Archaeology of the Unconscious: Italian Perspectives PDF
Preview Archaeology of the Unconscious: Italian Perspectives
Archaeology of the Unconscious In reconstructing the birth and development of the notion of ‘unconscious’, histo- rians of ideas have heavily relied on the Freudian concept of Unbewussten, retro- actively projecting the psychoanalytic unconscious over a constellation of diverse cultural experiences taking place in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries be- tween France and Germany. Archaeology of the Unconscious aims to challenge this perspective by adopting an unusual and thought-provoking viewpoint as the one offered by the Italian case from the 1770s to the immediate aftermath of the First World War, when Italo Svevo’s La coscienza di Zeno provided Italy with the first example of a ‘psychoanalytic novel’. Italy’s vibrant culture of the long nineteenth century, characterized by the sedimentation, circulation, intersection, and synergy of different cultural, philosophical, and literary traditions, proves itself to be a privileged object of inquiry for an archaeological study of the uncon- scious, a study whose object is not the alleged ‘origin’ of a pre-made theoretical construct but rather the stratifications by which that specific construct was as- sembled. In line with Michel Foucault’s Archéologie du savoir (1969), this volume will analyse the formation and the circulation, across different authors and texts, of a network of ideas and discourses on interconnected themes, including dreams, memory, recollection, desire, imagination, fantasy, madness, creativity, inspira- tion, magnetism, and somnambulism. Alongside questioning pre-given narratives of the ‘history of the unconscious’, this book will employ the Italian ‘difference’ as a powerful perspective from whence to address the undeveloped potentialities of the pre-Freudian unconscious, beyond uniquely psychoanalytical viewpoints. Alessandra Aloisi is Lecturer in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French at the University of Oxford (Jesus College). In 2015–2017, she was Marie Curie post- doctoral fellow at the University of Warwick, UK, with a research project on Dis- traction as a Philosophical Concept and Stylistic Device in France and Italy, from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. She obtained her PhD in Aesthet- ics at the University of Pisa in 2011, and her thesis was published as Desiderio e assuefazione. Studio sul pensiero di Leopardi (Ets, 2014). She is currently working on a monograph on the concept of distraction (under contract with Il Mulino). Fabio Camilletti is Associate Professor and Reader at the University of Warwick, UK. His specialism is Gothic and Romantic literature from a European view- point: he published, among others, monographs on D.G. Rossetti and Giacomo Leopardi, and finalized in 2015 the first complete edition of the German-French anthology of ghost stories Fantasmagoriana. His most recent works include Italia lunare (Peter Lang), The Portrait of Beatrice (Notre Dame UP), and Guida alla letteratura gotica (Odoya). He is currently working on a BA/Leverhulme-funded project on supernatural anthologies in the early nineteenth century. Warwick Series in the Humanities Series Editor: Christina Lupton Titles in this Series Picturing Women’s Health Edited by Kate Scarth, Francesca Scott and Ji Won Chung Knowing Nature in Early Modern Europe David Beck New Jazz Conceptions History, Theory, Practice Edited by Roger Fagge and Nicolas Pillai Food, Drink, and the Written Word in Britain, 1820–1945 Edited by Mary Addyman, Laura Wood and Christopher Yiannitsaros Beyond the Rhetoric of Pain Edited by Berenike Jung and Stella Bruzzi Mood Interdisciplinary Perspectives, New Theories Edited by Birgit Breidenbach and Thomas Docherty Prohibitions and Psychoactive Substances in History, Culture and Theory Edited by Susannah Wilson Archaeology of the Unconscious Italian Perspectives Edited by Alessandra Aloisi and Fabio Camilletti For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/Warwick-Series-in-the-Humanities/book- series/WSH Archaeology of the Unconscious Italian Perspectives Edited by Alessandra Aloisi and Fabio Camilletti First published 2020 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Taylor & Francis The right of Alessandra Aloisi and Fabio Camilletti to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-26373-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-29304-7 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra Contents List of Contributors vii Acknowledgements xi Introduction 1 ALESSANDRA ALOISI AND FABIO CAMILLETTI 1 Uneasy Sensibility: Pietro Verri on Pain and Pleasure 13 SABRINA FERRI 2 Francesco Soave and the Unconscious of the Somnambulist, Dreams, Madness, and Distraction in Eighteenth-Century Italy 33 ALESSANDRA ALOISI 3 Jacopo’s Secret 50 FRANCO D’INTINO 4 Leopardi’s Night (T)errors, the Uncanny, and the ‘Old Wives’ Tales’ 67 FABIO CAMILLETTI 5 At the Frontiers of Dreams: The Nightmares of the Vita Nuova Read Through Freud and Manzoni 86 ANDREA MALAGAMBA 6 Italian Mesmerism, Religion, and the Unconscious: Irresistible Analogies from Muratori to Morselli 113 PAOLA CORI 7 Magnetic Culture and the Self in Post-Unification Italy 141 MORENA CORRADI vi Contents 8 Drawing-Room Shivers: Spiritualism and Uneasy Presences on the Pages of La Domenica del Corriere 164 FABRIzIO FONI AND IRENE INCARICO 9 Subconscious and Oneiric Consciousness in the Late Nineteenth Century (and Beyond): A Focus on Sante De Sanctis’s Studies on Dreams 185 SARA BOEzIO 10 Metamorphosis and Nightmare in Leopardi and Svevo 217 OLMO CALzOLARI 11 Is There an Unconscious in This Text? On Italo Svevo’s La coscienza di Zeno 235 ALESSANDRA DIAzzI Bibliography 257 Index 281 List of Contributors Alessandra Aloisi is Lecturer in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French at the University of Oxford (Jesus College). In 2015–2017, she was Ma- rie Curie post-doctoral fellow at the University of Warwick, UK, with a research project on Distraction as a Philosophical Concept and Stylistic Device in France and Italy, from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. She obtained her PhD in aesthetics at the University of Pisa in 2011, and her thesis was published as Desiderio e assuefazione. Studio sul pensiero di Leopardi (Ets, 2014). She is currently working on a mono- graph on the concept of distraction (under contract with Il Mulino). Sara Boezio studied at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, and at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris and in Lyon. Her MA thesis on the essays of Federico De Roberto was awarded the Galilei-Carducci prize. Her PhD thesis (University of Warwick) explores from a com- parative and interdisciplinary perspective how historical, political, social, and cultural changes shaped new perceptions and representa- tions of time in fin-de-siècle Italy. Her research interests concern fin- de-siècle European literary cultures and the late nineteenth-century periodical press, as well as the relationship between poetry and visual arts in early modern Italian literature, and cognitive literary studies. Olmo Calzolari is a DPhil Student at the University of Oxford. Before starting his doctoral project, he obtained an MPhil from Oxford and a BA from the Università degli Studi di Siena. His interests revolve around nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literature, the pres- ence of Leopardi in the Italian Novecento, and the history of medi- cine. He collaborates with LEO (Leopardi Studies at Oxford) and the Oxford Italian Postgraduate Seminars. Fabio Camilletti is Associate Professor and Reader at the University of Warwick, UK. His specialism is Gothic and Romantic literature from a European viewpoint: he published, among others, monographs on D.G. Rossetti and Giacomo Leopardi, and finalized in 2015 the first complete edition of the German-French anthology of ghost stories Fan- tasmagoriana. His most recent works include Italia lunare (Peter Lang), The Portrait of Beatrice (Notre Dame UP), and Guida alla letteratura viii List of Contributors gotica (Odoya). He is currently working on a BA/Leverhulme-funded project on supernatural anthologies in the early nineteenth century. Paola Cori is Lecturer in Modern Languages (Italian) at the Univer- sity of Birmingham, where she is also Honorary Research Fellow at the Leopardi Centre. Her main research interests are in the litera- ture and philosophy from the eighteenth century to the present day, particularly Giacomo Leopardi. Her most recent article, Ipnotismo e iperrealtà. Spunti per un dialogo tra Leopardi e il postmoderno, is forthcoming with Italian Studies, 74, 3, summer 2019, while her monograph Forms of Thinking in Leopardi’s Zibaldone. Religion, Science and Everyday Life is forthcoming with Legenda (Cambridge, August 2019). Morena Corradi is Associate Professor at Queens College and at the Graduate Center, CUNY (City University of New York). Her research focuses on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italian literature and printed media, fantastic and gothic literature, narrative theory, and nation building. She has published articles on the fantastic in the works of the Milanese Scapigliatura and on post-unification political and literary journals. She is Author of the monograph Spettri d’Ita- lia: scenari del fantastico nella pubblicistica postunitaria milanese (Longo Editore, 2016). Alessandra Diazzi is Lecturer in Italian studies at the University of Manchester. In 2015, she was awarded a PhD in Italian Studies from the University of Cambridge. She published on contemporary Italian literature – Italo Calvino, Alberto Moravia, Giorgio Manganelli, and Ottiero Ottieri, among – cinema (Gianni Amelio), and René Girard’s mimetic theory. She works primarily on the reception of psychoanal- ysis in Italian literature and culture in post-World War II Italy. Franco D’Intino is Professor of modern Italian literature at the Univer- sity of Rome Sapienza where he directs the ‘Laboratorio Leopardi’ (School of Advanced Studies). His main areas of research are the autobiographical genre and Romanticism, in particular the work of Giacomo Leopardi. He is the critical editor of Leopardi’s translations in prose and verse and autobiographical writings, and co-editor of the English translation of the Zibaldone (Farrar Straus & Giroux/ Penguin 2013, 20152). Sabrina Ferri is Associate Professor of Italian at the University of Notre Dame. Her research encompasses Italian literature, philosophy, and science in the long eighteenth century. She has written on Casanova, Alfieri, Vico, and Leopardi, among others. Her first book, Ruins Past: Modernity in Italy, 1744–1836 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2015), reconstructs Italy’s philosophy of history between the eighteenth and List of Contributors ix early nineteenth centuries. She is currently working on modern the- ories of the imagination and on the relationship between fiction and revolution. Fabrizio Foni (Umbertide, 1980) is Lecturer in the Department of Italian and Member of the Institute of Anglo-Italian Studies at the University of Malta, with a specialisation in popular culture. His re- search interests include horror, thriller and science fiction, the adven- ture novels by Emilio Salgari and his followers, comic-book series, 1960s and 1970s Italian gothic cinema, as well as the multifaceted fictional representations of sideshows and freaks. He co-authored the most comprehensive annotated bibliography of criticism on the Fan- tastic in Italian literature: Stefano Lazzarin, and others, Il fantastico italiano: Bilancio critico e bibliografia commentata (dal 1980 a oggi) (Florence: Le Monnier Università, 2016). Irene Incarico (La Spezia, 1981) is Visiting Senior Lecturer in the Department of Italian of the University of Malta, where she teaches study-units ranging from medieval literature to women’s writing. She is also International Students and Programme Leader at Chiswick House School (Malta), where she teaches French. She published ar- ticles on science fiction, Emilio Salgari, and Stephen King. She co- authored a ‘cybergoth’ novel, and authored several science fiction and horror short stories. She also co-edited with Alice Favaro the book Eurofumetto & globalizzazione: Studi su graphic novel e linguaggi dei comics (La Spezia: Cut-Up Publishing, 2018). Andrea Malagamba teaches in Rome. He is the author of the mono- graph “Quell’ombra io sono”. Io, Tu, Noi nella poesia di Eugenio Montale (Giulio Perrone 2011) and the editor of the anthology of texts: Giacomo Leopardi, Il gusto. Bellezza, sapori, mondanità nello Zibaldone (Edizioni Estemporanee 2015). He has published several studies on Leopardi’s poetry and philosophical vocabulary, as well as on the intertextual relationship between Dante and Primo Levi. He also works on social media, cinema, and TV series, and he edited the volume Figure della serialità televisiva (Bevivino 2010).
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