Maria Luisa Graziano

Human communication can be either monosemiotic or polysemiotic, depending on whether it combines ensembles of representations from one or more semiotic systems such as language, gesture and depiction. Each semiotic system has its unique storytelling potentials, which makes intersemiotic translation from one system to another challenging. We investigated the influence of the source semiotic system, realised in speech and a sequence of pictures, respectively, on the way the same story was retold using speech and co-speech gestures. The story was the content of the picture book Frog, Where Are You?. A group of Finnish speakers saw the story in pictures, and another group heard it in matched oral narration. Each participant retold the story to an addressee and all narrations were video-recorded and analysed for both speech and gestures. Given the high degree of iconicity in depiction, we expected more iconic gestures (especially enactments) in the narratives translated from pictures than in those translated from speech. Conversely, we expected greater narrative coherence in the narratives translated from speech. The results showed that more iconic gestures were produced in the narratives translated from speech, but these were primarily not from the enactment subtype. As expected, iconic enactments were more frequent in the narratives translated from the story presented in pictures. The narratives produced by participants who had only heard the story did not have a greater variety of connective devices, yet the type of devices differed slightly between the groups. Together with some additional differences between the groups that had not been anticipated, the results indicate that a story presented in different semiotic systems tends to be translated into different polysemiotic narratives.

This study explores the literary and cultural implications of two antithetical character types---the superman and l'inetto ---as they recur in and dominate, respectively, the works of Gabriele D'Annunzio and Italo Svevo. An analysis concerned with such a characterological opposition inevitably takes the form of a double or doubling reading. ;Chapter One undertakes a close reading of the first two novels by Svevo and two of D'Annunzio's novels. To voice my disagreement with traditional literary criticism which has relegated D'Annunzio and Svevo to opposite ends of the literary spectrum, I attempt to stage a confrontation between them that foregrounds their shared attempt to construct an "heroism" in keeping with modern life. The "superman" often proves to be "inept", the "inept" often a "superman"---albeit by default. ;Chapter Two responds to a recurrent, albeit inaccurate, criticism of D'Annunzio as an amateur narrator of sensations. I claim that sensations are D'Annunzio's instrument to counterbalance his fascination with death, a subject explored by Freud. Through a masterful description of impulses, D'Annunzio sublimates his unconscious death wish. ;Chapter Three deals with humor in Svevo's La coscienza di Zeno from a Bakhtinian viewpoint. Zeno's humor is discussed as a carnival-like overturning of the establishment. Zeno, the purported inept, turns out to be a partial winner. ;Chapter Four attempts to diagnose the historical context in which the authors operate, the subtext of which was the genesis of the Fascism, first made visible in the spectacle politics of D'Annunzio. The "inept" and "ubermensch" have a common origin in the fascination with Napoleon's glory and decline, shared by many authors in the 19th and early-20th centuries. I also describe the impact of positivism and other ideological currents upon their work. Svevo voices the necessity of moral uprightness in his work, finally fully explored in this work. D'Annunzio sets the stage for the upcoming fascism, his death wishes are staged in history. ;I conclude the dissertation with a Jungian reading of the "inept" and "ubermensch", regarding them as the "twins" of a collective archetype that is in conflict