Metamorphoses of Endymion and Selene: Dominance, Objectification, and Necrophilia

The aim of the research is to understand the transformations of the myth of Endymion and Selene from the Ancient World to the Contemporary Times with regard to the intersection of dominant femininity and objectified masculinity. The final goal is to show how these two macro-concepts have been represented according to a dialectical mechanism of cultural constants and variations of which the myth stands as a privileged plane of study. This connection will be explored in detail alongside with the eroticization of the sleeping and dead male body, to which its erotic agency is to be restored, by a woman who explicitly shows an erotic desire towards him. These two marginal desires are analysed from the point of view of the dialectic antagonistic to hegemony, and their expressive effects are examined in different media: literary, artistic, cinematographic. This relationship between the two lovers is marked by a significant presence of death that in the first part of the thesis is called female proto-necrophilia, while in the last part is named female necrophilia. The relationship that is in established between the two is a clear example of how anti-normative desires have undergone numerous attempts of neutralization and have increasingly become an expression of the medicalization of the uncanny. Female necrophilia is in fact the last step of a mythical romance that undermines the normative and hegemonic construction of ordinariness, but at the same time manifests its expressive and irrepressible power throughout the literature and arts of the Global North. To examine this in depth, the research is divided into five chapters.

Fermentative processes for environmental remediation

The growing interest in environmental protection has led to the development of emerging biotechnologies for environmental remediation also introducing the biorefinery concept. This work mainly aimed to evaluate the applicability of innovative biotechnologies for environmental remediation and bioenergy production, throught fermentative processes. The investigated biotechnologies for waste and wastewater treatment and for the valorisation of specific feedstocks and energy recovery, were mainly focused on four research lines. 1. Biotechnology for textile wastewater treatment and water reuse that involving anaerobic and aerobic processes in combination with membrane technologies. Combinations of different treatments were also implemented for water reuse in a textile company. 2. Biotechnology for the treatment of solid waste and leachate in landfill and for biogas production. Landfill operated as Bioreactor with recirculation of the generated leachate was proposed for organic matter biostabilisation and for ammonia removal from leachate by favouring the Anammox process. 3. An innovative two-stage anaerobic process for effective codigestion of waste from the dairy industry, as cheese whey and dairy manure, was studied by combining conventional fermentative processes with a simplified system design for enhancing biomethanisation. 4) The valorisation of the glycerol waste as surplus by-product of the biodiesel industry was investigated via microbial conversion to value-added chemicals, as 1,3-propanediol. The investigated fermentative processes have been successfully implemented and reached high yields of the produced bio-chemical. The studied biotechnological systems proved to be feasible for environmental remediation and bioenergy and chemicals production.