Fotografie e scrittura nei testi di argomento indiano di Guido Gozzano
Additional information
Authors
Type
Journal Article
Year
2025
Language
Italian
Abstract
Through an analysis of Guido Gozzano’s (1883-1916) writings on India and the corresponding photographs, this article reflects on the stratification of meanings created by phototexts, emphasising the dynamics of contamination of the historical truth of images.
Before the texts were selected, ordered and published in the posthumous volume "Verso la cuna del mondo. Lettere dall’India" (1917), they were published in four magazines («La lettura», «La stampa», «La donna», «Bianco, rosso e verde») and accompanied by seventy-eight photographs, taken by the author himself or recycled from other publications. The images, which were later omitted from the book editions, are an integral part of the narrative and contribute to creating a fictional and stereotypical vision of India that is in line with Gozzano’s vision and far from the strictly documentary function often commonly associated with photographic representation. The study of the rhetoric of images – that is, the expedients that act on the gaze, on the layout and on the parerga; rhetoric complementary to textual rhetoric – allows to understand how they participate in the construction of the narrative and the genesis of a literary truth, rather than an historical one, and a subjective vision, simulacrum of reality.
Journal
Aura. Rivista di letteratura e storia delle idee
Volume
I
Pages (or article number)
77-95
