2024-03-29T16:02:35Zhttps://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/oai/requestoai:research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk:10023/164972018-11-19T12:26:36Zcom_10023_108com_10023_29col_10023_110col_10023_874
Title redacted
Pierini, Carmela
Riccobono, Rossella
2018-11-19
2018-11-19
2016-06-23
Thesis
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/16497
it
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
2021-05-23
Thesis restricted in accordance with University regulations. Print and electronic copy restricted until 23rd May 2021
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
261 p.
University of St Andrews
The University of St Andrews
oai:research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk:10023/283222023-09-07T02:00:32Zcom_10023_108com_10023_29col_10023_110
Examining Italian postcolonial narratives through the lens of intermediality
Borrini, Giulia
Duncan, Derek
Bond, Emma
University of St Andrews. School of Modern Languages
Postcolonial studies
Intermediality studies
Visual studies
Postcolonial Italy
Walter Benjamin
This doctoral thesis sets out to investigate how different media interact in Italian postcolonial narratives by employing the theoretical framework of intermediality. It explores how intermedial configurations create more inclusive narratives of the postcolonial identities portrayed in novels, photography series and documentaries. This central question produces two lines of enquiry; firstly, how intermediality helps to uncover layers of the Italian imperial enterprise in East Africa and its consequences on the present; and secondly, how intermediality contributes both to the field of postcolonial studies and to the understanding of the current migration experience.
The thesis begins with an exploration of the theoretical intersections of intermediality and postcolonial studies, while introducing Walter Benjamin’s philosophical apparatus as a means to elucidate the conceptual overlapping between the two disciplines. A brief analysis of Cover boy. L’ultima rivoluzione (2006) showcases how intermedial investigation will be conducted in the following sections.
The thesis is structured according to the three major theoretical paradigms that constitute intermediality studies which are: 1) post-structuralist philosophies used to explore the concept of in-betweenness; 2) trans-semiotic theories scrutinising media borders; 3) connections between the real and the intermedial. Each paradigm gathers a number of theoretical strands that are employed in the respective examinations conducted in the five chapters of the thesis.
Building on a body of post-structuralist thought, Chapter One and Two examine how different intermedial configurations create in-betweenness in both novels Adua (2015) and Timira. Romanzo Meticcio (2012). Chapter Three scrutinises how media converge to generate Roaming (2006) and Roma negata. Percorsi postcoloniali nella città (2014) through an additional theoretical approach that borrows from the post-structuralist paradigm. Chapter Four and Chapter Five employ two different articulations of the trans-semiotic paradigm which are used in the respective examinations of the documentaries Asmarina (2015) and Pagine nascoste (2017). In the Conclusion, this study employs the third paradigm to investigate Grooving Lampedusa (2012) and reflects upon how intermedial practices encourage viewers to actively participate in the unfolding of postcolonial narratives that connect Italy’s colonial enterprise in Eastern Africa with the current migration experience in Italy.
2023-09-06
2023-09-06
2023-11-29
Thesis
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/28322
https://doi.org/10.17630/sta/601
en
2028-09-03
Thesis restricted in accordance with University regulations. Restricted until 3rd September 2028
260
The University of St Andrews
oai:research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk:10023/181772023-11-16T16:26:02Zcom_10023_108com_10023_29col_10023_110
Title redacted
Roveri, Mattia
Duncan, Derek
University of St Andrews. School of Modern Languages
2019-07-26
2019-07-26
2016-06-23
Thesis
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/18177
en
2026-05-09
Thesis restricted in accordance with University regulations. Print and electronic copy restricted until 9 May 2026
[3], 197 p.
University of St Andrews
The University of St Andrews
oai:research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk:10023/119472017-10-30T14:23:02Zcom_10023_108com_10023_29col_10023_110col_10023_874
Journeys beyond binaries : storytelling and polyphony in the narratives of Gabriella Ghermandi, Igiaba Scego, Ubax Cristina Ali Farah and Amara Lakhous
Prisco, Mario
Riccobono, Rossella
In the last two decades, in media and political discourses, Italianness has been increasingly represented as a homogeneous and compact entity, which is intruded on and contaminated by immigrants. In this study, the binary opposition between Italians and migrants is investigated from the perspective of writers who inhabit a liminal space, between at least two cultures, with the main intent to problematize the binary itself and to show its nature of fabrication. On the basis of Said’s contrapuntal method, the novels by Ghermandi, Scego, Ali Farah and
Lakhous are thought to establish a counterpoint with dominant discourses about Italianness.
With the firm belief that discourses about postcolonial Italy must address its colonial past, the works analysed are considered as in dialogue with both colonial and postcolonial discourses.
A dialogical relation is established, within the study, between Ghermandi’s Regina di
fiori e di perle and Flaiano’s Tempo di uccidere. Written from the perspectives of the colonized and the colonizers respectively, both novels unveil colonial crimes and faults in Ethiopia, thus being counter-narratives about official representations of Italian colonialism. In
Scego’s Rhoda and Oltre Babilonia and Ali Farah’s Madre piccolo, like threads, the individual stories of Somali exiles intertwine to create a fabric, whose pattern reveals the importance of the legacy of colonialism within contemporary Italy. Mainly situated between Italian and Somali cultures, the protagonists experience traumas, suffering and loss but finally attain a contrapuntal awareness between the two cultural poles. They become conscious of how enriching their in-between position is; they affirm the value of their hybrid identity. With a further zoom into postcolonial Italy, Lakhous’ Scontro di civiltà per un ascensore a piazza Vittorio and Divorzio all’islamica a viale Marconi analyse the binary ‘us-Italians’ versus ‘thosemigrants’ in two microcosms in Rome. General polarizations such as Islam and the West emerge as factors which are exploited in order to exacerbate tensions and divisions. In addition, Italianness appears to be an internally fragmented entity, which is imagined as compact and homogeneous, as a reaction to the influx of immigrants. Against any logic of binarism, the novels by Ghermandi, Scego, Ali Farah and Lakhous reveal the constant effort to create a passage between two poles and to uphold a dialogical relation between them; crossings over and hybridity are continuously affirmed. With their highly important affirmation of multiplicity, the works challenge any essentializing notion of identity and any narrow representation of Italianness, within multiethnic contemporary Italy.
2017-10-30
2017-10-30
2015-10
Thesis
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/11947
en
2020-10-30
Thesis restricted in accordance with University regulations. Print and electronic copy restricted until 30th October 2020
196 p.
The University of St Andrews
oai:research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk:10023/178232021-09-15T15:17:04Zcom_10023_108com_10023_29col_10023_110
Transnationalizing Lampedusa : representing migration in Italy and beyond
Colombini, Iacopo
Duncan, Derek
Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
University of St Andrews. School of Modern Languages
Lampedusa
Cultural studies
Stuart Hall
Lampedusa in Hamburg
Postcolonial Italy
Transnationalism
Collettivo Askavusa
Archivio Memorie Migranti
This thesis explores the transnational dimension of Lampedusa, and how its symbolism can be used to address questions of identity and subjectivity in the cultural representation of migration. By examining the initiatives of the Archivio delle Memorie Migranti, the self-organised refugee group Lampedusa in Hamburg, and the Lampedusa-based Collettivo Askavusa, this work defines Lampedusa as a floating signifier. The discussion of the discursive formations composing what I defined, drawing on Benjamin, as the ‘Lampedusa transnational constellation’ highlights the centrality of cultural practices in affecting hegemonic representations of migration.
This thesis recognises that the marginalisation of migrant and refugee voices in the public debate on migration is also partially reflected in the cultural projects that attempt to restore the agency of these individuals. The production and collections of new films, exhibitions, memories focusing on migrant deaths, passage and presence on Lampedusa, from the perspective of migrants themselves, are therefore considered playing a fundamental role, but are not seen as a straightforward solution. This works emphasises the importance of analysing the ‘moment of production’ of these cultural products, proposing forms of participant observation and multi-sited ethnographic work as a means to directly engage with the questions of race, identity, and positionality embedded in cultural practices focusing on migration.
2019-06-05
2019-06-05
2019-06-27
Thesis
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/17823
https://doi.org/10.17630/10023-17823
en
https://doi.org/10.5523/bris.1k66c9sl7ag0a2pxkal4txbcv1
Transnationalizing Lampedusa : representing migration in Italy and beyond (thesis data) Colombini, I., University of St Andrews. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5523/bris.1k66c9sl7ag0a2pxkal4txbcv1
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
2024-03-21
Thesis restricted in accordance with University regulations. Print and electronic copy restricted until 21st March 2024
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
xii, 307 p.
University of St Andrews
The University of St Andrews
oai:research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk:10023/7372020-03-10T16:42:29Zcom_10023_108com_10023_29col_10023_110
A diachronic study into the distributions of two Italo-Romance synthetic conditional forms
Parkinson, Jennie K.
Ferguson, Ronnie
Romance
Conditional
Two distinct conditional paradigms are available to speakers of Italian, derived from the Latin periphrases cantare habui/cantare habebam. The aim of this thesis is to describe and explain their patterns of attestation in the earliest northern Italian and Tuscan texts, which date from between 1200 and 1400.
Textual analysis showed that while the cantare habui periphrasis was native to both areas, the use of the cantare habebam periphrasis differed in the northern and central dialects. In the northern dialects, the cantare habebam periphrasis was attested in all genres over the whole time period, whereas in the Tuscan dialects it only appeared in literary genres. Moreover, although the northern texts attested both periphrases consistently over time in every genre, only Tuscan poetry followed this pattern. Other genres attested reflexes of the cantare habebam periphrasis for short periods in the fourteenth century. These results suggest that different influences resulted in different patterns of conditional use in the two areas.
This thesis postulates that in the northern Italo-Romance dialects the cantare habebam periphrasis was introduced through the proximity to, and influence of, Provençal. Although the use of reflexes of cantare habebam was reinforced in the north by the Sicilian school of poets, the dual nature of the sources meant that it was also retained in prose, and thence into modern dialect use. In contrast, reflexes of the cantare habebam periphrasis were introduced into central Italy through the Sicilian school alone. Although it appeared in prose texts, this was a sporadic phenomenon, resulting from imitation of the influential poetic texts. Because there was no prose source for reflexes of the cantare habebam periphrasis, it did not enter non-literary genres and quickly disappeared from literary prose genres. The cantare habebam periphrasis eventually disappeared entirely from Tuscan poetry as well, and is not attested at all in the modern central dialects.
2009-08-20
2009-08-20
2009-06-23
Thesis
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/737
en
316 p.
University of St Andrews
The University of St Andrews
oai:research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk:10023/19202019-07-01T10:19:00Zcom_10023_108com_10023_29col_10023_110
La vita in uno spot : un'indagine diacronica della pubblicità televisiva italiana, 1957-1977
Casarini, Rita
Riccobono, Rossella
Advertising
Television
Italian advertising
Semiotics
The present dissertation investigates the role of television advertising in shaping the cultural values of the Italian society in the circular process of mirroring pre-existing societal values yet inducing new ones, thus contributing to its evolution. It questions its role within the society, its relationship with families, women and youngsters, the kind of language used in communicating, between 1957-1977, the age of Carosello programme.
A corpus of two thousand five hundred television adverts was viewed and filed, of which a hundred were selected according to the more frequent themes, their cultural and semiotic relevance, and twenty-two analysed by a semiotic approach, together with some more considered alongside. Chapter One deals with methodology, an overview of the main concepts and tools of applied semiotics and the socio-semiotic perspective adopted. Chapter Two, then, contextualizes television advertising into its broader socio-cultural milieu and the history of television.
The following three chapters analyze the selected adverts according to five main recurring themes: Chapter Three, the first steps of TV advertising, its auto-referentiality and its language; Chapter Four, the family and its inner relationships, the couple and the institution of marriage; Chapter Five women‘s emancipation, the new generation of youngsters and new myths. Commercials are analysed by shots and sequences from a narrative and visual perspective in search of their deep underlying generative values. The approach is a holistic one, adapting itself to the prevailing characteristics of every occurrence, although the peculiar nature of the ads of the period entails a prevailing narratological model. All findings are then connected together to identify the main semantic areas indicating cultural values present in the Italian society of the period.
The end findings consist of a set of interesting cultural values identified. At first a self-assertiveness of advertising as a way to popularity; then its preferred mode of communication through verbal language rather than pictures; a representation of families according to either the patriarchal or the consumerist model; a fundamental disbelief in marriage and a sexist attitude to women‘s representation; finally, a mistrust in the values of the new generations. All of these eventually pointing to the main semantic area of tradition, an index to the fundamental conservative yet contradictory role of the Carosello adverting which, while contributing to preserve traditional values, it also tended to replace them with its only main consumerist value. At a higher level, on a socio-semiotic perspective it is the role of that semiosphere which, while drawing from society it also contributes in shaping it.
2011-07-19
2011-07-19
2011-06-21
Thesis
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/1920
it
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/scotland/
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 UK: Scotland
251
University of St Andrews
The University of St Andrews
oai:research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk:10023/153502019-04-01T09:04:04Zcom_10023_108com_10023_29com_10023_114col_10023_110col_10023_116
Melancholy imagination in Ausias March and the Florentine Neoplatonists
Maingon, Louis Patrick A.
This thesis focuses primarily on the work of the Valencian poet, Ausias March (1398 - 1459), who was revered by the first two generations of Petrarquistas in Golden Age Spain, and in particular by Juan Boscán and Garcilaso de la Vega. It has long been contended that the introduction of Ficinian Neoplatonism in Spain by Boscán's translation of Il Cortegiano, and Garcilaso's assimilation of Bembo's Petrarchism, represents a radical shift in sensibility, unprecedented in the Iberian peninsula. The object of this thesis is to demonstrate that because Ausias March is a Lullian poet who manifests an evangelical-Platonic sensibility, and is not a "troubadour attardé" as Amédée Pagès thought, the introduction of the Italianate fashion by Boscán and Garcilaso is not a radical departure from their earlier allegiance, but a development. The poetry of Ausias March is remarkable for its introspection. Consequently, the interpretation of his work must begin with an analysis of his use of the theory of imagination, which he inherited through the literary influence of the Chartrians and Victorines of the twelfth century, and, in particular, from Hughes de Saint Victor. The importance of introspection and imagination naturally entails the question of the extremes of melancholy, as it is understood in the mediaeval tradition of Aristotle's Problem XXX, i. After a survey of the role of melancholy imagination in Ausias March's poetry, the function of these two closely related concepts is analysed in Ficino's Commentarium in Convivium , Hebreo's Dialoghi, Bembo's Gli Asolani, and Castiglione's Il Cortegiano. This enables one to determine that the Florentine theory of love is not insulated from passion, as many literary critics imply. The dialectical relation of natural reason to Augustinian right reason evinces the extremes of imagination and melancholy, as either lunacy or divine rapture. These elements of Florentine Neoplatonism reveal a deep concern for the difficult relation of the body to the soul, and, ultimately, a conscious search for ascesis. These elements, which are common to Ausias March and the Florentine Neoplatonists, are an expression of the Augustinian doctrine of Charity. The common factor between Ausias March and the Florentines is the pseudo-Dionysian - Erigenian concept of beauty. The latter is fundamental to what M. D. Chenu has defined as the secular evangelical current in Europe. It is a sensibility based on a consciousness of the all-pervasive presence of grace in nature, which is articulated in the symbolic mentality of Christian Platonists. This aspect of Ausias March' Work is central to Chapter V. In order to avoid creating the impression that this interpretation of Ausias March's poetry is anachronical this chapter studies the significance of an important segment of this poet's imagery. This serves to contrast Ausias March's use of the pseudo- Dionysian - Erigenian concept of beauty and his consequent handling of the concepts of melancholy and imagination to that used by Andreas Capellanus. Finally, this analysis illustrates Ausias March's predominantly symbolic mentality, as well as his exceptional use of medical theory which distinguishes him from the vast majority of Spanish cancionero poets, and emphasizes his many points of affinity with the Florentine Neoplatonists.
2018-07-13
2018-07-13
1982
Thesis
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/15350
en
2 v. (436, 656 p.)
University of St Andrews
The University of St Andrews