Skip to main content

Matteo ZUPANCIC

Istituto Italiano di Studi Germanici, Projekt “Goethes Venezianische Epigramme – Kritische digitale Edition”, Post-Doc

Università di Pisa, Dipartimento di Filologia, Letteratura e Linguistica, Dottore di Ricerca / Dr. Phil.

Universität Stuttgart, Stuttgart Research Centre for Text Studies, Post-Doc

Followers

115

Following

149

Co-authors

2

Mentions

22

Public Views

Postdoc Research Fellow/wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter at the IISG (Rome) and the SRCTS (Stuttgart), working on a critical digital edition of Goethe's "Venetian Epigrams"

Editor of the Journal “Odradek. Studies in Philosophy of Literature, Aesthetics and New Media Theories”

Project Member of “Il cinema tedesco occidentale in Italia (1949-1989): co-produzione, distribuzione e funzione” (IISG) and Collaborator of “DiScEPT: Digital Scholarly Editions Platform and aligned Translations", (IISG)

Fellow of the “Ernst und Friedrich Georg Jünger Gesellschaft”, “Associazione Italiana Germanistica”, “Goethe-Gesellschaft”, “English Goethe Society” and “European Academy of Religion”

Winner of the Colombaria-Price 2023 for Best PhD Thesis in Historical and Philosophical Sciences

Fellowships:
2025: Weimar-Fellow at the Klassik Stiftung, Weimar
2019: Marbach-Stipendiat at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach

Education:
2018-2022: Binational PhD in Discipline Linguistiche e Letterature Straniere and Neuere deutsche Literatur (University of Pisa and Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen)
2013-2018: Student in German Literature at the Scuola Normale Superiore and the University of Pisa

Research Interests:
Sprachreflexion in the klassische Moderne; Transdisciplinary intersections between literature, philosophy and theology; Intertextuality; Epistemology of cultural studies; Modern Philology; Digital Textual Scholarship; Literature and Natural Sciences between the 1700s and the Weimar Republic

less

InterestsView All (18)

Uploads

Books by Matteo ZUPANCIC

Forthcoming: Universalienstreiter der Moderne. Das sprachtheoretische Feld zwischen Literatur und Religion (1890–1930), Königshausen & Neumann, Reihe: Poetik & Episteme, Bd. 7, Würzburg 2024, ISBN 978-3-8260-8908-4

Edited Volumes by Matteo ZUPANCIC

Forthcoming: Poetiken der Turbulenz: Hans Magnus Enzensberger / Poetiche della turbolenza: Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Hrsg. v. Francesco Rossi, Matteo Zupancic, «LINKS. Rivista di letteratura e cultura tedesca / Zeitschrift für deutsche Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft» 24 (2024)

CfP für «links. Zeitschrift für deutsche Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft» 24 (2024). Hrsg. v. F... more

Interruzioni e cesure. Fenomeni e pratiche della discontinuità in linguistica, letteratura e arti performative, Pisa University Press, a cura di R. Donnarumma, F. Romoli, D. Terzano, M. Turconi e M. Zupancic

by Diego Terzano, Martina Turconi, and Matteo ZUPANCIC

Comparare è una necessità e una scommessa, quando non un azzardo, che continua a metterci di fron... more Comparare è una necessità e una scommessa, quando non un azzardo, che continua a metterci di fronte a difficoltà inaggirabili. La prima si chiama specialismo: ogni studioso è in questa condizione, cui di fatto le istituzioni accademiche spingono anche quando sembrano favorire gli incontri fra discipline diverse. Il paradosso è dunque che non si può dare comparazione seria se prima non si è data una qualche forma di specialismo. È questo lo spirito che anima i contributi raccolti in questo volume. I saggi qui raccolti, infatti, affrontano il tema dell’interruzione e della cesura da prospettive e con approcci molteplici, in una varietà di studi che complessivamente ricadono negli ambiti della linguistica, della letteratura e della metrica. Sta al lettore individuare le intersezioni possibili, guidato dai propri interessi, come anche riconoscere che, in una certa misura, ci sono metodi o approcci o declinazioni di uno stesso tema non sovrapponibili.

Papers by Matteo ZUPANCIC

«Das entsetzliche Schreien ringsum». Distorsioni pararomantiche nel cinema di Werner Herzog, in: «Lasst den Gesang erschallen! Macht mich Still». Dissonanze e trasfigurazioni nella letteratura e nella cultura tedesche, hrsg. v. F. Rossi e L. Zenobi, Mucchi, Modena 2024, S. 115-128

Speculum mundi. Realismo linguistico e nominalismo nella metafora del linguaggio-specchio, in: «Atti e Memorie dell’Accademia Toscana di Scienze e Lettere “La Colombaria”», LXXXVIII, LXXII, anno 2023, Leo S. Olschki, Firenze 2024, ISBN 9788822269249, S. 231-244

Atti e Memorie dell’Accademia Toscana di Scienze e Lettere “La Colombaria”, 2023

Ad imaginem suam. The Adamic Model and Exclusive Monoanthropism in Human Simulacra, «Between», XII, 24 (2022), pp. 551-575

Between, 2022

The aim of the present paper is to trace the Nachleben of the logics characterizing the Adamic ep... more The aim of the present paper is to trace the Nachleben of the logics characterizing the Adamic episode within the fictional reflection on human simulacra. In fact, Judeo-Christian 'exclusive monotheism' is based on the strict ontological differentiation of God, the unique Creator, from the World, as his Creation. Such a conception of monotheism is, as Jan Assmann pointed out, strictly connected to a repressive exercise of violence and to God's opposition against every possible form of ontological rivalry. In the Genesis, Yahweh turns this law machinery even against his simulacra, the creatures made «in his own image»: Adam and Eve are removed from Eden and condemned to mortality only as a result of their attempt to become «like God, knowing good and evil». By means of a brief analysis of some exemplary literary cases (Mary Shelley, Isaac Asimov, Ernst Jünger), an attempt will be made to show how the fear and violence exercised by man towards his simulacra are deeply linked to a secular revival of the theological-juridical complex intertwined with the Adamic model.

Hauspostille: linguaggio teologico-negativo e negazione della teologia nel giovane Brecht, in: «ODRADEK. Studies in Philosophy of Literature, Aesthetics, and New Media Theories», 4 (2018), 2, pp. 121-154

ODRADEK. Studies in Philosophy of Literature, Aesthetics, and New Media Theories, 2019

The present paper aims to investigate Brecht’s early interpretation of the divine and to show to ... more The present paper aims to investigate Brecht’s early interpretation of the divine and to show to what extent the Hauspostille poetic collection adopts formal strategies similar to those of the negative theology. As Hans Mayer has already pointed out, the Hauspostille is in fact an “umfunktionierte Theologie”, framed not only as a simple ironic-atheistic twisting of the theological discourse, but also as an attempt to re-function, in a secularized form, certain linguistic garments and structures of thought proper to the religious tradition. “Umfunktionierte Theologie”: recovering this formula, we refer to a theology that is not only re-functionalized, but also overturned. In an attempt to bring the notion of deus absconditus to its extreme consequences and, at the same time, to turn man’s attention towards the cold reality of immanence, Brecht would end up preparing a secularized version, in an aesthetic sense, of Luther’s own theologia crucis and propose a negative theology that presents, as its only aim, that of denying theology itself.

Schrecken vor Tod. Un’ipotesi di intertestualità tra la Traumnovelle di Arthur Schnitzler e le Sieben Variationen di Heimito von Doderer, in «Studi Germanici», 13 (2018), pp. 221-241

Studi Germanici, 2018

The present paper examines the potential and undeclared intertextual link between Arthur Schnitzl... more The present paper examines the potential and undeclared intertextual link between Arthur Schnitzler's Traumnovelle and Heimito von Doderer's Sieben Variationen über ein Thema von Johann Peter Hebel, with a specific focus on the ambiguous and contradictory character of the relationship between the two Viennese writers. Through an investigation of the scattered statements included in the early Tagebücher, as well as the contrastive analysis of both textes, it will be provided what it seems to be a missing page in the research on Heimito von Doderer's literary sources and, at the same time, a further scientifical support for the investigations of one of his less-known works.

Caduta dell'epos e rinascita della tragedia: Paul Ernst e il Nibelungenlied, «Studi Germanici», 11 (2017), pp. 91-103

Studi Germanici, 2017

From an initial phase of rediscovery, characterized by a comparison with ancient Greek epic poetr... more From an initial phase of rediscovery, characterized by a comparison with ancient Greek epic poetry and the attempt to present it as poem of national identity for the German people, the Nibelungenlied has been the object of many renowned dramatic versions. At the height of this trend, just as the work was being co opted by Nazi propaganda, the playwright Paul Ernst noted the decline of the epic poem, and with the theoretical support of György Lukács, re-examined the Nibelungenlied through a revisitation of classic Greek drama. Through an analysis of his theoretical essays and preparatory material for the tragedy Brunhild (1909), the present paper examines Ernst’s work providing not only a further reappraisal of the reception of the Nibelungenlied, but also a specific case study illustrating some of the most crucial aspects of literarische Moderne: linguistic issues, the function of myth, classical antiquity, the decline of epic poetry and the weight of Nietzsche’s legacy.

"Il pifferaio magico" tra canone occidentale e tradizione dell'Est europeo, «Il Ponte», 3 (2015), pp. 80-85

Reviews by Matteo ZUPANCIC

Gabriele Guerra – Maurizio Pirro (a cura di), Stefan George, «Cultura Tedesca», 59 (2020), pp. 198, in «Studi Germanici», 20 (2021), S. 163-266

Studi Germanici, 2021

E.T.A. Hoffmann: I fratelli di Serapione. Racconti e fiabe. Tomo I, a cura di Matteo Galli, L'orma, Roma 2020, In: «Allegoria», 83 (2021)

Gabriele Guerra (a cura di): Tra ribellione e conservazione. Monte Verità nella cultura tedesca, Studi Germanici, Roma 2018, In: «Studi Germanici», 18 (2021)

Studi Germanici, 2021

Andreas Kablitz: Zwischen Rhetorik und Ontologie. Struktur und Geschichte der Allegorie im Spiegel der jüngeren Literaturwissenschaft. (Neues Forum für Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft 50) Winter, Heidelberg 2016. 260 S., in: «Scientia Poetica», 24 (2020), S. 497-502

Scientia Poetica, 2020

Conferences & Workshops by Matteo ZUPANCIC

Bioromantik. Il rapporto tra poesia e microrganismi nel romanticismo jenese (sull’esempio di F. Schelling), Giornata di Studi "Simpoesia. Romanticismi in contesto globale", Università di Pisa, 5. Dezember 2024

Si potrebbe forse dare inizio ad un'epoca del tutto nuova nelle scienze e nelle arti, se la sinfi... more

“Die puncten […], wo die verschiedenen Reiche zusammen zu treffen und ineinander überzugehen scheinen”. Goethe, Lichtenberg e l’indistinto metamorfico, Convegno internazionale “Trans-formare. La metamorfosi nella letteratura, nell'arte, nelle scienze e nel pensiero europei”, Roma 25-27 Nov. 2024

La luce infilmabile. La rappresentazione del linguaggio mistico in Vision di Margarethe von Trotta. Convegno "Hannah Ingeborg Rosa e le altre. Il cinema di Margarethe von Trotta", Università di Firenze, 20.-21 November 2024

“Il vuoto delle parole. Giorgio Caproni lettore di Hofmannsthal”, Tagung "Hofmannsthal in Italia”, 18.–19. November 2024, Università di Trieste

Enzensbergers "fundamentlose" Episteme, Internationale Tagung “Schiffbrüche verhandeln. Kritik, Skepsis und Ironie im Werk Hans Magnus Enzensbergers”, 30.10.–02.11.2024, Akademie der Wissenschaften, Szeged (Ungarn)

Das Nachleben der potentia Dei absoluta bei Robert Musil, Internationales Forschungskolloquium WiSe – SRCTS Stuttgart, Kloster Höchst – 25./27.10.2024

Forthcoming: Universalienstreiter der Moderne. Das sprachtheoretische Feld zwischen Literatur und Religion (1890–1930), Königshausen & Neumann, Reihe: Poetik & Episteme, Bd. 7, Würzburg 2024, ISBN 978-3-8260-8908-4

Forthcoming: Poetiken der Turbulenz: Hans Magnus Enzensberger / Poetiche della turbolenza: Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Hrsg. v. Francesco Rossi, Matteo Zupancic, «LINKS. Rivista di letteratura e cultura tedesca / Zeitschrift für deutsche Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft» 24 (2024)

CfP für «links. Zeitschrift für deutsche Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft» 24 (2024). Hrsg. v. F... more

Interruzioni e cesure. Fenomeni e pratiche della discontinuità in linguistica, letteratura e arti performative, Pisa University Press, a cura di R. Donnarumma, F. Romoli, D. Terzano, M. Turconi e M. Zupancic

by Diego Terzano, Martina Turconi, and Matteo ZUPANCIC

Comparare è una necessità e una scommessa, quando non un azzardo, che continua a metterci di fron... more Comparare è una necessità e una scommessa, quando non un azzardo, che continua a metterci di fronte a difficoltà inaggirabili. La prima si chiama specialismo: ogni studioso è in questa condizione, cui di fatto le istituzioni accademiche spingono anche quando sembrano favorire gli incontri fra discipline diverse. Il paradosso è dunque che non si può dare comparazione seria se prima non si è data una qualche forma di specialismo. È questo lo spirito che anima i contributi raccolti in questo volume. I saggi qui raccolti, infatti, affrontano il tema dell’interruzione e della cesura da prospettive e con approcci molteplici, in una varietà di studi che complessivamente ricadono negli ambiti della linguistica, della letteratura e della metrica. Sta al lettore individuare le intersezioni possibili, guidato dai propri interessi, come anche riconoscere che, in una certa misura, ci sono metodi o approcci o declinazioni di uno stesso tema non sovrapponibili.

«Das entsetzliche Schreien ringsum». Distorsioni pararomantiche nel cinema di Werner Herzog, in: «Lasst den Gesang erschallen! Macht mich Still». Dissonanze e trasfigurazioni nella letteratura e nella cultura tedesche, hrsg. v. F. Rossi e L. Zenobi, Mucchi, Modena 2024, S. 115-128

Speculum mundi. Realismo linguistico e nominalismo nella metafora del linguaggio-specchio, in: «Atti e Memorie dell’Accademia Toscana di Scienze e Lettere “La Colombaria”», LXXXVIII, LXXII, anno 2023, Leo S. Olschki, Firenze 2024, ISBN 9788822269249, S. 231-244

Atti e Memorie dell’Accademia Toscana di Scienze e Lettere “La Colombaria”, 2023

Ad imaginem suam. The Adamic Model and Exclusive Monoanthropism in Human Simulacra, «Between», XII, 24 (2022), pp. 551-575

Between, 2022

The aim of the present paper is to trace the Nachleben of the logics characterizing the Adamic ep... more The aim of the present paper is to trace the Nachleben of the logics characterizing the Adamic episode within the fictional reflection on human simulacra. In fact, Judeo-Christian 'exclusive monotheism' is based on the strict ontological differentiation of God, the unique Creator, from the World, as his Creation. Such a conception of monotheism is, as Jan Assmann pointed out, strictly connected to a repressive exercise of violence and to God's opposition against every possible form of ontological rivalry. In the Genesis, Yahweh turns this law machinery even against his simulacra, the creatures made «in his own image»: Adam and Eve are removed from Eden and condemned to mortality only as a result of their attempt to become «like God, knowing good and evil». By means of a brief analysis of some exemplary literary cases (Mary Shelley, Isaac Asimov, Ernst Jünger), an attempt will be made to show how the fear and violence exercised by man towards his simulacra are deeply linked to a secular revival of the theological-juridical complex intertwined with the Adamic model.

Hauspostille: linguaggio teologico-negativo e negazione della teologia nel giovane Brecht, in: «ODRADEK. Studies in Philosophy of Literature, Aesthetics, and New Media Theories», 4 (2018), 2, pp. 121-154

ODRADEK. Studies in Philosophy of Literature, Aesthetics, and New Media Theories, 2019

The present paper aims to investigate Brecht’s early interpretation of the divine and to show to ... more The present paper aims to investigate Brecht’s early interpretation of the divine and to show to what extent the Hauspostille poetic collection adopts formal strategies similar to those of the negative theology. As Hans Mayer has already pointed out, the Hauspostille is in fact an “umfunktionierte Theologie”, framed not only as a simple ironic-atheistic twisting of the theological discourse, but also as an attempt to re-function, in a secularized form, certain linguistic garments and structures of thought proper to the religious tradition. “Umfunktionierte Theologie”: recovering this formula, we refer to a theology that is not only re-functionalized, but also overturned. In an attempt to bring the notion of deus absconditus to its extreme consequences and, at the same time, to turn man’s attention towards the cold reality of immanence, Brecht would end up preparing a secularized version, in an aesthetic sense, of Luther’s own theologia crucis and propose a negative theology that presents, as its only aim, that of denying theology itself.

Schrecken vor Tod. Un’ipotesi di intertestualità tra la Traumnovelle di Arthur Schnitzler e le Sieben Variationen di Heimito von Doderer, in «Studi Germanici», 13 (2018), pp. 221-241

Studi Germanici, 2018

The present paper examines the potential and undeclared intertextual link between Arthur Schnitzl... more The present paper examines the potential and undeclared intertextual link between Arthur Schnitzler's Traumnovelle and Heimito von Doderer's Sieben Variationen über ein Thema von Johann Peter Hebel, with a specific focus on the ambiguous and contradictory character of the relationship between the two Viennese writers. Through an investigation of the scattered statements included in the early Tagebücher, as well as the contrastive analysis of both textes, it will be provided what it seems to be a missing page in the research on Heimito von Doderer's literary sources and, at the same time, a further scientifical support for the investigations of one of his less-known works.

Caduta dell'epos e rinascita della tragedia: Paul Ernst e il Nibelungenlied, «Studi Germanici», 11 (2017), pp. 91-103

Studi Germanici, 2017

From an initial phase of rediscovery, characterized by a comparison with ancient Greek epic poetr... more From an initial phase of rediscovery, characterized by a comparison with ancient Greek epic poetry and the attempt to present it as poem of national identity for the German people, the Nibelungenlied has been the object of many renowned dramatic versions. At the height of this trend, just as the work was being co opted by Nazi propaganda, the playwright Paul Ernst noted the decline of the epic poem, and with the theoretical support of György Lukács, re-examined the Nibelungenlied through a revisitation of classic Greek drama. Through an analysis of his theoretical essays and preparatory material for the tragedy Brunhild (1909), the present paper examines Ernst’s work providing not only a further reappraisal of the reception of the Nibelungenlied, but also a specific case study illustrating some of the most crucial aspects of literarische Moderne: linguistic issues, the function of myth, classical antiquity, the decline of epic poetry and the weight of Nietzsche’s legacy.

"Il pifferaio magico" tra canone occidentale e tradizione dell'Est europeo, «Il Ponte», 3 (2015), pp. 80-85

Gabriele Guerra – Maurizio Pirro (a cura di), Stefan George, «Cultura Tedesca», 59 (2020), pp. 198, in «Studi Germanici», 20 (2021), S. 163-266

Studi Germanici, 2021

E.T.A. Hoffmann: I fratelli di Serapione. Racconti e fiabe. Tomo I, a cura di Matteo Galli, L'orma, Roma 2020, In: «Allegoria», 83 (2021)

Gabriele Guerra (a cura di): Tra ribellione e conservazione. Monte Verità nella cultura tedesca, Studi Germanici, Roma 2018, In: «Studi Germanici», 18 (2021)

Studi Germanici, 2021

Andreas Kablitz: Zwischen Rhetorik und Ontologie. Struktur und Geschichte der Allegorie im Spiegel der jüngeren Literaturwissenschaft. (Neues Forum für Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft 50) Winter, Heidelberg 2016. 260 S., in: «Scientia Poetica», 24 (2020), S. 497-502

Scientia Poetica, 2020

Bioromantik. Il rapporto tra poesia e microrganismi nel romanticismo jenese (sull’esempio di F. Schelling), Giornata di Studi "Simpoesia. Romanticismi in contesto globale", Università di Pisa, 5. Dezember 2024

Si potrebbe forse dare inizio ad un'epoca del tutto nuova nelle scienze e nelle arti, se la sinfi... more

“Die puncten […], wo die verschiedenen Reiche zusammen zu treffen und ineinander überzugehen scheinen”. Goethe, Lichtenberg e l’indistinto metamorfico, Convegno internazionale “Trans-formare. La metamorfosi nella letteratura, nell'arte, nelle scienze e nel pensiero europei”, Roma 25-27 Nov. 2024

La luce infilmabile. La rappresentazione del linguaggio mistico in Vision di Margarethe von Trotta. Convegno "Hannah Ingeborg Rosa e le altre. Il cinema di Margarethe von Trotta", Università di Firenze, 20.-21 November 2024

“Il vuoto delle parole. Giorgio Caproni lettore di Hofmannsthal”, Tagung "Hofmannsthal in Italia”, 18.–19. November 2024, Università di Trieste

Enzensbergers "fundamentlose" Episteme, Internationale Tagung “Schiffbrüche verhandeln. Kritik, Skepsis und Ironie im Werk Hans Magnus Enzensbergers”, 30.10.–02.11.2024, Akademie der Wissenschaften, Szeged (Ungarn)

Das Nachleben der potentia Dei absoluta bei Robert Musil, Internationales Forschungskolloquium WiSe – SRCTS Stuttgart, Kloster Höchst – 25./27.10.2024

[With Franz Fischer, Claus Zittel] Goethes Venezianische Epigramme. Case-Studies and Genetic Modeling, International Workshop, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, 10th July

Frugando in scatole cinesi. Sulle tracce del genere letterario dei gong'an nell'opera di Kafka, Giornata di Studi “Un certo Kafka. A cento anni dalla morte dello scrittore”, Universit di Pisa, 03.-04. Juni 2024

«Ich will kein Knecht mehr sein von Götterworten, Priesterworten, Buddhaworten, Menschenworten». Theological-political Silence in the Early 20th Century Anarchist German Literature, International Conference “EuARe 2024” (European Academy of Religion), Palermo, 20.-23. Mai 2024

[Mit Franz Fischer, Claus Zittel und Daniele Fusi] Goethe’s Venezianische Epigramme. A Critical Digital Edition, International Conference “GENESIS 2024: Constants and Variants in Genetic Criticism”, Università di Bologna, 09.-11. Mai 2024

“«Ein scheinbares Einpfählen der scheinbaren Sache». Zu Franz Kafkas narrativen Phänomenologien”, Internationale Tagung "Kafka nach hundert Jahren”, IISG (Rom), 16.-17. April 2024

[Mit Daniele Fusi] Goethes Venezianische Epigramme tra sperimentazione e fruizione: Modeling, Flow Plan e questioni filologiche, “Accessibilità, sostenibilità e riuso nell’ecosistema delle edizioni scientifiche digitali”, Istituto Italiano di Studi Germanici (Rom), 8. Februar 2024

“Kafka nach hundert Jahren”, Università di Venezia Ca' Foscari, 29.-30. Januar 2024

Werner Herzog in Italia, Workshop “Il Cinema Tedesco in Italia: Co-Produzione, Distribuzione, Funzione”, 30.11-01.12.2023 Università di Firenze

Goethes Venezianische Epigramme: Ein Blick in die Editionswerkstatt, “9. Internationales und interdisziplinäres Nachwuchs-forschungskolloquium für Literaturwissenschaft und Philosophie”, Universität Stuttgart – Universitat de Valencia, Miltenberg 03.-05. November 2023

«Wie eine hohle Form». On Rainer Maria Rilke’s Kenotic Modernism, “Uses of Modernism”, Ghent University, 20.-22. September 2023

The aim of the present proposal is to offer a new systematization of the religious sources of Rai... more The aim of the present proposal is to offer a new systematization of the religious sources of Rainer Maria Rilke’s (1875-1926) poetological workshop during the first decade of the 20th century, between the linguistical skepticism of the Stunden-Buch (1899-1903) and the heights of the upcoming modernist masterpiece Duineser Elegien (1912-1922). Faced with the Fin-the-siècle European Sprachkrise and thus the impossibility of establishing an ontological connection between sign and referent, Rilke tried to find his way out through a redefinition of the meaning of ‘silence’. Instead of seeing it as the byproduct of a tragic failure of the denotative function of language, in fact, the poet resorted to the vast tradition of apophaticism, which not only treasured silence as the most respectful form of speech with regard to the ultimate Reality, but also understood it as the language of God itself. More specifically, by means of an eclectic hybridization of Eckhartian Gelassenheit, the negative theology of Angelus Silesius, the theologies of love of the Frauenmystik, the Buddhist concept of śūnyatā (emptiness) and the Pauline tradition of Kenosis, the Austrian poet tried to restore the severed bond between words and things by emptying language of its semantic content in order to allow things to flow freely into it. Rilke used three different but coherent metaphors to describe such a process: First, the image of the Mulde, the empty mould into which molten metal is poured to produce a statue; second, the Schale (shell) of the Buddha’s body, which silently envelops the whole world; third, the Virgin Mary’s womb, through which the immaterial Logos empties itself (kenosis) in order to receive a body and enter the world. The direct result of this rich interplay between poetry and religious tradition was the creation of the paradoxical mimesis of the Neue Gedichte (1907), where the poetic form of the Dinggedicht aimed not to speak of reality but rather to let reality speak through the poem itself.

Das leere Paradies. Über Kafkas Anderswo und die Negativitätsgrade der Heimatlosigkeit, Internationale Tagung “Heimatlosigkeit. Ästhetisches und kritisches Potential einer Figur der Negativität in der deutschsprachig-jüdischen Literatur des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts", 5.-6. Oktober 2022, Pisa

Ad imaginem suam. The Adamic Model and the ‘Exclusive Monoanthropism’ of Human Simulacra, “Configurazioni del simulacro in letteratura, arte, tecnologia e società”, Università di Pisa, 26.-28. Januar 2022

The Incarnate Word. The Theological Ground of an Aesthetic Reflexion on the Boundaries between Orality and Literacy in German-Speaking Modernity (Hugo Ball, Robert Walser) – Making Meaning Across Media: Orality and Literacy in Germanic Languages – Indiana University Bloomington, 19-20th March 2021

The present proposal aims to investigate the ways in which two authors of German literary moderni... more The present proposal aims to investigate the ways in which two authors of German literary modernity, Hugo Ball and Robert Walser, have recovered the theological reflection on the relationship between literacy and orality, thus accessing new, avant-garde artistic experimentations and pushing the boundaries between text and oral speech. Reading Hugo Ball's autobiographical work Die Flucht aus der Zeit, it is in fact possible to understand how the Dadaistic Lautdichtung has been inspired by the performative dimension of the Catholic Mass and by the priest's ability to produce a sense of community based on the simultaneous production and reception of the psalmodizing word. The text is thus torn from its written rigidity and becomes, through the body of the priest and the acoustic materialty of the spoken word, an ecstatic and aesthetic glue that holds the audience together. In other terms, Ball, who defined himself a magischer Bischof (magical bishop), tried to revive an historically corrupted and socially ineffective literacy by the means of an artistic rehabilitation of ritualism, the mystical presence of the body, and the absolute dimension of a meaningless, performed language. On the side of modernism, the Swiss author Robert Walser has instead investigated the phonocentric nature of Christian narrative strategies, dedicating numerous reflections to the figure of Christ – not only the living embodiment of the divine logos, but also an authentic storyteller whose literary production (the testamentary parables) has always been entrusted to the orality and the physical presence of its narrator. The combination of these ancient and modern exchanges between orality and literacy allows us to understand the degree of complexity involved in the theological reflection on these two aspects of human linguistic experience: a complexity still capable of generating meaning and influencing two of the most disruptively modern exponents of early twentieth-century literature.

Un fisiologo della modernità. “Das große Bestiarium der modernen Literatur” di F. Blei tra identikit letterari e identità di un'epoca, Seminario tridottorale “Espressioni e poetiche dell'identità”, Università di Pisa, 08-10 Oktober 2020

Scrittore, critico, editor e pervasivo mediatore, l'austriaco Franz Blei (1871-1942) è una tra le... more Scrittore, critico, editor e pervasivo mediatore, l'austriaco Franz Blei (1871-1942) è una tra le più eccentriche e sfaccettate figure dell'identità culturale mitteleuropea. Nel suo irriverente testo “Das große Bestiarium der modernen Literatur” (1922-1924), primo abbozzo di quello che sarebbe dovuto divenire un tentativo di storiografia letteraria, l'autore tentò di ricostruire un bislacco profilo della letteratura del suo tempo, rompendo ogni accademismo e assumendo le improbabili vesti di un fisiologo della modernità: il cavallo da corsa Schnitzler, il trampoliere George, il ‘gazzelliforme’ Hofmannsthal, il topo Kafka, i coleotteri xilofagi Heinrichmann e Thomasmann o lo zoologo Nietzsche vengono così raccolti nell'immaginario ‘parco naturale’ del fin de siècle e formano i dissacranti tasselli di un'acuta operazione culturale, volta a dissezionare e riassemblare il carattere fittizio delle identità autoriali tratteggiate da ogni moderno tentativo di canonizzazione.

“Through the Protean Text. A Morphological Approach to Textual Genesis”, Gastvortrag im Rahmen des Seminários de Pós-graduação “Modernidade e História Cultural” von Prof. Henry Burnett, Universidade Federal de São Paulo (Brasile) [online], 16. August 2024

Textpolypen der Goethezeit. Organische Schreibpraxis in Goethes Venezianischen Epigrammen, Vortrag im Rahmen des “Forschungsoberseminars von Prof. Dr. Claus Zittel”, 29. Januar 2024, SRCTS (Stuttgart, online)

Morphologie im Wandel. Passato, presente e futuro dell’approccio morfologico agli studi letterari, Gastvortrag im Rahmen des Seminarzyklus “Unter Palmen”, Università di Padova, 27. April 2023

Morphologie im Wandel Passato, presente e futuro dell'approccio morfologico agli studi letterari ... more

Analyse der literarischen Sprachreflexion der Moderne aus der Sicht ihrer Verhältnisse mit der Tradition des theologischen Sprachdenkens, Gastvortrag im Rahmen des Oberseminars von Prof. Dr. Friedrich Vollhardt, LMU München, 3. Dezember 2019