Published works

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https://hdl.handle.net/2328/548
This collection contains works that discuss Dante's Commedia and the work of twentieth-century author Vincenzo Consolo.

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    Matelda: Poetic Image or Archetype?
    (Berg Publishers, 1993) Coassin, Flavia
    As their recurrence in different epochs and cultures shows, archetypal images exercise a powerful influence on imaginative and expressive modes. This essay addresses the problem, encountered by feminist critics and artists, of how to deal with 'positive' female archetypal images, of which Matelda (Purgatory XXVIII–XXXIII) is an expression. The analysis of the development of this image and of its interaction with an often contrasting social reality is expressive of the tensions and aspirations at play within a nation's culture. As the longevity of these images resides in their dynamism, women artists, rather than dispensing with them, may find it a more fruitful strategy to transform them by giving them new meanings.
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    Female Voice - Male Rhetoric (Inferno V)
    (Dept. of Italian, University of Melbourne, 1994) Coassin, Flavia
    We do not encounter many female characters in the 'Comedy', and this is particularly true of the first cantica, so it is significant that Francesca is, in the poem, the very first soul who speaks, just as it is significant that the first theme to be explored is courtly love. The aim of this article is to discuss Dante's reasons for choosing to explore the theme of courtly love from a female perspective, as this procedure is unusual in the literature of the times, as it is in Dante's case also.
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    The Function of Lethe
    (Australian Humanities Press, 2000) Coassin, Flavia
    When, in the last canto of the 'Purgatorio', Dante-character claims not to remember having ever estranged himself from Beatrice, she reminds him that he has just drunk of Lethe, and adds that his inability to remember is proof of his estrangement. If Lethe were just a generic river of forgetfulness, it would lose the metaphorical complexity of the Lethe of classical myth, and, as a consequence, its inclusion would amount to a mere literary reference that Dante had not been able to resist. This cannot be the case, firstly because these cantos are brimming with such references and the complexity of their meanings and interpretations has to be assumed totally; and secondly because, in making use of myth, Dante never erases or diminishes its original significance but enriches it instead through a Christian perspective, the procedure being one of equation and integration of the truth of pagan myths into Christian truth, just as Matelda equates the myth of the golden age with the Edenic myth. This article examines the function of Lethe in Dante's 'Comedy'.
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    L’ordine delle somiglianze nel "Sorriso dell’ignoto marinaio" di Vincenzo Consolo
    (Dept. of Italian, University of Melbourne, 2003) Coassin, Flavia
    In this paper the analysis of the symbolic and linguistic structures of Consolo’s text reveals its political message, specifically the role of language in constructing, and deconstructing, history and reality.
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