Fabio Vittorini (born 19 December 1971) is an Italian

literary critic A genre of arts criticism, literary criticism or literary studies is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical analysis of literature' ...

, currently

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

Comparative Literature Comparative literature studies is an academic field dealing with the study of literature and cultural expression across language, linguistic, national, geographic, and discipline, disciplinary boundaries. Comparative literature "performs a role ...

IULM University of Milan The IULM University - Milan () is a university located in Milan, Italy. It was founded in 1968 and is organized in four faculties. History and profile The University Institute for Modern Languages (IULM) was founded by Carlo Bo, poet, literar ...

(Italy) He is known for his studies on

opera Opera is a form of History of theatre#European theatre, Western theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by Singing, singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically ...

and on metamodern narratives. He is the author of many books and articles.

Biography

In 1995 he graduated in Modern Literature at University of Bologna under the supervision of Mario Lavagetto. In 1999 he got a Ph.D. in Literary Theory at University of Bergamo. Between 1996 and 2001 he gave seminars on

Literary Theory Literary theory is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for literary analysis. Culler 1997, p.1 Since the 19th century, literary scholarship includes literary theory and considerations of intellectual history, m ...

and

at University of Bologna. Between 2001 and 2002 he was lecturer of Italian Contemporary Literature at University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. Between 2002 and 2007 he was associate professor of

and Music and Image at

. Since 2018 he is full professor at the same university, where he also coordinates a Master
Television, cinema and new media
and
Multimedia Laboratory
and is a member of the board o
Visual and Media Studies Ph.D
He is a member of the Italian National Council of Literary Critic and Comparative Literature. He is a member of the steering committees of the following reviews of comparative literature: “Poli-Femo”, "Symbolon” and “Comparatismi”. He is a member of the editorial office of the movies webzin
duels.it
He reviews musical events for the Italian newspaper

Il Manifesto (; English: "the manifesto") is an Italian daily newspaper published in Rome, Italy. While calling itself " communist" and broadly left-wing, it is not connected to any political party A political party is an organization that coordin ...

. He is author and host of cultural tv shows for Italian National Television

RAI (), commercially styled as since 2000 and known until 1954 as (RAI), is the national public broadcasting company of Italy, owned by the Ministry of Economy and Finance. RAI operates many terrestrial and subscription television channels a ...

Research Interests

Gender Studies

In the book ''Normal People. Gender and generations in transit between literature and media'' (2022), together with other colleagues from IULM University, he mapped the complex relationships between gender identity and literary and media genres in the contemporary landscape. In the two volumes ''Queer Bodies. Trans* identities in literature and media. From the end of the 19th century to the 1970s'' and ''Queer Bodies. Trans* identities in literature and media. From the 1970s to today'', both published in 2024, he reconstructed the history of the connected concepts of gender identity and transition in literature and media from the end of the 19th century to the present, with particular attention to the Italian cultural context.

Opera and Melodrama

In his book ''Shakespeare and romantic opera'' (2000) he outlined how

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...

's plays entered the European continental literature and culture, mostly through French dramatic rewritings during the 18th century and, after the romantic consecration, through Italian operatic adaptations during the 19th century. In his book ''The Threshold of the Invisible. A Journey into Macbeth: Shakespeare, Verdi, Welles'' (2005), he deepened the points of the

intertextual Intertextuality is the shaping of a text's meaning by another text, either through deliberate compositional strategies such as quotation, allusion, calque, plagiarism, translation, pastiche or parody,Gerard Genette (1997) ''Paratexts'p.18/ref>Hal ...

, inter-semiotic, inter-cultural and intermedial translation focusing on the case of

Macbeth ''The Tragedy of Macbeth'', often shortened to ''Macbeth'' (), is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, estimated to have been first performed in 1606. It dramatises the physically violent and damaging psychological effects of political ambiti ...

(Shakespeare's

tragedy A tragedy is a genre of drama based on human suffering and, mainly, the terrible or sorrowful events that befall a tragic hero, main character or cast of characters. Traditionally, the intention of tragedy is to invoke an accompanying catharsi ...

, Giuseppe Verdi's

and Orson Welles's

movie A film, also known as a movie or motion picture, is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, emotions, or atmosphere through the use of moving images that are generally, sinc ...

) In his book ''Dream in Opera. Oneiric Tales and Operatic Texts'' (2010) he used the

Freud Sigmund Freud ( ; ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies seen as originating from conflicts in t ...

's psychoanalysis tools to build a theory about the structural relationship between oneiric and operatic languages. In his book ''Melodrama. An intermedia path between theater, novel, cinema and TV series'' (2020) he explored the melodramatic mode as a typically modern device of aesthetic knowledge, going back to the origins of the melodramatic imagination, mapping its deep structures and reconstructing the historical relationships between the genre where it initially crystallized (''

mélodrame A melodrama is a dramatic work in which plot, typically sensationalized for a strong emotional appeal, takes precedence over detailed characterization. Melodrama is "an exaggerated version of drama". Melodramas typically concentrate on dialo ...

'') and the contemporary or later genres where it spread, in particular romantic opera, realist-naturalist novel, American film and television

melodrama A melodrama is a Drama, dramatic work in which plot, typically sensationalized for a strong emotional appeal, takes precedence over detailed characterization. Melodrama is "an exaggerated version of drama". Melodramas typically concentrate on ...

, psychoanalysis and European auteur cinema, contemporary novel.

Narratology and
Metamodernism Metamodernism (from meta- and modernism) is the term for a cultural discourse and paradigm that has emerged after postmodernism. It refers to new forms of contemporary art and theory that respond to modernism and postmodernism and integrate aspec ...

In his very first book ''Story and Plot'' (1998) and in the following ''The'' ''Narrative Text'' (2005) he explored possibilities of classical

narratology Narratology is the study of narrative and narrative structure and the ways that these affect human perception. The term is an anglicisation of French ''narratologie'', coined by Tzvetan Todorov (''Grammaire du Décaméron'', 1969). Its theoretica ...

to define the recurring structures of narrative texts in modern, modernist and postmodernist traditions. In 2015, after a decade of academic courses and studies, in his book ''USA Narrative 1984-2014: Novels, Films, Graphic Novels, TV Series, Video-games etc.'', he outlined the story of contemporary United States narrative fiction. In 2017, in his book ''Telling today. Metamodernism between narratology, hermeneutics and intermediality'', starting from the previous exploration and extending it beyond the limits of USA culture, he tried to develop a theory of the metamodern narratives.

Italo Svevo

In 2004 he carried out the philological edition of

La coscienza di Zeno ''Zeno's Conscience'' ( ) is a novel by Italian writer Italo Svevo. The main character is Zeno Cosini, and the book is the fictional character's memoirs that he keeps because his psychoanalyst recommended to do so in order to overcome his illnes ...

and of the unfinished forth novel by

Italo Svevo Aron Hector Schmitz (19 December 186113 September 1928), better known by the pseudonym Italo Svevo (), was an Italian and Austro-Hungarian writer, businessman, novelist, playwright, and short story writer. A close friend of Irish novelist and ...

(''Il vecchione'' or ''Il vegliardo''), within ''The'' ''Complete Works'' of

(3 voll., Milano, Mondadori, ed. by Mario Lavagetto), which imposed itself as the basic edition for any later Svevo's critics. In 2011 he wrote ''Italo Svevo,'' a monographic book on the author.

Bibliography

Books

* ''Queer Bodies. Identità trans* nella letteratura e nei media. Da fine Ottocento agli anni Settanta'' (Queer Bodies. Trans* identities in literature and media. From the end of the 19th century to the 1970''s), Bologna, Pàtron, 2024, '' * ''Queer Bodies. Identità trans* nella letteratura e nei media. Dagli anni Settanta a oggi'' (Queer Bodies. Trans* identities in literature and media. From the 1970s to today), Bologna, Pàtron, 2024, * ''Normal People. Gender e generazioni in transito tra letteratura e media'' (Normal People. Genders and generations in transit between literature and media), ed. by Fabio Vittorini and Federico Bortolini, Bologna, Pàtron, 2022, * ''Melodramma. Un percorso intermediale tra teatro, romanzo, cinema e serie tv'' (Melodrama. An intermedia path between theater, novel, cinema and TV series), Bologna, Pàtron, 2020, * ''Nuove narrazioni mediali. Musica, immagine, racconto'' (New media narrations. Music, image, story), ed. by Fabio Vittorini, Bologna, Pàtron, 2019 * ''Raccontare oggi. Metamodernismo tra narratologia, ermeneutica e intermedialità'' (Telling today. Metamodernism between narratology, hermeneutics and intermediality), Bologna, Pàtron, 2017 * ''Narrativa USA 1984-2014: romanzi, film, graphic novel, serie tv, videogame e altro'' (USA Narrative 1984-2014: Novels, Films, Graphic Novels, TV Series, Video-games etc.), Bologna, Pàtron, 2015 * ''Italo Svevo'', Milano, Mondadori, 2011 * ''Il sogno all'opera. Racconti onirici e testi melodrammatici'' (Dream in Opera. Oneiric Tales and Operatic Texts), Palermo, Sellerio, 2010 * ''Il testo narrativo'' (The Narrative Text), Roma, Carrocci, 2005 * ''La soglia dell'invisibile. Percorsi del Macbeth: Shakespeare, Verdi, Welles'' (The Threshold of the Invisible. A Journey into Macbeth: Shakespeare, Verdi, Welles), Roma, Carocci, 2005 * ''Italo Svevo: Guida alla "Coscienza di Zeno''" (Italo Svevo: A Guidebook to "La Coscienza di Zeno"), Roma, Carocci, 2003 * ''Shakespeare e il melodramma romantico'' (Shakespeare and Romantic Opera), Firenze, La Nuova Italia, 2000 * ''Fabula e intreccio'' (Story and Plot), Firenze, La Nuova Italia, 1998

TV Programs

2015: ''

Spoon River Anthology ''Spoon River Anthology'' is a 1915 collection of short free verse poems by Edgar Lee Masters. The poems collectively narrate the epitaphs of the residents of Spoon River, a fictional small town named after the Spoon River, which ran near Maste ...

'' (on

Edgar Lee Masters Edgar Lee Masters (August 23, 1868 – March 5, 1950) was an American attorney, poet, biographer, and dramatist. He is the author of '' Spoon River Anthology'', ''The New Star Chamber and Other Essays'', ''Songs and Satires'', ''The Great V ...

' poems) 2017: ''

Dracula ''Dracula'' is an 1897 Gothic fiction, Gothic horror fiction, horror novel by Irish author Bram Stoker. The narrative is Epistolary novel, related through letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles. It has no single protagonist and opens ...

'' (on

Bram Stoker Abraham Stoker (8 November 1847 – 20 April 1912), better known by his pen name Bram Stoker, was an Irish novelist who wrote the 1897 Gothic horror novel ''Dracula''. The book is widely considered a milestone in Vampire fiction, and one of t ...

's novel and its

adaptations In biology, adaptation has three related meanings. Firstly, it is the dynamic evolutionary process of natural selection that fits organisms to their environment, enhancing their evolutionary fitness. Secondly, it is a state reached by the p ...

) 2018: ''

Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe (; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic who is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales involving mystery and the macabre. He is widely re ...

- The Last Four Days'' (on the life and works of the writer). 2022: ''The Creation of

Frankenstein ''Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus'' is an 1818 Gothic novel written by English author Mary Shelley. ''Frankenstein'' tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a Sapience, sapient Frankenstein's monster, crea ...

'' (on the life and works of

Mary Shelley Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley ( , ; ; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel ''Frankenstein, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus'' (1818), which is considered an History of science fiction# ...

)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vittorini, Fabio 1971 births Living people Italian literary critics Italian male non-fiction writers Academic staff of the IULM University of Milan University of Bologna alumni University of Bergamo alumni