BETWEEN DIVINITY AND DULLNESS: THE ADVENT OF PERSONAL COMPUTERS IN ITALIAN LITERATURE.
This article examines the cultural impact of personal computers in Italian literature in the first decade of their mass diffusion (from the mid-1980s to the second half of the 1990s) through the analysis of four texts written by some of the most respected writers of the time: Primo Levi's article "P...
| Published in: | Quaderni d'italianistica Vol. 41; no. 1; pp. 5 - 43 |
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| Format: | Article |
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Iter Canada
2020
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=148508920&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 148508920 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 02268043 2B0 jtl: Quaderni d'italianistica issn: 02268043 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: 2020 vid: 41 iid: 1 pid: 78725 pub: Iter Canada artinfo: ui: 148508920 10.33137/q.i..v41i1.35893 ppf: 5 ppct: 38 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: P size: 1.7MB tig: atl: BETWEEN DIVINITY AND DULLNESS: THE ADVENT OF PERSONAL COMPUTERS IN ITALIAN LITERATURE. aug: au: LIMA, ELEONORA affil: Trinity College Dublin su: Personal computers Italian literature Levi, Primo, 1919-1987 Eco, Umberto, 1932-2016 Del Giudice, Daniele, 1949-2021 sug: subj: Personal computers Italian literature Levi, Primo, 1919-1987 Eco, Umberto, 1932-2016 Del Giudice, Daniele, 1949-2021 ab: This article examines the cultural impact of personal computers in Italian literature in the first decade of their mass diffusion (from the mid-1980s to the second half of the 1990s) through the analysis of four texts written by some of the most respected writers of the time: Primo Levi's article "Personal Golem" (1985), Umberto Eco's novel Il pendolo di Foucault (1988), Francesco Leonetti's novel Piedi in cerca di cibo (1995), and Daniele Del Giudice's story "Evil Live" (1997). More than simply addressing the advent of personal computers, what these texts have in common is the use of religious images and metaphors in order to make sense of the new technology. This study aims at showing how this frame of reference served the four writers in expressing the contradictions inherent to the machine. Bulky and tangible because of its hardware, but animated by an elusive and mysterious software, the personal computer was perceived at the same time as a dull office appliance and a threatening virtual entity. Finally, by showing how timely and well-informed these literary works on the impact of PCs are, this article wants to make the case for considering the role of literature in shaping computer culture. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Quaderni d'italianistica is the property of Iter Canada and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Quaderni d'italianistica holder: Iter Canada dt: @attributes: year: 2020 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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