1. Roland Barthes
To the French thinker and writer (1915-1980) I have devoted several essays (e.g. on his interviews and reception in Italy). I participated with some encyclopedic entries in the Dictionnaire Barthes (edited by Claude Coste, Honoré Champion, 2024). I published the book Roland Barthes e la tentazione del romanzo (Morellini, 2013), which studies the author’s late production to investigate the evolution of his nonfiction writing, and the intellectual biography Roland Barthes. Dalla vita al testo (Carocci, 2024).
2. Literary Hybrids
The research investigates the modes of interaction between literature and media that give rise to hybrid literary genres. I have studied two examples from the perspective of both production and circulation in the literary and media fields:
- The Imagined Interview: while the interview appears in the newspapers, the authors begin to imagine interviews that never took place and in which they entertain themselves or talk to other characters. The imagined interview is a new literary genre that builds on the forms of the journalistic genre of the interview. As its derivation, the imagined interview also spreads from publishing to radio, from television to digital devices (see my Open Access book, the chapter in the Companion on Interview edited by Carsten Junker and this article in French).
- Pseudo-Essays: the term “pseudo-essay” denotes a literary form of the critical essay. Here, literary criticism escapes from its institutional function and context and appears as a camouflage of another genre. Through different strategies of camouflage, the pseudo-essays spread throughout Europe and the United States, and they experience various metamorphosis in combination with different media supports, such as journalism, theatre, literary books (fiction and autobiography). Finally, the pseudo-essay represents a hybrid form with visual media, as in the case of the video essay. See Pseudo-saggi. (Ri)Scritture tra critica e letteratura (Morellini, 2019).
3. The Imagination of Flight
The research investigates the impact of technological, material and ideological changes on literature and mass culture. The relationships between literature and society are studied through the historical-material analysis of the influences that mechanical and technological innovations imprint on cultural and artistic products such as texts, paintings, art installations, movies, etc. The project aims to study changes in the imagination of flight (in the modes of vertical viewpoint, air travel, means of ascension) at the appearance of the airplane (see “«Il sopra delle nubi è un altro mondo». L’immaginario aviatorio tra le due guerre”).
Further information on my research projects is available on my personal website.
