language and literature, but also in the celebration of the beauty, history and cultural heritage of his homeland. A true connoisseur of Dante’s original, the author from Zadar was also competent in the art of appropriation and creative reemployment of the Commedia’s various aspects, an exercise inaugurated by Boccaccio, and practiced by 15th and 16th-century men and women of letters. My contribution will focus on the modalities through which the text of Planine transforms the materials derived from Dante by mixing them with elements from other prestigious literary sources, in their turn heirs or precursors of Dante, such as works by Virgil, Ovid, the Church doctors, the Roman de la rose, Petrarch’s Trionfi, the Decameron and the early narrative production by Boccaccio, Arcadia by Sannazaro and, according to my hypothesis, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (Polifilo’s Dream) by Francesco Colonna.

This paper focuses on the anabasis and katabasis narratives inspired by Dante in the works of the most representative Polish romantics: Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855), Juliusz Słowacki (1809-1849), Zygmunt Krasiński (1812-1859) and Cyprian Kamil Norwid (1821-1883). It was the Divina Commedia which exercised the greatest influence on the poets, especially Inferno, which became a forerunner of the Polish reality itself. But whereas Dante’s Inferno is identified with the underworld, the Polish Romantics’ locus horridus coincides with the actual world. If the Dantesque journey is a katabasis to the underworld, the descent portrayed by Polish poets is an anabasis towards a volcano crater covered with lava and ice. Moreover, according to the martyrological view, the Polish reality in those days was not only a place of suffering and tribulation, but also of expiation, which was a preparation for the arrival of paradise on Earth.

The paper examines some critical aspects of the manuscript tradition of Boccaccio’s Corbaccio, starting from the results of the very few studies on the subject. Besides proposing an updated list of all the 79 available manuscripts that hand down the work, whose yet we don’t have any critical edition, he then demonstrates, through a number of examples, the benefits of widening perspective to the codes of the non-α family, but also of a comprehensive reconsideration of the status of α itself. In the absence of a solid classification of the whole manuscript tradition, the “traditional” hypothesis that the α2 group (and in particular the Mannelli codex) represents an advanced redaction of Boccaccio’s «umile trattato» risks to be too conditioning if assumed at such a preliminary stage.

The aim of the paper is to outline the main developments in research, translation and reception of Dante’s work in Slovakia after 1989. The period in question is particularly significant for the overall evaluation of the translation and reception of Dante’s work from the 19th century and for the basis of the comparative translation and literary research of the last decade, including new translations.

The journal "Mitteilungen aus dem Brenner-Archiv" has been published regularly since the early 1980s (No. 1/1982). It provides information on the activities of the research institute Brenner-Archiv: on new estates, research projects and on current publications. In addition, scolarly contributions from international authors are included, whose research areas range from literary studies to philosophy and (cultural) history. The papers mainly refer to topics related to the "Brenner", the "Brenner"-circle or the more than 300 estates of the institute (especially from "Brenner" employees and Tyrolean authors of the 19th and 20th Century).

This paper addresses an obscure aspect surrounding Solon’s activity, which occurred after his political and legislative activity and before his opposition to Pisistratus’ moves towards tyranny. It tackles, more specifically, the way in which Solon may have been indirectly involved (as a politician but also as a sophos) in a triangle of interests that would include, besides himself, two personalities associated with a period of stasis (Damasias) and with the status of sophos (Thales). In order to achieve this goal, the present study combines two different approaches: it first analyses the historical circumstances that marked Athens during the period immediately after Solon’s legislation, until the moment when Damasias held the archonship, and then clung to office for a further year and two months; it then discusses the testimony of Demetrius of Phalerum (quoted by Diogenes Laertius, 1.22), according to whom Thales was named for the first time sophos during the archonship of Damasias.

Demosthenes is recognized as a defender of Athenian democracy and freedom, particularly in voicing his concern about the growth of Macedonian power. While the defence of democracy is a recurring theme in his speeches, Demosthenes did not develop a theory of democracy. Rather, he tended to idealize the Athenian democratic experience. Further, in his defence of democracy and the ethos of the democratic citizen, Demosthenes references oligarchy, though again not from a theoretical perspective. The objective of this paper is to analyse Demosthenes’s use of the democratic and oligarchical forms of government in his defence of Athens, with a focus on his construction of an antithesis between them and his deployment of the Athenian experiences with oligarchy in 411 and 404 BC in his oratory.

Basing on the accounts of Thucydides and Plutarch, the paper analyses the way Sicily and the proposed Athenian expedition to Sicily, as a strategic bridge to advance over Carthage, define Nicias and Alcibiades, and what they represent: old Athens, comprised of experienced rulers and devoted, thoughtful citizens, who retreat, aware of the madness and threat of disaster that will lead to the ruinous outcome of the civil war. Forced to join the expedition, Nicias, as the embodiment of this polis, will stay until the end, in a campaign with which he does not agree, trying to save his fellow citizens. Alcibiades together with what he represents are fighting fiercely for the realisation of a megalomaniacal dream that will bring fortune and power for their own advantage. While Nicias accepts the command out of duty and imitation, Alcibiades yearns for it. In this background, Sicily and Carthage, waving from afar with their wealth and promise of power, constitute the stimulus for action that ultimately destroys an Athens close to defeat. On the other hand, in the young Roman republic, Sicily and Carthage offer natural encouragement of the conquest and submission of their power, as an imperative of the logic of expansion, affirmation and survival of Rome as a nascent power. It is the generation of the old Roman nobility that claims Carthago delenda est.

At the end of the 1970s, a new genre cycle was formed in US cinema. Starting with space opera in cinema, for which George Lucas' Star Wars is paradigmatic, fantasy established itself for the first time as an independent cinematic genre in distinction from fairy tales and fantastic fiction. The enthusiasm for pen & paper role-playing games and the continuing J. R. R. Tolkien craze culminated in the following years in a series of films that absorbed, pushed and further developed the diversity of modern film technology and production: the spectrum of films ranged from live-action films (Conan the Barbarian) to puppet animation (The Dark Crystal) to animated films (The Last Unicorn), in which George Lucas as well as Jim Henson and the production companies behind them at the time played leading roles. Contemporary critics had written these films off as conservative, sometimes even reactionary genre plays. In contrast, this essay unfolds a (historical) poetics of the US fantasy film. With its film-analytical case studies, the volume shows how the films of the years 1977 to 1987 are embedded in a specific film culture and how the genre cycle as part of the Hollywood system prepared and significantly influenced the triumph of blockbuster cinema in the 1990s.