Claire's Literature Corner

  Introduction The relationship between science and literature has always been problematic. If we analyze the question from an epistemological point of view, what emerges is that science, since its very beginning (that is to say since the17 th  century, the birth of science as we conceive it today) has claimed to be the only group of disciplines that provides a universal knowledge. In this, science has put itself in the position of being totally against literature, claiming that the latter was only entertainment or, even worse, embellishment. That’s the reason why, still today, a vast majority of people believes that literature has almost nothing to do with the transmission of knowledge or, rather, that literature cannot provide universal ‘truths’. Literature has much to do with imagination, therefore many people think that it does nor deal with ‘real’ and important things, as on the contrary science does (or claims to do). This approach to literature might appear partially tr...

  “There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, met          To view the last of me, a living frame          For one more picture! in a sheet of flame           I saw them and I knew them all. And yet             Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,          And blew. Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.''                 Robert Browning, 1855 Stephen King hardly requires any introduction. He is probably one of the most famous American novelists of our age, and his books are read by passionate fans all over the world. King, born in 1947 in Portland, Maine, is mostly known for his horror novels.  His production is huge, varying from novels, short stories, screenplays, and even an essay about the creative process, On Writing (2000). What is really astoni...

  Dante Alighieri’s poem The Divine Comedy  , since its appearance between 1304 and 1321, has been an enormous success.This happened both in Italy, where it contributed to establish the Tuscan dialect, in which it is written, as the standard Italian language, and abroad, where it influenced the works of famous poets and artists, such as Geoffrey Chaucer, John Milton and William Blake. In England, the work knew a great success in the years immediately following its publication, but proper and complete translations of the poem did not appear until the 18 th  century. Many writers, though, inserted quotations of Dante’s poem into their own poetic production, as well as in essays, as an example of high poetry. In doing so, they often provided translations of the passages they needed: as a result, earliest attempts of translation of the Divine Comedy  are in the form of small fragments. What follows is a brief history of the most famous and important authors who, in a way...