Fabio Vittorini (born 19 December 1971) is an Italian literary critic, currently

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...

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

IULM University of Milan The IULM University - Milan ( it, Libera Università di Lingue e Comunicazione IULM ) 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 ...

(Italy) He is known for his studies on

opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a libr ...

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

RAI RAI – Radiotelevisione italiana (; commercially styled as Rai since 2000; known until 1954 as Radio Audizioni Italiane) is the national public broadcasting company of Italy, owned by the Ministry of Economy and Finance. RAI operates many ter ...

Research Interests

Opera and Melodrama

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

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 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 XVIII Century and, after the romantic consecration, through Italian operatic adaptations during the XIX 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>H ...

, inter-semiotic, inter-cultural and intermedial translation focusing on the case of Macbeth (Shakespeare's

tragedy Tragedy (from the grc-gre, τραγῳδία, ''tragōidia'', ''tragōidia'') is a genre of drama based on human suffering and, mainly, the terrible or sorrowful events that befall a main character. Traditionally, the intention of tragedy ...

, Giuseppe Verdi's

and Orson Welles's

movie A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...

) In his book ''Dream in Opera. Oneiric Tales and Operatic Texts'' (2010) he used the Freud'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 modern melodrama is a dramatic work in which the plot, typically sensationalized and for a strong emotional appeal, takes precedence over detailed characterization. Melodramas typically concentrate on dialogue that is often bombastic or exces ...

'') and the contemporary or later genres where it spread, in particular romantic opera, realist-naturalist novel, American film and television melodrama, psychoanalysis and European auteur cinema, contemporary novel.

Narratology and Metamodernism

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. It is an anglicisation of French ''narratologie'', coined by Tzvetan Todorov (''Grammaire du Décaméron'', 1969). Its theoretical li ...

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 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 writer, businessman, novelist, playwright, and short story writer. A close friend of Irish novelist and poet James Joyce, Svevo ...

(''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

* ''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'' (1915), by Edgar Lee Masters, is a collection of short free verse poems that collectively narrates the epitaphs of the residents of Spoon River, a fictional small town named after the Spoon River, which ran near Masters' ...

'' (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'' (on Bram Stoker'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 ...

) 2018: ''

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

- 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 novel written by English author Mary Shelley. ''Frankenstein'' tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific ...

'' (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; or, The Modern Prometheus'' (1818), which is considered an early example of science fiction. She also ...

)

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