Learning Paths » 5A Interacting
The three texts considered deal with Roberto Crotoneo's last effort Tweet di un discorso amoroso(2013). So, each of the texts constitutes a review of Crotoneo's book and in particular the second one provides readers with three extracts of the book. Let's take into consideration the analysis of each text.
The first text was written by Elisabetta Stefanelli and its main objective consists of showing readers the most interesting features of the book. Right from the start two rethorical questions aim to catch the reader's attention and to introduce the topic of Cotroneo's book, "Cos'e' l'amore ai tempi di Twitter?": in social networks like Twitter, love takes place as an unreturned feeling. In addition, interesting is to notice the adjectives used to describe the book, "intenso, commovente, poetico fino in fondo", making us understand that Stefanelli has been positively impressed by reading it.
Going on, Stefanelli draws a link between Cotroneo's book and Roland Barthes' A Lover's Discourse Fragment , sharing the same preamble: an individual declares in his/ her inner world the love for another person who is supposed not to answer. According to the last statement, Stefanelli reports two significative quotations taken from the book: the first one highlights an aspect of the working of social network, in the sense of implying to fix our thoughts as a verbal icon; the second quotation puts into a better focus what the previous quotation has just underlined. So, the writer focuses his attention on young teenagers that frequently decide to express their feelings on a social network, as underlined by the double simile " come un diario, come una cura".
In the last part of the review Stefanelli makes one of the features of contemporary literature come to the surface, that is intertextuality. Indeed it is said that Tweet di un discorso amoroso has been built up with references to Natalia Ginzburg's and Maria Conti's works, but also appealing to musical world and musicians like Keith Jarrett and Fryderyk Chopin.
Now, in the second text considered, after a short introduction about Cotroneo's Tweet di un discorso amoroso and then a paragraph concerning his writing life, the reader comes across three extract of the book. Going into depth, in the first extract the main topic is nowadays an individual has to be able to continually change something linked to his lifestyle to keep in touch with the world. In addition, Cotroneo states that human attitude consists of overwhelming the desires of the past with daily new desires, giving no importance to our own past, and also forgetting it.
The second extract is based on Cotroneo's conception of the writing: along his life he has never seen the writing as something concerning to his inner world or the extreme research for beauty, but, appealing to his childhood, to the semantic field of grammar, and then comparing himself with a tailor, he comes to the conclusion that the writing allows him to enter and exit his readers' worlds.
Finally, the last extract deals with the "force" of voice and silence, not defined in opposition with something else. Going on, Cotroneo further states his conviction concerning the existence of people like him that are able to recognize "parole diverse", as if it were the first time doing it. In other words, the writer wants to underline again the importance of not forgetting our own past, because there lies "quello che ... da sempre".
Well, the third text was written by Manila Benedetto on 26th March 2013. Considering the subtitle of the review, the reader comes across two pieces of information, the first one about the structure of Cotroneo's book, consisting of 76 fragments, and the second one about the main topic of the book.
Right from the start, Benedetto reports her favourite quotation from Tweet di un discorso amoroso, " Quasi mai ... e felicità" and she states the book is built as a stream of consciousness and so it does not follow a linear plot, but it passes from a thought to another, all concerning with the impersonal communication taking place in social network like Twitter, where a love declaration is made by writing some sentences anyone is able to read and also comment . Going on, Benedetto draws a comparison between the reading of Cotroneo's book and the one of several statements on social networks, underlining the high speed - feature of these reading.
In the last paragraph Benedetto's objective is to recommend people to read Cotroneo's book in order to make a reflection upon the changing of life with the development of social networks, with particular references to nowadays love condition and use of language.
Comparison between a tweet and a dramatic monologue
Thanks to the analysis of the reviews about Tweet di un discorso amoroso, you have just fixed into the mind the features of one of nowadays form of communication. Up to now the attention has been focused on the way registered people on Twitter express their feelings and thoughts, even the ones concerning with love for a person, through tweets. Now, a comparison between the way of expressing human feelings by tweets and the one by the poetical form of the dramatic monologue will be drawn in the following lines.
Well, according to the similarities, both the tweet and the dramatic monologue are based on a certain series of feelings an individual needs to express, as love for a woman. Another simile is that both can be addressed to a beloved person, who might not been conscious of that feeling because speaking voices do not take courage of expressing it in the real world. What's more, they are also composed with the aim not to be deleted, so to keep identical and to reach eternity. But, differently from dramatic monologues like the ones written by T. S. Eliot, a tweet can be removed by who published it. That's the first difference between these ways of expressing human feelings and interesting will be to notice how differences will overwhelm similarities. As a matter of fact, another difference appeals to the structure of a tweet and the one of a dramatic monologue. Indeed on one hand a tweet can be considered a synthesis of a particular feeling which is usually condensed in a few lines, on the other one a dramatic monologue can extend for several lines. According to Eliot's dramatic monologues, you notice The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock consists of 131 lines, while his masterpiece The Waste Land is arranged into five sections and lasts 433 lines. It goes without saying that the distance between the two ways of expressing emotions is enormous.
Going on, whereas the tweet is published on a social network where all registered people can see and also comment or appreciate it, the dramatic monologue is supposed to be a secret confession to an individual having the task not to reveal it to the world. Thanks to this you can understand why Eliot chose in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock to start the text with the epigraph referring to Dante Alighieri's Divina Commedia,from Inferno, Canto XXVII: as Dante's character opens his inner world with the conviction that it will be secret, in the same way Prufrock frees his inner feelings to the interlocutor identified with the pronoun "you".
Finally, interesting is to notice whereas in Twitter you come across tweets based on quotations taken by famous artists, but in composing them not all people are aware of their real meaning, dramatic monologues like Eliot's ones contains quotations whose meaning is well known by the writer.