Page 8 - Costellazioni 2

EDITORIAL

With this second issue, Costellazioni also enters its second year as a pro-
ject. This issue is devoted to the Great War and tackles the complex
relationship between the experience of total conflict and writing – a
theme that has resurfaced to become of the greatest relevance and ur-
gency in our time.
The writings examined in this collection may be regarded as a
singular type of epic which in some sense makes intelligible our own
times and experiences, in which the boundaries between the domains
of the subjective and the objective are, in social discourse, often faded,
or blurred, or overlapping.
The theme elicits a discussion of the text as documentary inscrip-
tion, touching on issues that range widely from questions of identity
to the workings of the imagination; throughout, however, one distinct-
ly perceives the overwhelming emotional impact on the texts of the
historical conditions out of which they arose. There is room, further,
for linguistic evaluations, in discussions of the peculiar influence of
certain events on the communicative process.
The Linguistics Section in this issue is devoted to French Gram-
mar. Particular emphasis is laid on natural language, declension, gen-
der, and error, in a framework which assigns great theoretical impor-
tance to the datum.
As usual, we invite our readers to write their comments to our
address and join in the discussion of a set of themes that strangely re-
verberate in the experience of our times.

Giuseppe Massara

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