SPONDE
type: channel
description: SPONDE - A Journal of Languages, Literatures and Cultures between the two Adriatic coasts The journal SPONDE, founded by the faculty members of the University of Zadar’s Department of Italian Studies, aims to publish research and professional papers covering a wide range of topics in the fields of linguistics, history and theory of literature, history and culture in the broader sense, and viewing the Adriatic region and its hinterlands through the lens of comparison, contact, relationship, hybridization – a perspective which has been an identifying mark of the Department for decades. We welcome submissions relating to the languages, literatures, and cultures of the regions in the Adriatic basin and following the logic of “comparing”, in the manner of comparative literature, contact linguistics, translation studies, and cultural studies. As regards methodology, the journal, as its name SPONDE suggests, also looks forward to encouraging the contact between different approaches and disciplines. We accept submissions in Italian, Croatian, and English, accompanied by abstracts in both English and Italian. We might exceptionally consider papers in other languages. Prior to publication, the papers are subject to double-blind peer review process. Submissions can fall in one of the following categories: original research paper, preliminary communication, review paper, and professional paper. Book reviews do not undergo the peer review process; instead, the decision on publication rests with the journal’s editorial board. Sponde is an open access journal, published on a semiannual basis. Submissions are open year-round. The journal was classified as A2 journal in the field of humanities by the National Council for Science, Higher Education, and Technological Development (NN 42/2026).
publisher: Sveučilište u Zadru
language: en
publication name: SPONDE
issn: 2939-3647
items: Čale Feldman, Lada. 2025. Molière ponovljen. Zagreb: Disput.
items: https://testmorepress.unizd.hr/journals/index.php/sponde/en/article/view/5006
items: https://testmorepress.unizd.hr/journals/index.php/sponde/en/article/view/5005
items: By Way of Introduction
items: Linguistic, literary and civic education
items: Beyond the Adriatic Mirror. Schiavoni’s Quaderno croato
items: “Un’altra volta lo sognai”
items: From August to November by Camillo Boito. On the Latent Library of Storielle vane
items: Retrospective reflections on Manzoni’s early linguistic ideas addressed to the purist Antonio Cesari
items: About the Baruffe chiozzotte relocated to Dubrovnik
items: Adriatic Stereoscopies
items: Rat pamćenjem u književnosti i historiografiji sjevernog Jadrana („La guerra della memoria nella letteratura e storiografia dell’Adriatico settentrionale“)
items: Vaglio, Luca. 2020. Le stagioni del romanzo di Vladan Desnica. Genesi, forme, poetica. Roma: Il Calamo.
items: Potonulo groblje by Goran Tribuson between horror fiction and film
items: Gradation of distinctive features of the literature ofthe exodus in the novel La zaratina by Silvio Testa
items: Miloš Crnjanski and the experience of the Mediterranean
items: From Language to Language
items: By way of introduction
items: Identity Oscillation in the Process of Repatriation
items: How Not to Get Lost in Translation? Transferring Croatian Realia Into Italian Culture
items: Book Reviews
items: Istro-Venetian Dialect of Tar and its Lexical Repertoire in the Semantic Field of Clothing
items: Some Aspects of Lexical Variation in Na-Našo/-u (Molise, Italy)
items: Translations and Compilations of Vialla de Sommières' Travel Book on Montenegro in Trieste Magazines
items: Deledda and Zagorka
items: Book reviews
items: Odeporica adriatica

Čale Feldman, Lada. 2025. Molière ponovljen. Zagreb: Disput.
type: item
subject: Book reviews
  topic: section
creator: Ana Bukvić
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-12-22
publication date: 2025-12-22
starting page: 236
ending page: 239
doi: 10.15291/sponde.5007

https://testmorepress.unizd.hr/journals/index.php/sponde/en/article/view/5006
type: item
title: Leto, Maria Rita, Etami Borjan, Tatjana Peruško e Katja Radoš-Perković (a c. di). 2025. Tra le due sponde dell’Adriatico: culture, storie e contatti. Studi in onore di Sanja Roić. Lanciano: Casa Editrice Carabba srl
subject: Book reviews
  topic: section
creator: Elena Kiprovska Knežić
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-12-22
publication date: 2025-12-22
starting page: 231
ending page: 235
doi: 10.15291/sponde.5006

https://testmorepress.unizd.hr/journals/index.php/sponde/en/article/view/5005
type: item
title: Bukvić, Ana, Andrijana Jusup Magazin e Sanja Paša Maračić (a c. di). 2025. PREKO MORA. Studije u čast profesora Živka Nižića / OLTRE IL MARE. Studi in onore del professor Živko Nižić. Zadar: Sveučilište u Zadru
subject: Book reviews
  topic: section
creator: Kristina Jordan
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-12-22
publication date: 2025-12-22
starting page: 228
ending page: 230
doi: 10.15291/sponde.5005

By Way of Introduction
type: item
subject: By way of introduction
  topic: section
creator: Iva Grgić Maroević
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-12-22
publication date: 2025-12-22
starting page: 8
ending page: 13
doi: 10.15291/sponde.5004

Linguistic, literary and civic education
type: item
description: The paper explores the intersections of linguistic education, literary education and civic education. The first part of the paper is therefore aimed at clarifying areas of interest of these disciplines and their interconnections. Citizenship education is examined at European level, and then in its implementation within Italian schools. In Italy, Law n. 92/2019 has defined specific norms as far as civic education is concerned, underlining that civic education is a cross-curricular subject. The Guidelines published in 2024 provide operational and methodological indications, highlighting the preference and the importance of collaborative methodologies. In this regard, the paper focuses on the main features of cooperative learning. Finally, an operational proposal is offered, based on La Nuvola di Smog, by Italo Calvino. The story was chosen because it enables students to work closely on the narrative while reflecting both on environmental issues and on relational issues.
subject: Review paper
  topic: section
subject: literary education
  topic: keywords
subject: citizenship education
  topic: keywords
subject: civic education
  topic: keywords
subject: language education
  topic: keywords
subject: Calvino
  topic: keywords
creator: Sveva Battaglia
creator: Fabio Caon
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-12-22
publication date: 2025-12-22
starting page: 211
ending page: 226
doi: 10.15291/sponde.5003

Beyond the Adriatic Mirror. Schiavoni’s Quaderno croato
type: item
description: This contribution offers an analysis of Vanni Schiavoni’s anthology Quaderno croato, a poetry collection by the young writer, highlighting its thematic complexity and stylistic maturity and published in 2020. The book, consisting of twelve poems dedicated to twelve places on the Croatian coast, uses the poetics of travel to transform the journey from a simple geographical displacement into an existential crossing and ethical-political meditation, where sensory perception, historical memory, and ethical reflection intertwine. Schiavoni transforms Croatia into a dynamic system of energies and correspondences, evoking with rare poetic intensity its islands, cities, and human figures - from the “Kornati, like small errors of the waves”, to Dubrovnik, with its “hundred names in the long sunset”, and Šibenik, a “Venice in filigree”. Schiavoni, a member of the post-industrial Salento generation, addresses in the collection the painful memory of the Yugoslav war and the complex dialogue between personal and collective identity, mediated by reflection on history and landscape. The structure of the poems in bilingual pairs (Italian-Croatian) emphasises the tension between roots and otherness. The human figures encountered fishermen, street vendors, border guards, become epiphanies of otherness and nuclei of meaning, revealing travel as an experience of encounter and self-knowledge. The poet favours a meditative and lyrical language, avoiding ideological and declamatory drifts, and restoring to the poetic text a function of resistance to oblivion and emotional reconstruction. Quaderno croato thus marks the apex of Schiavoni’s projected “Trilogy of the Roots”, representing the point of balance between his personal linguistic experimentation and a broader poetic tradition that weaves together lyrical introspection, moral tension and responsibility. The work can therefore be inscribed in the tradition of civil and testimonial poetry, which combines the aesthetic dimension with a …
subject: Preliminary communication
  topic: section
subject: odeporic literature
  topic: keywords
subject: identity
  topic: keywords
subject: Yugoslav war
  topic: keywords
subject: historical memory
  topic: keywords
subject: poetry
  topic: keywords
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-12-22
publication date: 2025-12-22
starting page: 195
ending page: 210
doi: 10.15291/sponde.5002

“Un’altra volta lo sognai”
type: item
description: The figure of Enrico Morovich (Pecine, 1906 – Lavagna, 1994) occupies an isolated place in Italian literature of the late twentieth century, moving between memorial realism and a dreamlike writing style rooted in surrealism. Born in a border city and marked by the experience of the Julian-Dalmatian exodus, in two emblematic works – Racconti di Fiume e altre cose (1985) and Un italiano a Fiume (1993) – Morovich develops a reflection on the complexity of a multi-layered identity through an interplay of fable, dream, and autobiography. In the first volume, memory is translated into a symbolic and dreamlike psychic landscape, constructed through a language of metamorphosis and visions that anticipate the later autobiographical internalization. In Un italiano a Fiume, on the other hand, the autobiographical component intensifies, and recollection becomes a practice of self-analysis: Fiume is not only a lost place, but a sentimental interlocutor, an inner projection in which the subject seeks to heal the fracture of exile. Read in dialogue, the two volumes trace a unified path of reflection on the relationship between memory, identity, and writing. Morovich works through the wound of his diasporic condition by transforming it into a creative act, constructing a “geography of the soul” in which the real and the imaginary overlap. From this perspective, Morovich’s narrative asserts itself as both testimony and an exercise in poetic resistance against oblivion: an act of regeneration of memory through language.
subject: Original research paper
  topic: section
subject: surrealism
  topic: keywords
subject: exile
  topic: keywords
subject: memory
  topic: keywords
subject: border identity
  topic: keywords
subject: fable
  topic: keywords
creator: Nicolò Dal Bello
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-12-22
publication date: 2025-12-22
starting page: 177
ending page: 192
doi: 10.15291/sponde.5001

From August to November by Camillo Boito. On the Latent Library of Storielle vane
type: item
description: This article examines the novella Dall’agosto al novembre by Camillo Boito, which contains the author’s most significant reflection on the theme of vanitas developed within his creative work (Storielle vane, 1876, and Senso. Nuove storielle vane, 1883). The analysis focuses on the landscape descriptions, on the dense network of intertextual relations and the rich latent library connected to them, and, finally, on the use of the notebook device, which invites the reader to question the reliability of the first-person narration. The initial description of Lake Maggiore makes it possible to situate the choice of the novella’s setting – unique within Boito’s narrative production – within a broad nineteenth-century pictorial and literary horizon. At the same time, the use of the personal notebook allows for an assessment of the problematic construction of the narrative self and of its strategies of self-representation. Lastly, the article considers the protagonist’s pseudo-philosophical dialogues and, in particular, the references to the Goethe-Schiller correspondence and to Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, including the textual variants that marked the transition from the periodical version of the novella to the volume edition. What emerges is a library of major classics and of authors close to the Romantic milieu, which the protagonist ostentatiously displays and appropriates in a reductive and partial manner. The reader is thus invited to reflect on the use of these sources and on their actual function within the Storielle vane, both in relation to Boito’s poetics and to the theme of vanity. Dall’agosto al novembre thus stands as a crucial hinge within the entire collection of novellas and as a particularly representative example of the modus scribendi that unites them.
subject: Original research paper
  topic: section
subject: Camillo Boito
  topic: keywords
subject: 19th-century novella
  topic: keywords
subject: Marcus Aurelius
  topic: keywords
subject: Johann Wolfgang Goethe
  topic: keywords
subject: landscape
  topic: keywords
creator: Paola Ponti
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-12-22
publication date: 2025-12-22
starting page: 145
ending page: 176
doi: 10.15291/sponde.5000

Retrospective reflections on Manzoni’s early linguistic ideas addressed to the purist Antonio Cesari
type: item
description: This presentation will analyze Manzoni’s dialogue with the “recognized leader of Italian purists, Antonio Cesari from Verona” (Vitale 2013: 120) in Due Minute of a Letter Never Sent (12 June 1827), with the aim of highlighting the novelty and uniqueness of Manzoni’s linguistic theory in the 19th-century context. Today, it is natural for us to understand that in a bilingual (multilingual) context, written and spoken language and dialects compete in linguistic codification and learning, influencing each other (De Marco 2002, Diadori-Palermo-Troncarelli 2016); just as we are aware that Italian is the result of a compromise between regional idioms and a literary variant that is mutilated in many of its parts (Bruni 1984, Cortelazzo 1986, D’Achille 1990, De Mauro 1994, Berruto 2010). However, it is not sufficiently well known that these conclusions were first described by Manzoni in his early comments on Cesari, and we still do not consider him one of the most important figures in the history of Italian linguistics. Tradition held that there was a common Italian language preserved in the canonical writings of the fourteenth (and/or sixteenth) century, that its acquisition depended on the passive study of these texts, and little attention was paid to current, oral and popular usage. Alessandro Manzoni, the first to give true value to usage (orality), could not believe that reading past writings was the most reasonable solution, both because this would have meant providing a model of dead rather than a living language, and because it would not have taken into account the concrete way in which Italians were trying to conquer their language and achieve the ideal of a single language. In fact, he began to discuss the traditional dichotomy between written and spoken language (Lingua - dialetto), recognizing and promoting the true essence of language: socially based oral tradition. In truth, thanks to an attitude that was not purist-censorial but descriptive-explanatory (Sgroi …
subject: Preliminary communication
  topic: section
subject: Manzoni
  topic: keywords
subject: Italian linguistics
  topic: keywords
subject: dialect
  topic: keywords
subject: literature
  topic: keywords
subject: use
  topic: keywords
creator: Emma Malaspina
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-12-22
publication date: 2025-12-22
starting page: 127
ending page: 144
doi: 10.15291/sponde.4999

About the Baruffe chiozzotte relocated to Dubrovnik
type: item
description: La traduzione localizzata delle Baruffe chiozzotte goldoniane nella parlata di Dubrovnik, realizzata da Morana Čale appositamente per la rappresentazione sotto la regia di Krešimir Dolenčić nell’ambito della stagione teatrale del Festival di Dubrovnik del 2025, occupa la parte centrale del contributo ed è corredata da una presentazione introduttiva e da una spiegazione di carattere tecnico-grammaticale inserita in coda, queste ultime sempre firmate dalla traduttrice/ adattatrice. Il testo prefatorio si propone di situare la traduzione-adattamento – designata col neologismo tradattamento – nel contesto della secolare tradizione teatrale di Dubrovnik. La sezione conclusiva dà notizie sull’ambientazione ragusea, riguardanti gli antroponimi, i toponimi, gli elementi folklorici e culturali, il lessico e l’idiomatica. Viene messo in rilievo il riutilizzo di elementi citazionali tratti dalle opere drammatiche della tradizione ragusea, in modo particolare dalle commedie di Marin Držić. Infine, vengono segnalate le principali differenze fra il testo del tradattamento e le modifiche apportate dall’ensemble di Dolenčić.
subject: Original research paper
  topic: section
subject: Carlo Goldoni
  topic: keywords
subject: Le baruffe chiozzotte
  topic: keywords
subject: translation into the dialect of Dubrovnik
  topic: keywords
subject: tradattamento
  topic: keywords
subject: Bühnensprache or theatrical language
  topic: keywords
creator: Morana Čale
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-12-22
publication date: 2025-12-22
starting page: 33
ending page: 126
doi: 10.15291/sponde.4998

Adriatic Stereoscopies
type: item
description: The essay examines Dalmatien und seine Inselwelt (1870) by Heinrich Noé, considering it a paradigmatic example of late-nineteenth-century travel writing, in which aesthetic representation, imperial ideology, and the construction of otherness are tightly interwoven. The metaphor of the Stereoskop shapes the structure of the work: a sequence of isolated visual tableaux in which Dalmatia is not described to be understood, but rather to be observed and classified. Landscape and human figures take on the form of ornamental images, and the experience of travel turns into an exercise in controlled vision. The rhetorical strategies employed – fragmentation, the exclusion of the other’s voice, and the reduction of local culture to visual folklore – respond to the expectations of a bourgeois Central European readership that, through the act of narration, seeks confirmation of its own symbolic centrality. The analysis highlights how Noé’s writing contributes to the construction of an “internal Orient”, projecting cultural difference into a closed textual space that serves the affirmation of perceptual hegemony. Comparison with authors such as Johann Georg Kohl and Karl Emil Franzos underscores the distinctive character of Noé’s vision, situated at the intersection of visual art, Orientalism, and the rhetoric of the exotic. The Dalmatia that emerges is not a territory to be explored but a repertoire of images already arranged for the gaze, turning representation itself into an act of symbolic appropriation.
subject: Original research paper
  topic: section
subject: travel literature
  topic: keywords
subject: internal orientalism
  topic: keywords
subject: landscape representation
  topic: keywords
subject: visual hegemony
  topic: keywords
subject: 19th-century Dalmatia
  topic: keywords
creator: Maurizio Basili
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
date: 2025-12-22
publication date: 2025-12-22
starting page: 15
ending page: 32
doi: 10.15291/sponde.4997

Rat pamćenjem u književnosti i historiografiji sjevernog Jadrana („La guerra della memoria nella letteratura e storiografia dell’Adriatico settentrionale“)
type: item
subject: Book reviews
  topic: section
creator: Miranda Levanat-Peričić
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-07-18
publication date: 2025-07-18
starting page: 85
ending page: 89
doi: 10.15291/sponde.4834

Vaglio, Luca. 2020. Le stagioni del romanzo di Vladan Desnica. Genesi, forme, poetica. Roma: Il Calamo.
type: item
subject: Book reviews
  topic: section
creator: Nikolina Gunjević Kosanović
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-07-18
publication date: 2025-07-18
starting page: 82
ending page: 84
doi: 10.15291/sponde.4833

Potonulo groblje by Goran Tribuson between horror fiction and film
type: item
description: This paper analyzes Potonulo groblje (“The Sunken Cemetery”, 1990), a horror novel by Croatian author Goran Tribuson, a key figure in the country’s escapist fiction tradition. The novel centers on Ivan Hum, a former prisoner who returns to his neglected, nameless hometown to uncover the truth about his past. As he navigates an eerie, decaying landscape marked by supernatural events and cryptic townspeople, Ivan becomes entangled in a web of personal trauma, local myth, and historical repression. The narrative weaves together psychological horror, crime mystery, and gothic atmosphere to explore deeper themes of memory, decay, and identity. At the core of the novel lies a metaphorical exploration of the collapse of socialism and the uncertain transition into a post-socialist society. The imagery of the sunken cemetery, derelict infrastructure, and a town lost in time serve as powerful symbols of social disintegration and historical amnesia. Through close reading and comparative analysis, the study investigates how Tribuson mobilizes elements of horror and thriller genres not just for suspense, but to comment on the disorientation and disillusionment that accompanied the end of Yugoslavia. A central contrast in the novel is between Ivan - a disillusioned intellectual shaped by rationalism, guilt, and exile - and Marilina, a strange, quasi-mystical librarian whose home is filled with Western pop-culture memorabilia. Their interaction encapsulates the tension between high and popular culture, as well as the ambivalence of post-socialist identity caught between the ruins of the past and the seductive promise of consumerism. The novel is also examined through its 2002 film adaptation, directed by Mladen Juran, co-written with Tribuson and Czech director Jiří Menzel. The film reinterprets many of the novel’s themes through visual storytelling, using cinematic techniques, symbolism, and Western horror tropes to enhance psychological and socio-political layers. While the nove…
subject: Original research paper
  topic: section
subject: Goran Tribuson
  topic: keywords
subject: horror fiction
  topic: keywords
subject: escapist fiction
  topic: keywords
subject: trivial literature
  topic: keywords
subject: film adaptation
  topic: keywords
creator: Enrico Davanzo
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-07-18
publication date: 2025-07-18
starting page: 65
ending page: 80
doi: 10.15291/sponde.4832

Gradation of distinctive features of the literature ofthe exodus in the novel La zaratina by Silvio Testa
type: item
description: The Italian literature of exile, pervaded by a bitter feeling of memories, has been enriched by another literary memory - Silvio Testa’s novel La zaratina, tragedy of Dalmatian exile. This consonant literature about the distinctive elements of Italianity - Romanity of Dalmatia - finds in Testa’s book a significant reinforcement of those elements and symbols, presented in almost all works of fiction and non-fiction dealing with the tragedy of the exile of Italians and other populations from the eastern coast of the Adriatic. The aim of this analysis is to detect and present the new contribution Silvio Testa offers to the memorial landscape of this traumatic historical experience - particularly through his depiction of the massacre and destruction of Zadar (Zara), caused by Anglo-American bombardments during World War II. Through the intimate and multi-generational portrait of the Italian family of the protagonist Bepi (Giuseppe), Testa elevates Zadar - nicknamed “the Adriatic Dresden” - into a literary monument: a testament to human survival, a symbol of the enduring vitality of its people, and of the solidarity that once existed between Italians and Croats, all immersed in the brutality of war. Testa’s novel is an exceptional contribution to the realist-naturalistic strand of Italian exile literature. The narrative moves beyond political or ideological accounts to construct a cubist mosaic of memory, trauma, and identity. At its core lies the deep pain of the disintegration of a multiethnic coexistence in Zadar - a city where Italians and Slavs once shared churches, schools, and family ties. Testa identifies nationalism, religion, and ideology as the three poisonous forces that shattered this balance. These motifs are not simply abstract ideas but are manifested through a wide range of emotionally charged and historically grounded episodes in the novel. The characters of Luigi, Daria, and Ivo offer insight into how personal identities and relationships were destroye…
subject: Original research paper
  topic: section
subject: Silvio Testa
  topic: keywords
subject: literature on exile
  topic: keywords
subject: Zadar
  topic: keywords
subject: literary memory
  topic: keywords
subject: World War II
  topic: keywords
creator: Živko Nižić
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Živko Nižić https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-07-18
publication date: 2025-07-18
starting page: 45
ending page: 64
doi: 10.15291/sponde.4831

Miloš Crnjanski and the experience of the Mediterranean
type: item
description: This study explores the poetic and intellectual development of Miloš Crnjanski, focusing on his engagement with Mediterranean cultural spaces and the legacy of classical antiquity. Crnjanski’s early experiences in the multicultural Adriatic city of Rijeka, combined with personal loss and his polyglot education, shaped a literary voice that challenged the nationalistic narratives of early 20th-century literature. His seminal poetry collection Lirika Itake (The Lyrics of Ithaca) reimagines the Odyssean return not as heroic triumph but as a traumatic reckoning with modernity, exile, and the collapse of traditional values. Deeply influenced by classical literature, European modernism, and Mediterranean history, Crnjanski developed Sumatraism, a poetic-philosophical vision grounded in cosmopolitanism and the transformation of suffering into aesthetic transcendence. Through works such as Dnevnik o Čarnojeviću (The Diary about Čarnojević), Crnjanski destabilizes fixed identities, employing fragmented narrative structures and psychological complexity. His engagement with cultural plurality - linking Pannonia, the Adriatic, and the broader Mediterranean - positioned him as a cultural mediator between East and West, North and South. Crnjanski’s poetic geography, spanning from Galicia to Sumatra, blends memory, trauma, and myth to articulate the modern subject’s dislocation. His late reflections, including a 1967 speech in Italian, affirm his belief in poetic internationalism and the indestructibility of the cultural past. Misunderstood by many contemporaries, Crnjanski’s opus anticipates postmodern concerns with hybridity, exile, and the crisis of meaning.
subject: Original research paper
  topic: section
subject: Miloš Crnjanski
  topic: keywords
subject: Mediterranean
  topic: keywords
subject: cultural hybridity
  topic: keywords
subject: Sumatraism
  topic: keywords
subject: poetic geography
  topic: keywords
creator: Sanja Roić
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-07-18
publication date: 2025-07-18
starting page: 29
ending page: 44
doi: 10.15291/sponde.4829

From Language to Language
type: item
description: This text offers a philosophical exploration of translation, presenting it not as a merely practical or linguistic task, but as a deeply existential, political, and metaphysical experience. The reflection begins by acknowledging that, historically, translation was often seen as a technical issue, with little philosophical weight. It was only through the contributions of thinkers like Schleiermacher, Humboldt, Heidegger, Rosenzweig, Benjamin, and Derrida that translation emerges as a central philosophical question. At the heart of the analysis is the dialectic between the “own” and the “foreign.” Translation is framed as an experience of the foreign, which in turn reveals the limits of what is considered one’s own language or culture. This encounter with otherness can take two fundamental directions: either an attempt to domesticate the foreign by assimilating it, or a more radical and ethical path - embracing estrangement, allowing the foreign to transform one’s own language. The text traces this tension through historical and theoretical developments. The Romantics, such as Schleiermacher and Humboldt, advocate for a form of translation that preserves the foreignness of the original, as a way to elevate and refine the native language. Heidegger, on the other hand, emphasizes the return to the “own” through the foreign, seeing translation as a way of “finding a home” (Heimischwerden). For him, language is tied to the homeland, and translation is a spiritual journey that reclaims linguistic identity through confrontation with the Other. However, the analysis becomes more complex and politically charged in the 20th century, particularly with Jewish thinkers like Franz Rosenzweig and Walter Benjamin. Rosenzweig, responding to the erasure of Hebrew through centuries of Christian translations (especially Luther’s German Bible), calls for a form of translation that does not substitute or overwrite, but instead respects the radical otherness of the original. He proposes a …
subject: Original research paper
  topic: section
subject: Translating
  topic: keywords
subject: Philosophy
  topic: keywords
subject: Unification and plurality
  topic: keywords
subject: Identities
  topic: keywords
subject: Otherness
  topic: keywords
creator: Donatella Di Cesare
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-07-18
publication date: 2025-07-18
starting page: 11
ending page: 28
doi: 10.15291/sponde.4828

By Way of Introduction
type: item
subject: By way of introduction
  topic: section
creator: Iva Grgić Maroević
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-07-18
publication date: 2025-07-18
starting page: 7
ending page: 9
doi: 10.15291/sponde.4827

By way of introduction
type: item
subject: By way of introduction
  topic: section
creator: Iva Grgić Maroević
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-07-18
publication date: 2025-07-18
starting page: 7
ending page: 9
doi: 10.15291/sponde.4826

Identity Oscillation in the Process of Repatriation
type: item
description: Migratory flows have become a common practice in our modern society. They include a series of linguistic, social and cultural phenomena that transcend national borders due to various technological and geopolitical advancements (Garcia e Wei 2014; Canagarajah, 2017). Identity is a dynamic phenomenon whose formation and subsequent (re)shaping depends on a variety of societal conditions. It is therefore flexible since the processes of the individual’s self-identification as well as the identification with other members of the society never seem to stop (Jenkins, 2008). When immerged into migratory experiences, identities are subject to profound alterations which consequently lead to the emergence of hybrid identities (Pavlenko e Blackledge 2004). In attempting to grasp the complexity of migratory experience, Faist (2000) and Castles and Miller (2003) proposed the multi-level migration systems theory which consists of three intertwined and constantly overlapping levels. The macro level takes into account the global perspective of a receiving country along with all of its political, economic and cultural opportunities. In contrast with global outlook, the micro level considers an individual’s personal expectations in a foreign country. Finally, the meso level refers to social, symbolic and transactional networks which intercede among the first two levels (Block, 2006). Considering the dynamic nature of identity, the aim of the present research was threefold as it aimed to investigate the migratory motivations, the critical experiences and the effect of the migration during an individual’s formative years on his or her self-identification. Three hypotheses were formulated: (1) The macro, meso, and micro levels of the multi-level migration system theory will undergo changes in the participants who have experienced the double migration; (2) Critical experiences will provoke destabilisation of the identities of the repatriated participants; (3) Participants who have spent a …
subject: Original research paper
  topic: section
subject: Migrations
  topic: keywords
subject: Repatriation
  topic: keywords
subject: Identity
  topic: keywords
subject: Italy
  topic: keywords
subject: Croatia
  topic: keywords
creator: Karmen Tolić
creator: Loreta Klarić
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2024-12-30
publication date: 2024-12-30
starting page: 11
ending page: 32
doi: 10.15291/sponde.4673

How Not to Get Lost in Translation? Transferring Croatian Realia Into Italian Culture
type: item
description: Literary works written in non-standard varieties are generally significantly less frequently translated than those written in the standard variety. Although the last 30 years have seen more than 600 Italian literary prototexts get published in Croatian (Mikšić and Huber 2023: 38-39), very few of them are written in a non-standard variety. In this paper we analyze the Italian translation of Croatian culture-specific items excerpted from Hotel Zagorje, a contemporary Croatian novel written by Ivana Bodrožić in 2010. Apart from the Standard Croatian variety, the novel contains an array of urban vernaculars and rural varieties (namely, the urban vernaculars of Zagreb and Vukovar, the rural Kaikavian speech of Kumrovec and a local Serbian vernacular). These varieties simultaneously make the prototext difficult to translate due to numerous culture- specific items and suitable for a methodological analysis in class, since the translation abounds in the examples of usage of various translation strategies. For this reason, analysis of the Italian translation of said novel (Hotel Tito, translated by Estera Miočić in 2019) was included in the Translation theories course taught as a part of the Department of Italian Studies’ graduate programme at the University of Zagreb’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. Culture-specific items are defined as concepts typical of a certain culture (Liebmann 2015: 14), which means that their translation creates a lexical gap. Translators typically try to fill in this gap by using various translation strategies. The classification of these diverse strategies as well as their typologies were taken from various sources (Ivir 1991, Mailhac 1996, Osimo 2011, Pavlović 2015, Veselica Majhut 2020). They vary from the borrowing of foreign lexemes which denote culturally-specific items to the formation of neologisms and the use of footnotes, if the translator wants their text to be appropriate (Toury 1995: 56) and thus enrich the target culture w…
subject: Professional paper
  topic: section
subject: culture-specific items
  topic: keywords
subject: translation
  topic: keywords
subject: strategies of translation
  topic: keywords
subject: Italian
  topic: keywords
subject: Kajkavian
  topic: keywords
creator: Nada Županović Flipin
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Nada Županović Flipin https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2024-12-27
publication date: 2024-12-27
starting page: 33
ending page: 57
doi: 10.15291/sponde.4672

Book Reviews
type: item
description: Dora Kapetanović University od Zadar Tommaseo, Niccolò. 2020. Canti corsi, Annalisa Nesi (a c. di). Milano: Fondazione Pietro Bembo / Ugo Guanda Editore
subject: Book reviews
  topic: section
creator: Dora Kapetanović
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2024-07-22
publication date: 2024-07-22
starting page: 103
ending page: 105
doi: 10.15291/sponde.4534

Istro-Venetian Dialect of Tar and its Lexical Repertoire in the Semantic Field of Clothing
type: item
description: Throughout history, Istria has been in close contact with the Italian, German and Slavic populations and, due to this fact, it has been under the influence of different cultures and idioms. For the most part, it has been under the influence of the Venetian language and culture. The Venetian dominance spread through language changes in three different phases throughout the linguistic venetization of Istria. The reality of this phenomenon is present in Tar, a town on the west coast of Istria, which belongs to the municipality of Tar - Vabriga – Torre – Abrega. This area is bilingual and the people there speak an Istro-Venetian dialect. The aim of this study was to collect and analyse material related to the semantic field of clothing based on the corpus of the Italian Linguistic Atlas and the Istrian Linguistic Atlas. Using two different types of methodologies in collecting materials: a semi-structured interview and a direct interview, we determined the effectiveness of the differences in the process of gathering materials as well as the differences in the responses of the interviewees and the differences that are based on their ages. The interview was conducted with two respondents: The first respondent is seventy-nine years old and belongs to the older generation of Tar’s population while the second respondent is twenty-nine years old belonging to the younger generation. Both respondents communicate in Istro-Venetian on a daily basis.
subject: Original research paper
  topic: section
subject: Tar
  topic: keywords
subject: bilingualism
  topic: keywords
subject: Istro-Venetian dialect
  topic: keywords
subject: direct interview
  topic: keywords
subject: semi-structured interview
  topic: keywords
creator: Gloria Stojnić
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2024-07-22
publication date: 2024-07-22
starting page: 69
ending page: 102
doi: 10.15291/sponde.4533

Some Aspects of Lexical Variation in Na-Našo/-u (Molise, Italy)
type: item
description: Molise Croatian is a Štokavian Ikavian variety brought from the East Adriatic coast to the region of Molise at the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th century. Today it is spoken in three out of four officially recognized Croatian Molise villages in the region of Molise in south Italy, namely those of Mundimitar / Montemitro, Kruč / Acquaviva Collecroce, and Filič / San Felice del Molise, but even there its use has been declining, and intergenerational transmission is interrupted in some parts of the community. The aim of the paper is to present and discuss aspects of diatopic variation in lexicon between the three local varieties on the basis of the terms collected in a local language documentation project and published in Vocabolario polinomico (Sportelli linguistici 2020).
subject: Professional paper
  topic: section
subject: Na-našo/-u
  topic: keywords
subject: Molise (Italy)
  topic: keywords
subject: lexicon
  topic: keywords
subject: language variation
  topic: keywords
subject: language shift
  topic: keywords
creator: Lucija Šimičić
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2024-07-22
publication date: 2024-07-22
starting page: 55
ending page: 68
doi: 10.15291/sponde.4532

Translations and Compilations of Vialla de Sommières' Travel Book on Montenegro in Trieste Magazines
type: item
description: The research analyses the translation and compilation methods employed and examines the resulting image of Montenegro presented to Italian readers. Through a close examination of the translated excerpts, the research identifies patterns in selection and omission, as well as the editorial practices employed. Additionally, the study contextualizes the publication of these translations within the broader political and cultural climate of Trieste, exploring potential factors that fuelled the popularity of Vialla’s account.
subject: Review paper
  topic: section
subject: Monténégro
  topic: keywords
subject: Vialla de Sommières
  topic: keywords
subject: Voyage historique et politique au Monténégro
  topic: keywords
subject: travelogues
  topic: keywords
subject: Italy
  topic: keywords
creator: Olivera Popović
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2024-07-22
publication date: 2024-07-22
starting page: 39
ending page: 54
doi: 10.15291/sponde.4531

Deledda and Zagorka
type: item
description: Grazia Deledda and Marija Jurić Zagorka were almost the same age. Deledda was born in 1871 in Nuoro, Sardinia, and Zagorka in 1873 in Negovec near Vrbovec. They both grew up in deep province, in wealthy families, but without the possibility of continuing their studies. However, on their way to become writers who, even decades after their death, have a large audience, they have successfully overcome the obstacles placed upon them by family, society, tradition, but also by their literary profession itself as well as by literary criticism. In addition to a strong will and the need to write, they have another unusual detail in common: until their deaths, both indicated the wrong year of birth, thus pretending to be a few years younger. Furthermore, both Deledda and Zagorka wrote autobiographies in novel form, transforming themselves into literary characters, Cosima and Mirjana. The theme of this work is precisely these autobiographical novels, Cosima and Stone in the street (Kamen na cesti). Zagorka published her romanticized autobiography first as a serial novel from 1932 to 1936, while Deledda’s novel was found in manuscript after her death in 1936 and published posthumously in the same year, also as a serial novel, then later as a book. These autobiographical novels allowed both authors to return to their earliest memories, to deal with the “problematic character” of mother and to resolve the most important identity issues. At the same time, these works constitute a possible key to understanding the poetics of the two women who were geographically distant, but similar in many respects. Strong women, who had the courage to fight for their right to write and to observe themselves as literary characters and therefore play with the complex relationship between fiction and faction.
subject: Original research paper
  topic: section
subject: Grazia Deledda
  topic: keywords
subject: Marija Jurić Zagorka
  topic: keywords
subject: autobiographical prose
  topic: keywords
subject: modernism
  topic: keywords
subject: the feminine self
  topic: keywords
creator: Dubravka Dubravec Labaš
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2024-07-22
publication date: 2024-07-22
starting page: 11
ending page: 38
doi: 10.15291/sponde.4530

By Way of Introduction
type: item
subject: By way of introduction
  topic: section
creator: Iva Grgić Maroević
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2024-07-22
publication date: 2024-07-22
doi: 10.15291/sponde.4529

By Way of Introduction
type: item
subject: By way of introduction
  topic: section
creator: Iva Grgić Maroević
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2023-12-28
publication date: 2023-12-28
doi: 10.15291/sponde.4374

Book reviews
type: item
description: Ana Bukvić Baroni, Giorgio (a c. di). 2022. Storia della letteratura dalmata italiana. Pisa-Roma: Fabrizio Serra editore Mirna Sindičić Sabljo Mikšić, Vanda i Marta Huber. 2023. Prijevodi i recepcija talijanske književnosti u Hrvatskoj od 1991. do 2020. Zagreb: Meandarmedia, Zadar: Sveučilište u Zadru Nikolina Gunjević Kosanović Balić-Nižić, Nedjeljka, Giorgio Baroni, Boško Knežić (a c. di). 2023. Zbornik radova Međunarodnoga znanstvenog skupa u spomen na prof. dr. sc. Matu Zorića (1927. – 2016.) Zadar – Šibenik, 17. – 18. studenoga 2017. / Atti del Convegno internazionale in onore del Prof. Mate Zorić (1927-2016) Zara – Sebenico, 17 – 18 novembre 2017. Zadar: Sveučilište u Zadru
subject: Book reviews
  topic: section
creator: Ana Bukvić
creator: Mirna Sindičić Sabljo
creator: Nikolina Gunjević Kosanović
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2023-12-28
publication date: 2023-12-28
doi: 10.15291/sponde.4373

Odeporica adriatica
type: item
description: Rubrica del Centro Interuniversitario Internazionale di Studi sul Viaggio Adriatico (C.I.S.V.A) a cura di Giovanna Scianatico
subject: Articles
  topic: section
creator: Giovanna Scianatico
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2023-12-28
publication date: 2023-12-28
doi: 10.15291/sponde.4372