Paola is Lecturer in Modern Languages, University of Birmingham. After completing her PhD at Birmingham with a thesis on Image and Memory in Leopardi that was awarded a Giacomo Leopardi Prize by the Centro Nazionale di Studi Leopardiani in 2010, Paola’s main research interests have been in the fields of Italian literature and philosophy from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries and the history of ideas, with particular attention to the relations between literature and science. She has written on Leopardi and twentieth-century thought, on the role of metaphors in poetry and cinema, on the psychological and temporal forms which structure poetry, as well as on the ephemerality of printed culture. Supervisors: Prof. Michael Caesar
Il mesmerismo, o magnetismo animale, primo sistema psicoterapeutico ideato in Francia dal medico ... more Il mesmerismo, o magnetismo animale, primo sistema psicoterapeutico ideato in Francia dal medico viennese Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815), avrebbe dato vita, nel corso dell’Ottocento e nei suoi sviluppi nella scienza dell’ipnotismo, a una letteratura magnetica mondiale che propone una nuova storia e filosofia dello sguardo. Strettamente legata all’emergere di nuovi regimi visuali e nuove tecniche di osservazione della realtà, in Italia la prima espressione creativa di una sensibilità ipnotica si riscontra in Giacomo Leopardi. L’analisi contenuta in questo articolo rilegge il suo pensiero e la sua opera (con particolare attenzione al ‘Dialogo della Natura e di un Islandese’) attraverso le lenti del mesmerismo, per ricostruire l’origine di una tensione tra presenza e rappresentazione in cui la mimesi, tradizionalmente legata alla produzione immaginativa del soggetto, fa i conti con la percezione di una realtà oscena e aumentata, la cui teorizzazione troverà compimento nel postmoderno.
On page 4526 Leopardi’s Zibaldone comes to an end. This article
provides an interpretation of the... more On page 4526 Leopardi’s Zibaldone comes to an end. This article provides an interpretation of the philosophical ideas and performative instances which extend throughout the notebook, and which are responsible for the interruption of Leopardi’s writing. By analysing the tensions between two antithetical philosophical and cultural models, that of Christianity, which re-proposes itself in the figure of the ‘stupefied’ Adam, and that of ancient Greek civilization, emerging in dialogical forms of Socratic dialogue, I aim to shed light on the importance of Leopardi’s self-educational drive as an informing principle of the text. In the daily set of methods and learning practices which structure the everyday development of the notebook, and which are regulated by the principle of clarity, Leopardi’s contrasting impulses between self-reflexive control and openness to the unexpected mirror broader cultural conflicts generated by the passage from antiquity to modernity.
In both the Zibaldone and the Operette morali, Leopardi meditates on the subjective perception of... more In both the Zibaldone and the Operette morali, Leopardi meditates on the subjective perception of the flow of time and represents the intensity of existence with two antithetical models: the bird and the ephemeron. Through an analysis of internal references and external sources, this article attempts to show how the image of the `vecchio canuto' in the `Canto notturno' is intertwined with that of the ephemeron, and to highlight their shared metaphorical value. Moreover, it seeks to interpret the subliminal appearance of the ephemeron alongside the bird in the final stanza of the poem, where the three considerations introduced by `forse' register three precise stages of consciousness, which represent a shift from an inner experience of time to an extra-temporal reality.
In reconstructing the birth and development of the notion of ‘unconscious’, historians of ideas h... more In reconstructing the birth and development of the notion of ‘unconscious’, historians of ideas have heavily relied on the Freudian concept of Unbewussten, retroactively projecting the psychoanalytic unconscious over a constellation of diverse cultural experiences taking place in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries between 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 WWI, when Italo Svevo’s La coscienza di Zeno provides Italy with the first example of a ‘psychoanalytic novel’. Italy’s vibrant culture of the long nineteenth century, characterised 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 unconscious; 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 assembled. In line with Michel Foucault’s Archéologie du savoir (1969), this volume will analyze 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, inspiration, 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.
Il mesmerismo, o magnetismo animale, primo sistema psicoterapeutico ideato in Francia dal medico ... more Il mesmerismo, o magnetismo animale, primo sistema psicoterapeutico ideato in Francia dal medico viennese Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815), avrebbe dato vita, nel corso dell’Ottocento e nei suoi sviluppi nella scienza dell’ipnotismo, a una letteratura magnetica mondiale che propone una nuova storia e filosofia dello sguardo. Strettamente legata all’emergere di nuovi regimi visuali e nuove tecniche di osservazione della realtà, in Italia la prima espressione creativa di una sensibilità ipnotica si riscontra in Giacomo Leopardi. L’analisi contenuta in questo articolo rilegge il suo pensiero e la sua opera (con particolare attenzione al ‘Dialogo della Natura e di un Islandese’) attraverso le lenti del mesmerismo, per ricostruire l’origine di una tensione tra presenza e rappresentazione in cui la mimesi, tradizionalmente legata alla produzione immaginativa del soggetto, fa i conti con la percezione di una realtà oscena e aumentata, la cui teorizzazione troverà compimento nel postmoderno.
On page 4526 Leopardi’s Zibaldone comes to an end. This article
provides an interpretation of the... more On page 4526 Leopardi’s Zibaldone comes to an end. This article provides an interpretation of the philosophical ideas and performative instances which extend throughout the notebook, and which are responsible for the interruption of Leopardi’s writing. By analysing the tensions between two antithetical philosophical and cultural models, that of Christianity, which re-proposes itself in the figure of the ‘stupefied’ Adam, and that of ancient Greek civilization, emerging in dialogical forms of Socratic dialogue, I aim to shed light on the importance of Leopardi’s self-educational drive as an informing principle of the text. In the daily set of methods and learning practices which structure the everyday development of the notebook, and which are regulated by the principle of clarity, Leopardi’s contrasting impulses between self-reflexive control and openness to the unexpected mirror broader cultural conflicts generated by the passage from antiquity to modernity.
In both the Zibaldone and the Operette morali, Leopardi meditates on the subjective perception of... more In both the Zibaldone and the Operette morali, Leopardi meditates on the subjective perception of the flow of time and represents the intensity of existence with two antithetical models: the bird and the ephemeron. Through an analysis of internal references and external sources, this article attempts to show how the image of the `vecchio canuto' in the `Canto notturno' is intertwined with that of the ephemeron, and to highlight their shared metaphorical value. Moreover, it seeks to interpret the subliminal appearance of the ephemeron alongside the bird in the final stanza of the poem, where the three considerations introduced by `forse' register three precise stages of consciousness, which represent a shift from an inner experience of time to an extra-temporal reality.
In reconstructing the birth and development of the notion of ‘unconscious’, historians of ideas h... more In reconstructing the birth and development of the notion of ‘unconscious’, historians of ideas have heavily relied on the Freudian concept of Unbewussten, retroactively projecting the psychoanalytic unconscious over a constellation of diverse cultural experiences taking place in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries between 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 WWI, when Italo Svevo’s La coscienza di Zeno provides Italy with the first example of a ‘psychoanalytic novel’. Italy’s vibrant culture of the long nineteenth century, characterised 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 unconscious; 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 assembled. In line with Michel Foucault’s Archéologie du savoir (1969), this volume will analyze 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, inspiration, 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.
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Papers by Paola Cori
provides an interpretation of the philosophical ideas and performative
instances which extend throughout the notebook, and which are responsible
for the interruption of Leopardi’s writing. By analysing the tensions between
two antithetical philosophical and cultural models, that of Christianity,
which re-proposes itself in the figure of the ‘stupefied’ Adam, and that of
ancient Greek civilization, emerging in dialogical forms of Socratic dialogue,
I aim to shed light on the importance of Leopardi’s self-educational drive as
an informing principle of the text. In the daily set of methods and learning
practices which structure the everyday development of the notebook, and
which are regulated by the principle of clarity, Leopardi’s contrasting impulses
between self-reflexive control and openness to the unexpected mirror broader
cultural conflicts generated by the passage from antiquity to modernity.
Books by Paola Cori
Events by Paola Cori
Edited Volumes by Paola Cori
provides an interpretation of the philosophical ideas and performative
instances which extend throughout the notebook, and which are responsible
for the interruption of Leopardi’s writing. By analysing the tensions between
two antithetical philosophical and cultural models, that of Christianity,
which re-proposes itself in the figure of the ‘stupefied’ Adam, and that of
ancient Greek civilization, emerging in dialogical forms of Socratic dialogue,
I aim to shed light on the importance of Leopardi’s self-educational drive as
an informing principle of the text. In the daily set of methods and learning
practices which structure the everyday development of the notebook, and
which are regulated by the principle of clarity, Leopardi’s contrasting impulses
between self-reflexive control and openness to the unexpected mirror broader
cultural conflicts generated by the passage from antiquity to modernity.