Grazia PulvirentiUniversity of Catania | UNICT · Department of Humanities (DISUM)
Grazia Pulvirenti
Professor
About
44
Publications
7,128
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48
Citations
Citations since 2017
Introduction
Grazia Pulvirenti, Dr. phil., tenur edprofessor of German Studies at the University of Catania since 2005. She was visiting fellow at the University of Vienna.
Focus of research
Grazia Pulvirenti specializes in the intersection of neurocognitive sciences and literature, with particular regard to neurohermeneutics and imagination. She is interested in bridging neurosciences and humanities, fostering the linkage among studies on the embodied brain and literature of the 18th Century.
Publications
Publications (44)
Tramite la creazione di storie, l'uomo organizza l'esperienza di sé e del mondo, il proprio vissuto, biologico e immaginario, la propria identità. E, a volte, attinge alla bellezza, nella configurazione stilistico-simbolica del testo letterario e nella sua fruizione. In Storie Menti Mondi, l'esperienza letteraria viene indagata come fenomeno dinami...
La poetologia della conoscenza di Heinrich von Kleist si configura come un viaggio nella mente umana, nelle sue capacità conoscitive e immaginative, nelle sue labilità e nei suoi trascendimenti. La totalità romantica è infranta e il linguaggio è il materiale magmatico di attraversamento del reale e della mente: in ciò si esprime un progetto epistem...
Ekphrasis is a rhetorical figure of speech based on the intertwining of visual and verbal features, involving the processes of both reading and priming a visual image or a related action. We argue in this study that this rhetorical figure, which has been object of many disputes and critical claims over the times, is a powerful tool in order to stim...
Following Wolfgang Iser’s studies, literary criticism could no longer avoid a confrontation with the phenomenology of the act of reading. This has led the analysis of a literary text towards new researches regarding the reader’s response theory. In particular, it is impossible to define the field of literary investigation, its coordinates and chara...
CALL FOR PAPERS
Imagination, Cognition, and the Arts
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
Abstract Submission Deadline 30 June 2023
Manuscript Submission Deadline 10 November 2023
Einbildungskraft (imagination) is a multifaceted mental faculty in Goethe’s theoretical writings and poetic works that is non-systematic and rich in aporias. At work in both cognitive processes and artistic production, it becomes a defining concept in Goethe’s creative understanding of natural and aesthetic processes. Einbildungskraft serves as a f...
Heinrich von Kleists Werk wird in diesem Aufsatz als Irradiationszentrum von poetischen und intermedialen Erneuerungen und politisch orientierten Aneignungen erörtert, die sich in Italien besonders zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts entwickelten. Wir werden auf drei Hauptwege dieser Kleist-Rezeption hinweisen: Einerseits werden wir die literaturkritisc...
Within the heuristic frame of the »Biocultural Turn«, this paper aims to propose a new transdisciplinary approach: the Neurohermeneutics of Suspicion. Its purpose is to investigate the literary text as a unique cognitive dynamic device with multilayered meanings and a metaphorical undercurrent, both responsive to the functioning system of the human...
Recent theories within the avenue of the bio-cultural turn, and particularly about embodied cognition are forecasted in the anthropological, philosophical, physiological and scientific debate of the late 18th century in Germany. Philosopher and theologian Johann Gottfried Herder contributed to this discourse sigificantly, opening up new perspective...
According to ancient texts on poetics, the concept of representation is deeply bound to that of “mimesis;” this last was intended in two main ways: as “imitation” and as “world construction.” In Aristotle's Poetics , mimesis is theorized as the main form of “world simulation,” giving rise to the complex universe of fiction. The concept of simulatio...
Il testo si propone di compiere un excursus storico, letterario e antropologico sullo studio della senilità dell'uomo e sulla sua rappresentazione, soffermandosi in particolar modo sui territori di lingua tedesca e sullo studio dalla fiaba di C.M:Wieland "Adis e Dahy.
Der Titel dieses Aufsatzes bezieht sich auf denjenigen eines berühmten Essays des amerikanischen Philosophen Thomas Nagel What it is like to be a bat [Wie ist es eine Fledermaus zu sein?], der darüber zu reflektieren versucht „was es bedeutet, ein bewusstes Ding zu sein“ (Nagel, 1974). Nach dem berühmten amerikanischen Psychologen und Philosophen D...
Nella raccolta di fiabe Jinnistan. Fiabe, la prosa rococò di Wieland ci trasporta in un mondo incantato, dove l’antico Oriente, mediato da Le mille e una notte, insieme all’Egitto dei misteri, affiorano attraverso una coulisse settecentesca d’ispirazione francese, popolata da geni, fate, maghi, ondine, silfidi, principi e regine, insieme a creature...
Il volume "Storie, menti, mondi", di R. Gambino e G. Pulvirenti, raccoglie il frutto di un lavoro di tessitura tra discipline sempre più dialoganti come neuroscienze, estetica e filosofia, studi cognitivi e fisiologia, letteratura e biologia. L'approccio neuroermeneutico alla letteratura intende riportare al centro dell'attenzione l'interazione tra...
In Heinrich von Kleist’s masterwork Penthesilea (1806–1808), Amazons and Greek heroes rule the stage together with many different species of animals. They are used not only metaphorically to enucleate and underlinehuman qualities or vices, but also as agents in hunting scenes. As regards the ideological issues implied by the hunting motif in the an...
Este artículo revisita la hermenéutica de la suspecha de Paul Ricœur considerándola un acto de interpretación inquisitivo basado en la intersubjetividad y destinado a desvelar significados ocultos y latentes del texto literario. En nuestra opinión, el marco teórico de Ricœur es relevante para los estudios neurocognitivos actuales aplicados a la lit...
This paper presents the results of a transdisciplinary research conducted by scholars working in the humanities and experimental psychologists in order to find an interface between the needs of a qualitative approach (mainly based on the evaluation of stylistic features) and those of a quantitative analysis, in order to find useful features for tes...
During the 18th century, debates about what constituted the sublime flourished in Europe, and particularly in Germany. These debates were nourished by two different visions: The Kantian concept supposed that the sublime is supra-sensible and rooted in reason (Logos) rather than in the object, thus provoking a mental state of tension between nature...
In the epistemic frame of the biocultural turn and of the neuroaesthetics, we have developed neurohermeneutics as an approach to literature that aims at contributing to the current debate about the linkage between literary, cognitive and neuroscientific studies, focusing on the relationship between mindbrain processes mirrored in the formal feature...
In the epistemic frame of the biocultural turn and of the neuroaesthetics, we have developed neurohermeneutics as an approach to literature that aims at contributing to the current debate about the linkage between literary, cognitive and neuroscientific studies, focusing on the relationship between mindbrain processes mirrored in the formal feature...
Desde 2014, Catania se ha ido convirtiendo en una de las sedes del pensamiento interdisciplinar más innovadoras dentro de los estudios literarios. En ese año aconteció por primera vez el Diálogo de Neurohumanidades, evento que visibilizó la labor que durante largo tiempo venía consolidando el núcleo de estudiosos de esta universidad. El evento logr...
On May 24 and 25 2019 the Interdepartmental Research Centre NewHums - Neurocognitive and Hu manities Studies organises the sixth NeuroHumanities Dialogue with the title Beauty and Embodiment in the Arts. Keynote Speakers of this year are professor Semir Zeki, professor Vittorio Gallese, professor Monika Fludernik and professor Pierluigi Sacco.
T...
Giovanna Cermelli's review of "La Mente Narrativa di Heinrich von Kleist" by Renata Gambino and Grazia Pulvirenti
Con “parole primordiali” intendiamo racchiudere il complesso
risultante dalle definizioni date in ambito tanto filologico quanto filosofico e poetico agli Urworte (parole primordiali), ai Machtworte (parole di potere), agli Stammworte (parole ceppo) o ai Wurzelworte (parole radice), oggetto di studio e indagine soprattutto nella cultura tedesca, da...
In this paper we argue that Ricoeur's concept of suspicion is significant for present-day neurocognitive studies on literature, with regard to the issues of embodiment, bodily simulation, and interpretation of textual latent meanings. Ricoeur's practice of suspicion is one of the two poles of our present inquiry on literary texts, being the second...
This paper is intended to draw attention to the theories of Johann Gottfried Herder, German philosopher, poet and theologist associated with the Enlightenment (Aufklärung) period, with reference to the modern cognitive research. We will demonstrate how Herder’s intuitions anticipated some important concepts regarding the themes of embodied mind and...
Recensione di Gambino, Renata e Grazia Pulvirenti. Storie menti mondi. Approccio neuroermeneutico alla letteratura. Mimesis, 2018, di Stefano Ballerio
This work aims to propose a new analysis of a very recurrent literary motif:
that of selling the shadow, which became very famous thanks to a masterpiece
of the German Romantics, the novel of Adelbert von Chamisso Peter
Schlemihl’s wonderful story. The attempt here is to interpret the paradoxical
splitting of the body from the shadow within the fra...
May 26 - 18, 2016 - University of Catania.
After an inspiring and ground-breaking First NeuroHumanities Dialogue about “Neuroaesthetics and Cognitive Poetics” and a Second NeuroHumanities Dialogue on “Metaphors as source of Creative Thought”, the third edition of the NeuroHumanities Dialogue will be focused on the cognitive value and neural proces...
The role Lina Loos had to play in her artistic milieu involved a permanent struggle between her authentic self and the male-dominated society which obliged her to serve as an inspiring “muse”, first of all for her more famous husband Adolf Loos. This contrast was the object of her play Wie man wird, was man ist. This paper will attempt to outline L...
Our work is based on the hypothesis of an existing interconnection between symbolic-metaphoric elements of the literary text and a series of mind patterns. These compress percep-tion and experience through the emergent process of conceptual blending triggering the seman-tic process during the creative act of poiesis. This enquiry focuses on the use...
Il mito classico recupera al mondo moderno e contempora-neo complessi definiti da Hofmannsthal come «Verkürzungen für Seelenvorgänge» 1 sulla scia di Nietzsche che nella Geburt der Tragödie ne aveva scritto nei termini di «Abbreviatur der Erscheinung». 2 Lo stesso filosofo precisa la natura del mito quale «zusammengezoge-nes Weltbild», 3 un'immagin...
This enquiry proposes an innovative analysis on Alban Berg's Wozzeck (1925) and tries to point out the archetypal structure of Totentanz emerging from the musical recurrences within Berg’s work and in Büchner’s drama. We observed elements of recurrence (visual, textual and musical ones) from a cognitive point of view, to verify if these elements, t...
Il senso religioso prega, come il pensiero pensa. Con questa riflessione, Novalis ci pone di fronte a questioni estreme, che riguardano il mistero di due delle attività principali dell’uomo di ogni epoca storica e di ogni latitudine geografica: il pensiero e la preghiera. La preghiera appare nella prospettiva novalisiana come un’attività fisiologic...
Indagine dei clichée orientaleggianti nella cultura viennese degli inizi dei secolo, attraverso l'analisi di opere letterarie e figurative del tempo.
During the 20th century the theme of fragmentation, symbol of modernity, is linked with the transformation of the concept of totality that has started since romanticism. Out of this reflection new strategies of figurations are generated. Stated in her absence, the utopia of totality originates in the perception of the deconstruction of any organic,...
Despite the apparent contrast between the thought of Georg Tralk and the one of Carl Dallago, stated in a resolute way by Dallago himself (letter to Ludwig von Ficker, 19th February 1914), a deep analysis of the writing of both authors highlights a remarkable convergence between their opposed poetics. This is shown by the tension towards an absolut...
Projects
Projects (5)
In our research, we have figured out a cognitive anthropological frame related to a neurohermeneutic theoretical model in order to investigate the act of reading as a complex linguistic, diffuse, and dynamic system. This system is hierarchically constituted in terms of time and rhythm, matching the complex diffuse activations and hierarchical organization of the mindbrain. Our heuristic model will allow to inquire the cognitive, emotional and imaginative processes put at stake by the literary experience.
29 - 30 May 2017
CATANIA - Italy
Following the three NeuroHumanities Dialogues focused on “Neuroaesthetics and Cognitive
Poetics” (2014), “Metaphors as source of creative thought” (2015) and “Ars et Ingenium: The
Processes of Imagination” (2016), the NewHums Research Centre of the University of Catania is
pleased to announce the Fourth Dialogue between neuroscientists and humanists.
The event will take place at the Benedictine Monastery in Catania. The topic of the 2017
Dialogue is: Space and Time in the Brain
Keynote speakers are (in alphabetic order):
Arthur M. Jacobs, Professor of Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology at the Freie
Universität Berlin
Patrick Colm Hogan, Professor of English at the University of Connecticut
Raoul Schrott, Austrian poet, writer and literary critic
Semir Zeki, Professor of Neurobiology at the University College London
