In this hermeneutical study on a canto that represents the emblematic center of all Dante’s Inferno, we find a reflection about the extensive network of symbols which is related with the vice of greed, highlighting for the first time the hidden kinship between apparently different faults: usury, blasphemy and sodomy. Geryon the monster appears at the beginning, connecting us with mercantilism as
a socio-historical phenomenon rapidly evolving when Europe sees its transition from feudalism to proto-capitalism. Later, the animalized figure of Reginaldo Scrovegni, in this same alienating context (the sole infernal canto which is entirely coloured as a fresco), suggests the implicit, ironic and disturbing presence of Giotto, with a secret moral reference (as a cruel contrappasso) to his famous masterpiece of Padua. Immediate horror and beauty come grotesquely together thus, in this hellish space, with
a specific and surprising sarcastic power

The present article is an analysis of the configuration of the narrative focus and its implications for the construction of three novels from the “second phase” of Machado de Assis’ ouvre: Casa Velha (1885), Dom Casmurro (1899) and Memorial de Aires (1908). We seek to shed new light on the problem faced by the Brazilian thinker at the end of 19th century, when his desire to understand the collective past was frustrated by the lack of a perspective capable of giving a full image of a heterogenous and strongly verticalized society. In order to exemplify this relationship, we propose to reflect on the role of portait as an intratextual representation of the narrative focus

The present paper aims at throwing some light on the way in which stylistics as a new literary science emerged, in the studies of two significant literary theorists of the 20th century. Both their theorizing positions are derived from the experience of World War I. D. Caracostea and Leo Spitzer were doctoral colleagues, in Vienna, in the department headed by the great linguist W. Meyer-Lubke, prior to WW I. War was to separate them forever. Nevertheless, it was also the war that caused them to reflect along similar lines on the necessity of devising a new scientific basis for literary studies. His experience as a military censor in prisoner camps provided Leo Spitzer with the most “concrete” materials for defining expressive stylistics, a new discipline in literary research. Likewise, D. Caracostea’s interest in folklore prompted the young Military Academy professor in the 1920’s to search the recent memories of peasant soldiers for the stuff that could help reestablish a collective psychology, actually foreshadowing modern anthropology.
 

The paper briefly presents the main stages of the development of the Triestine literary tradition, which phenomenon begins to be widely noticed already in the 1930s. At that time, the first generation of a new Triestine literature (with its main pioneers – Italo Svevo, Scipio Slataper, Umberto Saba) became an interesting object of study for those critics and scholars who were able to distinguish some of its essential features. Subsequently, the author focuses on the idea of Triestine identity presented by a contemporary Italian writer Claudio Magris in a book entitled Trieste. Un’identità di frontiera. Then, the author proposes her interpretation of Magris’ novel Microcosms, presenting it as the most significant attempt of expressing both writer’s and city’s Triestine identity; a portrayal of the city of paper re-written in the language and style of an essayistic, autobiographical novel.
 

The article examines the professional consequences of artistic encounters with Luigi Pirandello’s plays in case of Polish actors and/or directors (Wojciech Brydziński, Aleksander Węgierko, Kazimierz Junosza-Stępowski, theatre managers (Teofil Trzciński) and translators of his plays (Zofia Jachimecka). The text focuses on the performances made by the theatres in Krakow (and Warsaw) in the 1920s and 1930s. The analysis demonstrates that participating in those artistic events turned out to be a very positive artistic experience and in some cases it can be even considered fundamental for the further professional carrier

The article discusses some possible genological classifications of the so-called “liberary work.” By means of a literary analysis of some of the manifestos written by Zenon Fajfer, the founder of the notion of “liberature”, the author considers whether this phenomenon can actually be recognised as the fourth literary genre, along with prose, drama and poetry, just as Fajfer demanded in his manifestos. To this end, the author confronts Fajfer’s arguments with two different concepts of the literary genre, characteristic for the French and Polish theory of literature.