The Letter Kills
by Carlo Ginzburg
Description
The Letter Kills will include approximately 30 essays: a few unpublished, but most of them already published in English, in Italian, in French. Each essay deals with a case, placed at the intersection of a variety of disciplines: history, art history, anthropology, literature. The topics will include Augustine, Giorgione, Vasari, Hume, Proust, microhistory, werewolves, shamans, fake news, and so on. The potential reader, presumably struck by this variety, will ask: is it possible to identify a running thread, a common element in those essays?
Possibly – starting from the title, which overturns the hierarchy between letter and spirit emphasized by Paul (2. Corinthians 3:4-6). If we reconstruct the letter (of a text, of an image) and the contexts in which it is delivered and received, we’ll discover that the “letter” is a tool, and sometimes a weapon, which can change (as sometimes did change) the world. But this reconstruction is not self-evident. Each essay will be an exercise in slow reading – Friedrich Nietzsche’s definition of philology – associated with the speed of the web. (An association analyzed in the essay Conversations with Orion). Hopefully, the reader will share the feeling of being involved in the search.
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English translation available.
Contributor Biography
Carlo Ginzburg is an Italian historian. The son of Natalia Ginzburg, a novelist, and Leone Ginzburg, a philologist, historian, and literary critic, Carlo Ginzburg was born in 1939 in Turin, Italy. His interest for history was influenced by the works of historians Delio Cantimori and Marc Bloch. He received a PhD from the University of Pisa in 1961. He subsequently held teaching positions at the University of Bologna, the University of California, Los Angeles (1988–2006), and the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. His fields of interest range from the Italian Renaissance to early modern European history, with contributions to art history, literary studies, and the theory of historiography. He was awarded the 2010 Balzan Prize and was elected an International Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2013.
Reiser Literary Agency
Reiser is the traveller, one who explores the world, changes perspective and observes, experiences, records. Our authors’ books are characterized by mobility of point of view, originality of approach, novelty of research. From different disciplinary perspectives, often in dialogue with each other. Today, borders are crossed in order to retrace the outline of opinions, to acquire new knowledge. Reiser helps its authors to impart their knowledge and research in the most appropriate forms and through the best qualified publishers. With a view to shared experience that will enrich both writer and reader.
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Bibliographic Information
- Publisher Adelphi
- Original Language Italian
- ISBN/Identifier 000001
- Publication Country or regionItaly
- FormatHardback
- ReadershipGeneral
- Publish StatusUnpublished
- Original Language TitleLa lettera uccide
- Copyright Year2021
- EditionForthcoming
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