Essais

Please contact me if you wish to read any of this work directly.

Presented at the ANZSA 'Shakespeare at Play' conference at the University of Melbourne, February 8, 2018.

Shakespeare’s reputation for puns, or plays on words, is well founded, but one text for which he is particularly well known is a play about words. Language in 'Hamlet' is frequently centred on the impossibility of representing meaning through acting or through words. However, Shakespeare’s playful language does not stop at the edges of the English but moves further beyond it. The critical history of connections between Shakespeare’s work and the 'Essais' of Michel de Montaigne go back as far as 1779. However, this comparative history has been largely conducted through John Florio’s 1603 translation, even though 'Hamlet' was first performed at least as early as 1600, and perhaps much earlier.

Making a case for Shakespeare’s knowledge of French, this paper will trace some of the ways in which Shakespeare has Hamlet translate Montaigne’s philosophy, with a particular focus on plays and playing. As well as acknowledging the influence of the essays’ original French on all three 'Hamlet' texts – the First and Second Quartos, and the Folio – the comparison will reveal the authors’ shared general interests in invoking multiple meanings. Furthermore, doing so will reveal ways in which Shakespeare’s linguistic playfulness in 'Hamlet' works at and beyond edges of English.

En la primera entrega de esta serie me ocupé de describir brevemente las ediciones de los Essais de Montaigne entre 1580 y 1595. En la segunda hice un recorrido sumario por las divergentes tradiciones filológicas que se han ocupado del libro de Montaigne, sobre todo a partir de fines del siglo XX. Aquí me ocupo de las últimas traducciones al castellano. La lectura de esta entrega presupone la de las primeras dos partes del trabajo.

Texto subido el 13-I-2019

This paper provides a review of the classification of travertines with emphasis on their morphology. Three criteria are used to describe them: geochemistry, microfabric and morphology. Geochemically, travertines may be divided into two groups, the meteogene travertines, where the carrier carbon dioxide originates in the soil and epigean atmosphere, and the thermal (thermogene) travertines where the carbon dioxide comes from thermally generated sources. Many travertine fabrics are influenced by bacteria and plants. These include 'stromatolitic' forms, many oncoids, shrubs, tufts, mats and moss travertines. Morphologically, travertines are conveniently divided into autochthonous (spring mounds and ridges, cascades, barrages, fluvial and lacustrine crusts, paludal deposits and cemented rudites) and the allochthonous or clastic travertines (valley-fills, back-barrage deposits, alluvial cones). Travertine deposits often include a wide range of fabrics and morphologies in one syst...

This paper aims at illuminating a very interesting cultural-mediation case that involved Romantic essayist William Hazlitt and his son, also named William. The linking point was constituted by Michel de Montaigne’s Essais, which, for William Hazlitt Sr., had represented a source of inspiration to fashion his own kind of modern essay. Hazlitt Jr., on his part, committed himself to editing a volume of Montaigne’s Complete Works, where he managed to provide a nuanced profile of the French author to an audience who had already become familiar with him via his father. Such an example was to have many followers and imitators.

In questo volume sono raccolti i saggi più rappresentativi del lungo itinerario di Sofia Boesch Gajano nella storia della santità e del culto dei santi. Il titolo intende sottolineare come l’agiografia – nella varietà delle fonti e nella lunga tradizione metodologica e storiografica – rappresenti un osservatorio, indispensabile per l’alto medioevo e rilevante in ogni epoca, per ricostruire la storia delle società, delle istituzioni, delle culture. La memoria delle esperienze religiose, dei luoghi in cui si sono realizzate, dei miracoli compiuti in vita e in morte dai martiri e dai santi, del potere attribuito alle loro reliquie, offre un ricchissimo materiale per una storia capace di recuperare ogni aspetto della realtà, facendo emergere la varietà sociale, culturale, di genere dei protagonisti e di coloro che beneficiano del potere taumaturgico.

Il volume è dedicato a Jacques Le Goff, a testimonianza di quanto i suoi scritti e ancora più la sua amicizia siano stati importanti nel percorso storiografico dell’autrice.

Back in the 1950s, Dorset longhouses were unknown to archaeologists working in the Arctic. The discovery of one near Kangirsuk (Nunavik) in the early 1960s was an important addition to the corpus of data on the Dorset culture, but it was never presented as such by Thomas Lee. Somehow, this discovery was twisted into something else, and although Dorset longhouses are today being recognized in different parts of the Arctic world, the Imaha site at Pamiok Island carries false ghosts from the past. Following unsubstantiated conclusions from archaeological work done there in the mid-1960s, the Kangirsummiut still believe the site is of Viking origin, and this myth is being carried on outside Nunavik by visitors who are not informed better. This essay aims to end this charade once and for all and restore the true nature of the Imaha site.

The recent release of some video games particularly publicized in connection with the commemorations of the centenary of the First World War induced in the collective consciousness an impression of novelty of this thematic in the field of video games. In fact, it has been treated extensively but unevenly since the 1980s, in about 150 games. We go through the history of these in order to highlight the approaches of the conflict, from the first flight simulators to realistic strategy games, including arcade or horror.