Forms of appropriation of the "Spectator" in Romance speaking areas: Italian periodicals

With the project we are planning a formal and thematic analysis of the Moral Weeklies in Italy, as there are Il Filosofo alla Moda, La Spettatrice, Lo Spettatore italiano, Gazzetta urbana veneta and L`Osservatore Veneto. The aim of the work is to show the strategies of fictionalization in these texts and the principal conditions of their narrative construction in the specific surrounding of local 18th century discourse. In this project we want to start from the current state of research, which was presented not only at the Romanistentag in Munich (2001), where we participated at the panel about Il Caffè, but especially in our own panel about the topic "Moral Weeklies in Europe" at the last Romanistentag in Bonn (Sept. 2009). These contributions will be published in 2010 (see bibliography). There is still no research realized in this important field. It is necessary to describe the way, in which the phenomenon of the Moral Weeklies has taken place in Italy and how this event can be observed in the texts. There is a rich game of masking and unmasking of the narrators at different levels creating a whole system of communication with a great number of narrative microstructures, which are tightly connected with the social discourses, especially with the literary system of Italy. First we will establish a formal analysis of these narrative structures. Who tells what, in which circumstances, by what voice. It is necessary to establish a detailed structure of the communicational act to have a possibility of comparison with other European "Spectators". In the second part of the work, we will give an overview of the catalogue of themes, presented in the texts. The main question will be to ask if they are related to a genuine Italian production, or if they are imported by the English or French patterns. In a third step we will integrate our results in a larger European context and study intertextual phenomenon in different "Spectators". By the method of a detailed comparison of formal and semantic structures, we can follow the files of influence in the specific areas of Romance language "Spectators". In a longer run, the aim is to enlarge our database (http://gams.uni-graz.at/mws) with the Italian Moral Weeklies of the 18th century. Some texts are already edited and partly analyzed, e.g. Il Filosofo alla Moda, L`Osservatore Veneto and La Frusta letteraria. For the publications of the outcoming results, we have founded a book series at Peter Lang with the title "Die Aufklärung in der Romania".

With the project we performed a formal and thematic analysis of the Moral Weeklies in Italy, as there are La Spettatrice, La Gazzetta urbana veneta, Lo Spettatore italiano, Il Filosofo alla moda and LOsservatore veneto as well as its sequel Gli Osservatori veneti. The aim of the work was to show the strategies of fictionalization in these texts and the principal conditions of their narrative construction in the specific surrounding of local 18th century discourse.It was necessary to describe the way, in which the phenomenon of the Moral Weeklies has taken place in Italy and how this event can be observed in the texts. There is a rich play of masking and unmasking of the narrators at different levels creating a whole system of communication with a great number of narrative microstructures, which are closely connected with the social discourses, especially with the literary system of Italy.First, we established a formal analysis of these narrative structures. Who tells what, in which circumstances, by what voice? It was necessary to establish a detailed structure of the communicational act to have a possibility of comparison with other European Spectators. In the second part of the work, we gave an overview of the catalogue of themes, presented in the texts. The main question was to ask, if they are related to a genuine Italian production, or if they are imported by the English or French patterns. In a third step we integrated our results in a larger European context by studying intertextual phenomenon in different Spectators. It was also a target to enlarge our Digital Repository with the Italian Moral Weeklies of the 18th century (http://gams.uni-graz.at/archive/objects/container:mws-it/methods/sdef:Context/get?locale=fr&mode=&context=it).Our contribution to make the spectatorial cultural heritage easily available for the academic and non-academic public also has a social impact on the self-conception of the contemporary reader. The prerequisite cultural identity for Europeans in their society is deeply shaped by the enlightened values once widely propagated by the Spectator magazines like cosmopolitism, tolerance, commitment to the needs and welfare of the citizen and of the society as a whole. Tracing these values back to previously inaccessible journalistic sources was a first and important step towards their deeper understanding. Europeans reading the Spectators may appropriate these values by rediscovering them in spectatorial magazines from their own native town or region, especially Venice. At the same time, this reading will also enable them to critically redefine the problematic parts within the traditional value system. Rediscovering outdated patriarchal patterns of behavior or culture in the Spectators, for example, could foster the readers awareness of this behavior in our society.