A recepção de O Primo Basílio na imprensa brasileira do século XIX: Caricatura, Humor e Crítica Literária

Posto à venda em Portugal, em fevereiro de 1878, o romance O Primo Basílio, de Eça de Queirós, não demorou muito para chegar às livrarias do Rio de Janeiro. O sucesso quase instantâneo da obra despertou a reação dos meios intelectuais brasileiros, em particular dos críticos literários, divididos entre a acusação e a defesa da obra quanto à moralidade. A recepção do livro de Eça também repercutiu na imprensa brasileira de caricaturas da época, embora aqui, em lugar das charges, tenha prevalecido a sátira verbal, na forma das piadas, poemas e pequenas histórias picantes, sob o influxo da crítica literária, questão discutida no presente artigo.

Health related quality of life measure in systemic pediatric rheumatic diseases and its translation to different languages: an international collaboration

Background: Rheumatic diseases in children are associated with significant morbidity and poor health-related quality of life (HRQOL). There is no health-related quality of life (HRQOL) scale available specifically for children with less common rheumatic diseases. These diseases share several features with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) such as their chronic episodic nature, multi-systemic involvement, and the need for immunosuppressive medications. HRQOL scale developed for pediatric SLE will likely be applicable to children with systemic inflammatory diseases.Findings: We adapted Simple Measure of Impact of Lupus Erythematosus in Youngsters (SMILEY (c)) to Simple Measure of Impact of Illness in Youngsters (SMILY (c)-Illness) and had it reviewed by pediatric rheumatologists for its appropriateness and cultural suitability. We tested SMILY (c)-Illness in patients with inflammatory rheumatic diseases and then translated it into 28 languages. Nineteen children (79% female, n= 15) and 17 parents participated. The mean age was 12 +/- 4 years, with median disease duration of 21 months (1-172 months). We translated SMILY (c)-Illness into the following 28 languages: Danish, Dutch, French (France), English (UK), German (Germany), German (Austria), German (Switzerland), Hebrew, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Slovene, Spanish (USA and Puerto Rico), Spanish (Spain), Spanish (Argentina), Spanish (Mexico), Spanish (Venezuela), Turkish, Afrikaans, Arabic (Saudi Arabia), Arabic (Egypt), Czech, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Japanese, Romanian, Serbian and Xhosa.Conclusion: SMILY (c)-Illness is a brief, easy to administer and score HRQOL scale for children with systemic rheumatic diseases. It is suitable for use across different age groups and literacy levels. SMILY (c)-Illness with its available translations may be used as useful adjuncts to clinical practice and research.

O semanário Bundas e o jornalismo econômico

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

O poeta popular Leandro Gomes de Barros e a sátira ao discurso burguês-militarista no contexto da Primeira República

Among the popular poets from the northeastern backlands who criticized the governmental measures of the republican government, the figure of Leandro Gomes de Barros has highlighted. His satire extends to the representatives of the government in the context of the First Republic, striking politicians, bachelors, priests, colonels and oligarchs. We show here the biographical traces of the poet and a stretch from my Doctoral Thesis in which Leandro satirizes the bourgeois-militarist speech from Olavo Bilac.

Os elementos satíricos nas obras de Antônio da Fonseca Soares e Gregório de Matos

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Sobre Villiers de l'Isle-Adam e seus contos cruéis

Villiers de l’Isle-Adam (1838-1889) is always remembered and admired for his books: Contes cruels, L’Ève future and Claire Lenoir- which summarize the main worries of the writer, his satire of the triumphant Positivism, his metaphysical theory and his aspiration for the Ideal. He is one of the greatest artisans of the French literature style of the XIX century and, in spite of some individual and particular characteristics, he shares with other writers from his time – Joris-Karl Huysmans, Barbey d’Aurevilly, Leon Bloy, among others – the same sorrow and fury towards Positivism and Mercantilism. Having as a starting point the collection Contes cruels, the purpose of this article is to reveal the author’s writings who, by searching for the Ideal and by taking refuge in art, is able to unite the poet, the ironic and the idealist philosopher. Through his writings, the writer moves away from the world’s mediocrity and can express a mix of revolt, reaction, rebellion and also, his hopes expressed in his beliefs in the “Au-delà” and in the salvation by the Ideal.

Measuring Aeolian Saltation: A Comparison of Sensors

SHERMAN, D.J.; LI, B.; FERRELL E.J.; ELLIS, J.T.; COX, W.D.; MAIA, L.P., and SOUSA, P.H.G.O., 2011. Measuring Aeolian Saltation: A Comparison of Sensors. In: Roberts, T.M., Rosati, J.D., and Wang, P. (eds.), Proceedings, Symposium to Honor Dr. Nicholas C. Kraus, Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue, No. 59, pp. 280-290. West Palm Beach (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. We report the results of field experiments designed to compare four types of aeolian saltation sensors: the Safire; the Wenglor (R) Particle Counter; the Miniphone; and the Buzzer Disc. Sets of sensors were deployed in tight spatial arrays and sampled at rates as fast as 20 kHz. In two of the three trials, the data from the sensors are compared to data obtained from sand traps. The Miniphone and the Buzzer Disc, based on microphone and piezoelectric technologies, respectively, produced grain impact counts comparable to those derived from the trap data. The Satire and the Wenglor (R) Particle Counter produce count rates that were an order of magnitude too slow. Satires undercount because of their large momentum threshold and because its signal is saturated at relatively slow transport rates. We conclude that the Miniphone and the Buzzer Disc are appropriate for deployment as grain counters because their small size allows them to be installed in closely-spaced sets.

On universal Banach spaces of density continuum

We consider the question whether there exists a Banach space X of density continuum such that every Banach space of density at most continuum isomorphically embeds into X (called a universal Banach space of density c). It is well known that a""(a)/c (0) is such a space if we assume the continuum hypothesis. Some additional set-theoretic assumption is indeed needed, as we prove in the main result of this paper that it is consistent with the usual axioms of set-theory that there is no universal Banach space of density c. Thus, the problem of the existence of a universal Banach space of density c is undecidable using the usual axioms of set-theory. We also prove that it is consistent that there are universal Banach spaces of density c, but a""(a)/c (0) is not among them. This relies on the proof of the consistency of the nonexistence of an isomorphic embedding of C([0, c]) into a""(a)/c (0).

Hypoellipticity in spaces of ultradistributions-Study of a model case

In this work we study C (a)-hypoellipticity in spaces of ultradistributions for analytic linear partial differential operators. Our main tool is a new a-priori inequality, which is stated in terms of the behaviour of holomorphic functions on appropriate wedges. In particular, for sum of squares operators satisfying Hormander's condition, we thus obtain a new method for studying analytic hypoellipticity for such a class. We also show how this method can be explicitly applied by studying a model operator, which is constructed as a perturbation of the so-called Baouendi-Goulaouic operator.

Desafios à tradução do texto satírico: alguns exemplos de Dritte Walpurgisnacht, de Karl Kraus

Último texto de fôlego de Kraus, Dritte Walpurgisnacht (Terceira noite de Valpúrgis) foi a reação do satirista à tomada do poder por Hitler. Do ponto de vista tradutório, oferece grande variedade de problemas, visto que o autor faz um uso exuberante de citações, trocadilhos, aliterações, neologismos e variações de ditos, provérbios, máximas e lugares-comuns. Este artigo apresenta alguns desses problemas e discute possibilidades para sua solução, não sem antes definir uma abordagem teórica.

L'a(rche)tipico Brian O'Nolan. Comico e riso dalla tradizione al post-

This study aims at analysing Brian O'Nolans literary production in the light of a reconsideration of the role played by his two most famous pseudonyms ,Flann Brien and Myles na Gopaleen, behind which he was active both as a novelist and as a journalist. We tried to establish a new kind of relationship between them and their empirical author following recent cultural and scientific surveys in the field of Humour Studies, Psychology, and Sociology: taking as a starting point the appreciation of the comic attitude in nature and in cultural history, we progressed through a short history of laughter and derision, followed by an overview on humour theories. After having established such a frame, we considered an integration of scientific studies in the field of laughter and humour as a base for our study scheme, in order to come to a definition of the comic author as a recognised, powerful and authoritative social figure who acts as a critic of conventions. The history of laughter and comic we briefly summarized, based on the one related by the French scholar Georges Minois in his work (Minois 2004), has been taken into account in the view that humorous attitude is one of man’s characteristic traits always present and witnessed throughout the ages, though subject in most cases to repression by cultural and political conservative power. This sort of Super-Ego notwithstanding, or perhaps because of that, comic impulse proved irreducible exactly in its influence on the current cultural debates. Basing mainly on Robert R. Provine’s (Provine 2001), Fabio Ceccarelli’s (Ceccarelli 1988), Arthur Koestler’s (Koestler 1975) and Peter L. Berger’s (Berger 1995) scientific essays on the actual occurrence of laughter and smile in complex social situations, we underlined the many evidences for how the use of comic, humour and wit (in a Freudian sense) could be best comprehended if seen as a common mind process designed for the improvement of knowledge, in which we traced a strict relation with the play-element the Dutch historian Huizinga highlighted in his famous essay, Homo Ludens (Huizinga 1955). We considered comic and humour/wit as different sides of the same coin, and showed how the demonstrations scientists provided on this particular subject are not conclusive, given that the mental processes could not still be irrefutably shown to be separated as regards graduations in comic expression and reception: in fact, different outputs in expressions might lead back to one and the same production process, following the general ‘Economy Rule’ of evolution; man is the only animal who lies, meaning with this that one feeling is not necessarily biuniquely associated with one and the same outward display, so human expressions are not validation proofs for feelings. Considering societies, we found that in nature they are all organized in more or less the same way, that is, in élites who govern over a community who, in turn, recognizes them as legitimate delegates for that task; we inferred from this the epistemological possibility for the existence of an added ruling figure alongside those political and religious: this figure being the comic, who is the person in charge of expressing true feelings towards given subjects of contention. Any community owns one, and his very peculiar status is validated by the fact that his place is within the community, living in it and speaking to it, but at the same time is outside it in the sense that his action focuses mainly on shedding light on ideas and objects placed out-side the boundaries of social convention: taboos, fears, sacred objects and finally culture are the favourite targets of the comic person’s arrow. This is the reason for the word a(rche)typical as applied to the comic figure in society: atypical in a sense, because unconventional and disrespectful of traditions, critical and never at ease with unblinkered respect of canons; archetypical, because the “village fool”, buffoon, jester or anyone in any kind of society who plays such roles, is an archetype in the Jungian sense, i.e. a personification of an irreducible side of human nature that everybody instinctively knows: a beginner of a tradition, the perfect type, what is most conventional of all and therefore the exact opposite of an atypical. There is an intrinsic necessity, we think, of such figures in societies, just like politicians and priests, who should play an elitist role in order to guide and rule not for their own benefit but for the good of the community. We are not naïve and do know that actual owners of power always tend to keep it indefinitely: the ‘social comic’ as a role of power has nonetheless the distinctive feature of being the only job whose tension is not towards stability. It has got in itself the rewarding permission of contradiction, for the very reason we exposed before that the comic must cast an eye both inside and outside society and his vision may be perforce not consistent, then it is satisfactory for the popularity that gives amongst readers and audience. Finally, the difference between governors, priests and comic figures is the seriousness of the first two (fundamentally monologic) and the merry contradiction of the third (essentially dialogic). MPs, mayors, bishops and pastors should always console, comfort and soothe popular mood in respect of the public convention; the comic has the opposite task of provoking, urging and irritating, accomplishing at the same time a sort of control of the soothing powers of society, keepers of the righteousness. In this view, the comic person assumes a paramount importance in the counterbalancing of power administration, whether in form of acting in public places or in written pieces which could circulate for private reading. At this point comes into question our Irish writer Brian O'Nolan(1911-1966), real name that stood behind the more famous masks of Flann O'Brien, novelist, author of At Swim-Two-Birds (1939), The Hard Life (1961), The Dalkey Archive (1964) and, posthumously, The Third Policeman (1967); and of Myles na Gopaleen, journalist, keeper for more than 25 years of the Cruiskeen Lawn column on The Irish Times (1940-1966), and author of the famous book-parody in Irish An Béal Bocht (1941), later translated in English as The Poor Mouth (1973). Brian O'Nolan, professional senior civil servant of the Republic, has never seen recognized his authorship in literary studies, since all of them concentrated on his alter egos Flann, Myles and some others he used for minor contributions. So far as we are concerned, we think this is the first study which places the real name in the title, this way acknowledging him an unity of intents that no-one before did. And this choice in titling is not a mere mark of distinction for the sake of it, but also a wilful sign of how his opus should now be reconsidered. In effect, the aim of this study is exactly that of demonstrating how the empirical author Brian O'Nolan was the real Deus in machina, the master of puppets who skilfully directed all of his identities in planned directions, so as to completely fulfil the role of the comic figure we explained before. Flann O'Brien and Myles na Gopaleen were personae and not persons, but the impression one gets from the critical studies on them is the exact opposite. Literary consideration, that came only after O'Nolans death, began with Anne Clissmann’s work, Flann O'Brien: A Critical Introduction to His Writings (Clissmann 1975), while the most recent book is Keith Donohue’s The Irish Anatomist: A Study of Flann O'Brien (Donohue 2002); passing through M.Keith Booker’s Flann O'Brien, Bakhtin and Menippean Satire (Booker 1995), Keith Hopper’s Flann O'Brien: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Post-Modernist (Hopper 1995) and Monique Gallagher’s Flann O'Brien, Myles et les autres (Gallagher 1998). There have also been a couple of biographies, which incidentally somehow try to explain critical points his literary production, while many critical studies do the same on the opposite side, trying to found critical points of view on the author’s restless life and habits. At this stage, we attempted to merge into O'Nolan's corpus the journalistic articles he wrote, more than 4,200, for roughly two million words in the 26-year-old running of the column. To justify this, we appealed to several considerations about the figure O'Nolan used as writer: Myles na Gopaleen (later simplified in na Gopaleen), who was the equivalent of the street artist or storyteller, speaking to his imaginary public and trying to involve it in his stories, quarrels and debates of all kinds. First of all, he relied much on language for the reactions he would obtain, playing on, and with, words so as to ironically unmask untrue relationships between words and things. Secondly, he pushed to the limit the convention of addressing to spectators and listeners usually employed in live performing, stretching its role in the written discourse to come to a greater effect of involvement of readers. Lastly, he profited much from what we labelled his “specific weight”, i.e. the potential influence in society given by his recognised authority in determined matters, a position from which he could launch deeper attacks on conventional beliefs, so complying with the duty of a comic we hypothesised before: that of criticising society even in threat of losing the benefits the post guarantees. That seemingly masochistic tendency has its rationale. Every representative has many privileges on the assumption that he, or she, has great responsibilities in administrating. The higher those responsibilities are, the higher is the reward but also the severer is the punishment for the misfits done while in charge. But we all know that not everybody accepts the rules and many try to use their power for their personal benefit and do not want to undergo law’s penalties. The comic, showing in this case more civic sense than others, helped very much in this by the non-accessibility to the use of public force, finds in the role of the scapegoat the right accomplishment of his task, accepting the punishment when his breaking of the conventions is too stark to be forgiven. As Ceccarelli demonstrated, the role of the object of laughter (comic, ridicule) has its very own positive side: there is freedom of expression for the person, and at the same time integration in the society, even though at low levels. Then the banishment of a ‘social’ comic can never get to total extirpation from society, revealing how the scope of the comic lies on an entirely fictional layer, bearing no relation with facts, nor real consequences in terms of physical health. Myles na Gopaleen, mastering these three characteristics we postulated in the highest way, can be considered an author worth noting; and the oeuvre he wrote, the whole collection of Cruiskeen Lawn articles, is rightfully a novel because respects the canons of it especially regarding the authorial figure and his relationship with the readers. In addition, his work can be studied even if we cannot conduct our research on the whole of it, this proceeding being justified exactly because of the resemblances to the real figure of the storyteller: its ‘chapters’ —the daily articles— had a format that even the distracted reader could follow, even one who did not read each and every article before. So we can critically consider also a good part of them, as collected in the seven volumes published so far, with the addition of some others outside the collections, because completeness in this case is not at all a guarantee of a better precision in the assessment; on the contrary: examination of the totality of articles might let us consider him as a person and not a persona. Once cleared these points, we proceeded further in considering tout court the works of Brian O'Nolan as the works of a unique author, rather than complicating the references with many names which are none other than well-wrought sides of the same personality. By putting O'Nolan as the correct object of our research, empirical author of the works of the personae Flann O'Brien and Myles na Gopaleen, there comes out a clearer literary landscape: the comic author Brian O'Nolan, self-conscious of his paramount role in society as both a guide and a scourge, in a word as an a(rche)typical, intentionally chose to differentiate his personalities so as to create different perspectives in different fields of knowledge by using, in addition, different means of communication: novels and journalism. We finally compared the newly assessed author Brian O'Nolan with other great Irish comic writers in English, such as James Joyce (the one everybody named as the master in the field), Samuel Beckett, and Jonathan Swift. This comparison showed once more how O'Nolan is in no way inferior to these authors who, greatly celebrated by critics, have nonetheless failed to achieve that great public recognition O’Nolan received alias Myles, awarded by the daily audience he reached and influenced with his Cruiskeen Lawn column. For this reason, we believe him to be representative of the comic figure’s function as a social regulator and as a builder of solidarity, such as that Raymond Williams spoke of in his work (Williams 1982), with in mind the aim of building a ‘culture in common’. There is no way for a ‘culture in common’ to be acquired if we do not accept the fact that even the most functional society rests on conventions, and in a world more and more ‘connected’ we need someone to help everybody negotiate with different cultures and persons. The comic gives us a worldly perspective which is at the same time comfortable and distressing but in the end not harmful as the one furnished by politicians could be: he lets us peep into parallel worlds without moving too far from our armchair and, as a consequence, is the one who does his best for the improvement of our understanding of things.

Libro, diaspora e ri-costruzioni identitarie. Per una storia della tipografia sefardita portoghese nell'Italia del Cinquecento

Il lavoro ripercorre le tracce che gli ebrei portoghesi, esuli dopo il biennio 1496-97, lasciarono nel loro cammino attraverso l'Europa. In particolare, l'interesse si concentra sulla breve parentesi italiana, che grazie all'apertura e alla disponibilità  di alcuni Signori, come i Gonzaga di Mantova, i Medici, i Dogi della Serenissima e gli Este, risulta ricchissima di avvenimenti e personaggi, decisivi anche per la storia culturale del Portogallo. L'analisi parte evidenziando l'importanza che ebbe la tipografia ebraica in Portogallo all'epoca della sua introduzione nel Paese; in secondo luogo ripercorre la strada che, dal biennio del primo decreto di espulsione e del conseguente battesimo di massa, porta alla nascita dell'€™Inquisizione in Portogallo. Il secondo capitolo tenta di fare una ricostruzione, il più possibile completa e coerente, dei movimenti degli esuli, bollati come marrani e legati alle due maggiori famiglie, i Mendes e i Bemveniste, delineando poi il primo nucleo di quella che diventerà  nel Seicento la comunità  sefardita portoghese di Amsterdam, dove nasceranno le personalità  dissidenti di Uriel da Costa e del suo allievo Spinoza. Il terzo capitolo introduce il tema delle opere letterarie, effettuando una rassegna dei maggiori volumi editi dalle officine tipografiche ebraiche stanziatesi in Italia fra il 1551 e il 1558, in modo particolare concentrando l'attenzione sull'€™attività  della tipografia Usque, da cui usciranno numerosi testi di precettistica in lingua ebraica, ma soprattutto opere cruciali come la famosa «Bibbia Ferrarese» in castigliano, la «Consolação às Tribulações de Israel», di Samuel Usque e la raccolta composta dal romanzo cavalleresco «Menina e Moça» di Bernardim Ribeiro e dall'ecloga «Crisfal», di un autore ancora non accertato. L'ultimo capitolo, infine, si propone di operare una disamina di queste ultime tre opere, ritenute fondamentali per ricostruire il contesto letterario e culturale in cui la comunità  giudaica in esilio agiva e proiettava le proprie speranze di futuro. Per quanto le opere appartengano a generi diversi e mostrino diverso carattere, l'€™ipotesi è che siano parte di un unicum filosofico e spirituale, che intendeva sostanzialmente indicare ai confratelli sparsi per l'Europa la direzione da prendere, fornendo un sostegno teoretico, psicologico ed emotivo nelle difficili condizioni di sopravvivenza, soprattutto dell'integrità religiosa, di ciascun membro della comunità.

Studi sull'epigramma scoptico greco

The dissertation is divided into two parts: the first synthesis focused on the definition of the epigram scoptico imperial age, the second analysis concerns the study of the minor poets of Book XI. In the Introduction (I), the attention focuses on the genesis of imperial scoptic epigram: here you try to draw a picture of the satirical Greek literature before the middle of the century AD to identify the debts of the scoptic epigram, especially Lucillius’, in respect of previous authors (from the Middle-up comedy to epigrams of the Crown of Philip), and to emphasize the remoteness of this literary phenomenon from other experiences of ironic and satirical poetry (Catullus). In the chapter on the Themes (II), the study was limited to professional groups and those most targeted (doctors, grammarians, etc..), to that particular type represented by the satire on ethnic groups. The study of minor poets is necessarily preceded by a general discussion on the authors most representative of the greek satiric poetry: Lucillius, Ammianus, Nicarchus and Palladas (III). All the minor poets of the eleventh book, which you can not provide a date, have been regarded by scholars as the ‘poets of Diogenian’: the chapter on Anthologion of Diogenian (IV), which is undergoing critical to the existence (assumed but never proven) of the lost source of Book XI, therefore, serves as an introduction to the commentary of the authors required minors. During the discussion they are not qualified as poets ‘poets of Diogenian’, but are divided into two categories: those included in the string of alphabetically ordered AP XI 388-436 (V), and those who are not part of (VI). Finally, a separate chapter (VII) is devoted to the age-old question of epigrams assigned to Lucian, both in the string of alphabetically ordered epigrams, as well as outside it.

La ville comme labyrinthe: réécritures d'un mythe entre les années 1950 et 1980

Entre les années 1950 et 1980, émerge une nouvelle forme de labyrinthe chez des romanciers européens comme Michel Butor, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Italo Calvino, Patrick Modiano et Alasdair Gray : un labyrinthe insaisissable et non cartographiable. Pour en rendre compte nous avons recours au modèle du rhizome, issu de la philosophie de Gilles Deleuze et de Félix Guattari, aussi bien qu'au concept d'hétérotopie de Michel Foucault. La spatialité de nos romans nous pousse à prendre en compte également les réécritures ironiques du mythe de Thésée, Ariane, le Minotaure, Dédale. Les citations et les allusions au mythe nous font remarquer la distance d'avec le modèle traditionnel et les effets de ce qu'on peut considérer comme un « bricolage mythique », dans le cadre d'un regard ironique, parodique ou satirique. La représentation romanesque du labyrinthe accentue d'un côté l'absence d'un centre, et de l'autre côté l'ouverture extrême de cet espace qu'est la ville contemporaine. En même temps, la présence de nombreux « espaces autres », les hétérotopies de Foucault, définit l'égarement des protagonistes des romans. Au fur et à mesure que les écrivains acquièrent conscience des caractéristiques « labyrinthiques » de ces espaces, celles-ci commencent à informer l'œuvre romanesque, créant ainsi un espace métafictionnel. Entre les années Cinquante et le début des années Soixante-dix, les Nouveaux romanciers français accentuent ainsi l'idée de pouvoir jouer avec les instruments de la fiction, pour exaspérer l'absence d'un sens dans la ville comme dans la pratique de l'écriture. Calvino reformule cette conception du roman, remarquant l'importance d'un sens, même s'il est caché et difficile à saisir. Pour cette raison, à la fin de l'époque que nous analysons, des auteurs comme Modiano et Gray absorbent les techniques d'écriture de ces prédécesseurs, en les faisant jouer avec la responsabilité éthique de l'auteur.

Materiale epigrafico per la ricostruzione dei contatti nel Mediterraneo tra il 1200 a.C. e il 500 a.C.

La Tesi Materiale epigrafico per la ricostruzione dei contatti nel Mediterraneo tra il 1200 a.C. e il 500 a.C. si propone di illustrare i complessi rapporti instauratisi tra i vari popoli che si affacciarono sulle rive del Mediterraneo e nelle sue vicinanze, tra il 1200 e il 500 a.C. circa, quali emergono dalle iscrizioni disponibili, principalmente greche e semitiche (soprattutto fenicie, ebraiche, aramaiche e assire), prendendo tuttavia in esame anche iscrizioni ittite, egiziane, frigie, etrusche e celtiche. Le date suddette riguardano due eventi cruciali, che sconvolsero il Mediterraneo: gli attacchi dei Popoli del Mare, che distrussero l'Impero Ittita e indebolirono l'Egitto, e le guerre Persiane. Le iscrizioni riportate sono 1546, quasi sempre traslitterate, tradotte, e accompagnate da un'immagine, da riferimenti bibliografici essenziali e da una breve motivazione del collegamento proposto. Il quadro che si delinea ben testimonia la complessità dei rapporti che si intrecciarono in quel periodo: si pensi alle centinaia di graffiti greci trovati a Naucrati, in Egitto, o alle decine di iscrizioni greche trovate a Gravisca. Anche le iscrizioni aramaiche e assire attestano gli stretti rapporti che si formarono tra Siria e Mesopotamia; ugualmente Iran e Arabia sono, direttamente o indirettamente, collegati a Etruria e Grecia; così troviamo un'iscrizione greca nel cuore dell'Impero Persiano, e un cratere laconico nel centro della Gallia. In realtà lo scopo di questo lavoro è anche quello di mettere in contatto due mondi sostanzialmente separati, ossia quello dei Semitisti e quello dei Grecisti, che solo apparentemente si conoscono e collaborano. Inoltre vorrei soavemente insinuare l'idea che la tesi di Joseph Naveh, che ipotizzò che gli alfabeti greci abbiano tratto origine in prima istanza dalle iscrizioni protocananaiche, nel XII sec. a.C., è valida, e che solo in un secondo tempo i Fenici abbiano dato il loro apporto.