1. Literary Hybrids
The research investigates the modes of interaction between literature and media that give rise to hybrid literary genres. I have studied two examples from the perspective of both production and circulation in the literary and media fields:
- The Imagined Interview: while the interview appears in the newspapers, the authors begin to imagine interviews that never took place and in which they entertain themselves or talk to other characters. The imagined interview is a new literary genre that builds on the forms of the journalistic genre of the interview. As its derivation, the imagined interview also spreads from publishing to radio, from television to digital devices (see my Open Access book).
- Pseudo-Essays: the term “pseudo-essay” denotes a literary form of the critical essay. Here, literary criticism escapes from its institutional function and context and appears as a camouflage of another genre. Through different strategies of camouflage, the pseudo-essays spread throughout Europe and the United States, and they experience various metamorphosis in combination with different media supports, such as journalism, theatre, literary books (fiction and autobiography). Finally, the pseudo-essay represents a hybrid form with visual media, as in the case of the video essay. See Pseudo-saggi. (Ri)Scritture tra critica e letteratura (2019). The research on essay’s genre and its relationship with the novel is also the core of my first volume, dedicated to a specific case study: Roland Barthes e la tentazione del romanzo (Morellini, 2013).
2. The Imagination of Flight
The research investigates the impact of technological, material and ideological changes on literature and mass culture. The relationships between literature and society are studied through the historical-material analysis of the influences that mechanical and technological innovations imprint on cultural and artistic products such as texts, paintings, art installations, movies, etc. The project aims to study changes in the imagination of flight (in the modes of vertical viewpoint, air travel, means of ascension) at the appearance of the airplane (see “«Il sopra delle nubi è un altro mondo». L’immaginario aviatorio tra le due guerre”).
Further information on my research projects is available on my personal website.
