ANALYSIS OF CRITICAL REVIEWS ABOUT TWEET DI UN DISCORSO AMOROSO

The three texts that I have to analyze are critical reviews about Roberto Cotroneo’s last book: Tweet di un discorso amoroso , published in 2013.

Just considering the title the reader may expect the book to be about social network and love and such expectation is created by the words tweet and amoroso.

However my purpose is to unveil the features of the book through the reading and analysis of the reviews considered in order to understand his structure, most important themes and in order to confirm or deny my personal conclusion about the title.

The first review was written by Elisabetta Stefanelli and it shows the most important features of Roberto Cotroneo’s effort. The text starts immediately with two rhetorical questions which have the function to involve the reader’s attention: Cos’è l’amore ai tempi di Twitter? / Quando “il pudore è un’intermittenza dello stile?” These two rhetorical questions may be considered as the main basis of Cotroneo’s book: within Twitter and therefore within social network love is considered as a final feeling, an hanging idea and what’s more Elisabetta Stefanelli expresses her positively opinion about the book, stating that it is intenso, commovente, poetico fino in fondo. Afterwards she makes a comparison between Cotroneo’s effort and Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discouse: Fragments; indeed the two text considered are connected by their titles and at the same time by their introductions, which tell about  a person who declares his love  to an interlocutor, who does not answer. Moreover Elisabetta Stefanelli reports two quotations of the book: obbligano a una forma di iconocità verbale, se mai può esistere un’icona fatta di significnti e significati / Curate i vostri tweet come fossero testi da leggere e rileggere, come un diario,come una cura e dimenticare il tempo. The first one underlines our tendency in using symbolic icons, while the second one states  tweet are like text and you have to read and read again them and to forget time. The last image of time is strictly connected with the following part of the review in which it is explained that people can share only the interior time that is to say our feelings. To conclude in the last part of the review the theme of intertextuality comes on surface; indeed Roberto Cotroneo’s works are built upon other texts such as texts written by Natalia Ginzburg or by Maria Corti. The last concept may be also compared to a concept developed within Tradition and the Individual Talent , in which T.S. Eliot states that the most individual parts of a poet’s work may be those in which the dead poets assert their immortality most vigorously.

The second review is very particular ant it is characterized by three extracts taken from the book. It starts with a short introduction about Cotroneo’s book but the intelligent reader can notice that the short introduction considered is very important because it allows him to understand the structure of the book. Indeed the book contains impressions, thoughts and letters for a lady, which allows the construction of the real love and love may change our look, future and desires; it seems as if Cotroneo’s effort is based on stream of consciousness because it focuses its attention on writer’s most inner thoughts. Afterwards, as I have stated before, the writer introduced three extracts of the book. The first extract focuses its attention on an important point of human life: people should be able to change their forms, objects, material, colours, in short their habits. Indeed old objects are replaced by new objects and afterwards new objects would become old and so on. All the old objects are in a suitcase which represent our past; the suitcase considered is always with us, it represents a past that we cannot recover but we usually forget it. The second extract is based on what means writing in Cotroneo’s opinion: he states that he has never seen the writing as something concerning with himself or as something that allows him to get changes but as a room which allows him to put all in a certain order. Roberto Cotroneo concludes stating that he is as a tailor passes through cloth: indeed he is able to enter and exit his readers’ worlds. To conclude within the third extract Roberto Cotroneo states that people understand specific concept through difference and contrast; the last statement reminds the idea of Ferdinand Saussure’s opinion, that is to say that meaning comes from understanding what a thing is not, rather than understand what a thing is. At the same time silence is not defined through opposition and is considered like words seen for the first time.

The third review was written by Manila Benedetto. From the review considered the reader can know that Cotroneo’s book is arranged into 76 fragments and life and love within social network are the main topics. Manila Benedetto immediately reports his favourite quotation:  Quasi mai si è fedeli all’amore. Mentre spesso si è fedeli al non – amore. Che è un paradosso: un segno meno che cancella destini e felicità. Afterwards he states that the book may be considered as a stream of consciousness and it does not follow a certain plot, but it represents a series of thoughts which are concerned with the impersonal communication. The impersonal communication represent a society in which love is a phrase written within a social network. Afterwards Manila Benedetto compares the reading of Cotroneo’s book with the reading of a profile on social network. To conclude in the last part of the review Manila Benedetto quotes the most important themes of the book: love within social network, the condition of literature, of language and it invites the reader to involve his attention on these themes.

The analysis of the three extract has just allowed me to understand the main features of social network, of the new form communication and of love within social network. Moreover thanks to my knowledge about the features of the dramatic monologue I can make a comparison between a tweet and a dramatic monologue. First of all both focuses its attention on the expression of certain feelings, in particular they are used to express love for a woman, who generally does not know about the feeling considered. Both can be destroyed because for example a book may be burned while a tweet may be removed but their function, however,  is to make its contents eternal. To conlcude tweet are generally short, they may be considered as condensed feelings while the dramatic monologue consists of lots of lines: for example The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock consists of 131 lines.