L'anima del testo

[Autom. eng. transl.] The soul of the text is the fruit of an active circulation of meaning between three fundamental instances: the text itself, the author and the reader. After recalling the necessary distinction between empirical author and implicit author, between empirical reader and implicit reader, we focus above all on the implicit reader. Starting from a brief analysis of Jacopo Ortis di Foscolo's Last Letters and of Manessi's Promessi sposi, two types of reader are identified: the reader's reader and the reader reader. It is important that the empirical reader, that is, anyone who deals with the reading of a text, is able to recognize what kind of implicit reader is required by the text itself and therefore knows how to adapt to this request: only in this way can the soul of the text be taken in full by the reader. To draw on the soul of the text, however, another fundamental point must be clearly borne in mind: in the literary text, which is what we are dealing with here, the form of the text and the content of the text are not separable, they cannot be separated: the form is the content, the content is the form; in short, the soul of the text is revealed only through its body. Therefore the rediscovery of the physicality of the text, of its phonic body is a fundamental function: decisive for this rediscovery, it is an operation too long devalued and that is only now re-emerging in all its importance: reading aloud, which must be understood like a real putting into words of the body of the text, the first and fundamental step to draw its soul.