Mariano Longo

The paper attempts a comparison between two librettos set to music by Wolfgang Amedeus Mozart. The first, Idomeneo Re di Creta, was written by Giambattista Varesco and performed for the first time in 1780. It is an opera seria, which adopts tropes and common-places of the genre. Once Idomeneo comes back to his island, he is able to kill a monster menacing his people, thus restoring order and peace. The social structure, as emerging from the libretto, is still linked to the Ancient Regime model: society is unequal and order and justice are the output of the legitimate superiority of the sovereign.In Le nozze di Figaro, things change utterly. Written by Da Ponte after Le marriage de Figaro by Pierre-August de Beaumarchais, the libretto is imbued with the new spirit of the Enlightenment. By making reference to the libretto, I would like to show how juridical equality fosters complexity: indeed, the plot is triggered by the fact that the Count of Almaviva, Figaro’s master, has abolished the so-called jus prime noctis. This means that both Figaro and the Count are equal as to their desire to lie with Susanna (the wife-to-be of Figaro). Thus, the abolishment of a privilege produces the intricate plot of the opera, which is triggered by the Count’s necessity to seduce Susanna and to conceal his love deeds to both his wife and Figaro.

The present paper focuses on the antecedents of solidarity behavior towards Ukrainian refugees, specifically examining the role of subjective uncertainty generated in public opinion by the aggression of Ukraine on feelings of compassion and perceptions of refugees as a threat. Based on pooled data from six representative samples collected in different waves during the first six months of the Russian army’s invasion of Ukraine among a representative sample of adult Italian citizens (N = 6,063), the study provided support for the intensification hypothesis, suggesting that uncertainty can act as an affective amplifier. Indeed, the results showed that uncertainty increased perceptions of refugees as a threat (acting on its emotional component, i.e., anxiety), but also feelings of compassion, which is a main driver of solidarity. Moreover, compassion seemed to reduce the (perceived) threat posed by refugees on an economic, cultural, security, or political level. The pattern of relationships tested in the model proved to be stable across different areas of the country and for the first 6 months of the Russian invasion, suggesting that the empathic concern generated by the suffering of the Ukrainian population under attack did not significantly diminish its effects over the period considered.

The effects of climate change and increasing environmental pollution have clearly shown the vulnerability of individuals, local communities, and the natural environment, even in the Western context. However, despite such unquestionable data, International Law is still struggling to find adequate, unambiguous, effective solutions to the issue. Even the ‘human right to a healthy environment’, recognised by the UN General Assembly in 2022, is permeated by an anthropocentric idea of the world, which prevents it from fully dealing with ecosystem issues so as to protect any living and non-living being. The paper starts by exploring the historical relevance of the concept of limit and the lack of boundaries in contemporary society, aiming to show that new semantics are needed, in order to overcome contemporary extractivism. An analysis of international legislation and jurisprudence will investigate the role that the concept of ecosystem vulnerability might play in the implementation of both human rights and the rights of nature.

Engaging with the wide sociological literature on emotions, this book explores the social representation of emotions, their management and their effects by making reference to creative sources. With a specific focus on literary narrative, including the works of figures such as Dante, Austen, Manzoni, Tolstoy and Kundera, the author draws out the capacity of literary works to describe and represent both the external aspects of social relations and the inner motivations of the involved actors. An interdisciplinary study that combines sociology, narratology, philosophy, historical analysis and literary criticism, Emotions through Literature invites us to re-think the role of emotions in sociological analysis, employing literary narratives to give plausible intellectual responses to the double nature of emotions, their being both individual and social.