Captioned Landscapes: Intermedial Combinations Beyond the Human

Captioned Landscapes is the first comprehensive monograph on intermedial combinations between writing and natural environments. Writing is traditionally considered as a distinctive sign of the human; interrogating its interactions with the world beyond the human means questioning its presumed centrality and separateness. The multiple angles from which these combinations are studied in this two-volume anthology are relevant for questions regarding the ontologies that structure the relationships between human and non-human, as well as for questions of ideology, interculturality, memory, gender and the postcolonial.
Landscape reception studies usually assume not only a distinction but also a separation between the human and the non-human, attributing the privilege of subjectivity only to the former. This dualistic paradigm has been recently replaced by intermedial ecocriticism, which conceives the relationship between human and non-human as a negotiation without rigid and pre-established roles. However, attention has been focused so far on the representations (verbal, but also visual) of these relationships. In this monograph, for the first time, instead of representations of natural environments (in writing or other media), intermedial combinations between writing and landscapes are taken into account; particular attention is also paid, in the second volume, to verbal and visual representations of these combinations.
The book addresses Intermedial and Visual Studies and Environmental Humanities scholars. Because of the specific focus on combinations of writing, landscape, and verbal and visual representations of the latter, the book is also aimed at scholars of Literature, Garden and Landscape Design and History, and Visual Arts. By virtue of the case study approach in the chapters and the general theoretical framework provided in the introduction, the book also addresses students of all these disciplines.

Marco Maggi is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Theory of Literature at the Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano, Switzerland. He is Co-Director of the Master in Italian Language, Literature and Civilisation and was Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Communication, Culture and Society in the period 2020-2022.
He is a member of the scientific committee of the Swiss Association of General and Comparative Literature (ASLGC/SGAVL), of the PhD programme in Visual Culture at the University of Palermo, of the journals ‘Arabeschi’ and ‘Walter Benjamin Studies’ and of numerous publishing series. He is curator of the Lea Ritter Santini Papers at the archives of the Fondazione Centro Studi storico-letterari Natalino Sapegno.
His work focuses on literary intermediality from critical, historical and methodological perspectives, with a focus on Baroque and Neo Baroque and first half of the 20th century. His publications include the monographs ‘Walter Benjamin e Dante. Una costellazione nello spazio delle immagini’ (2017), ‘Modernità visuale dei «Promessi Sposi». Romanzo e fantasmagoria da Manzoni a Bellocchio’ (2019) and ‘Forme intermedie. Percorsi di cultura visuale nell’opera di Guido Gozzano’ (2025). He has edited 17th and 20th century texts: ‘Aurore barocche. Concerto di arti sorelle’ (2005), Emanuele Tesauro’s ‘Vocabulario italiano’ (2008) and ‘Anacronismi e didascalie. Prose varie (1903-1916)’ by Guido Gozzano (2023). He has edited anthologies and journal issues: ‘“Selbstdenken”. Atti della giornata di studi in ricordo di Lea Ritter Santini (2020); “Fototestualità” (‘Versants’, 2021); ‘Walter Benjamin e la cultura italiana’ (2022); “Prometeo, mito e intermedialità” (‘Arabeschi’, 2024). He also edited new editions of classics of inter-artistic comparison: ‘Ut pictura poesis’ by Rensselaer W. Lee (2011) and ‘Studi sul concettismo’ by Mario Praz (2014).
He writes regularly for ‘L’Indice dei Libri del Mese’ and other cultural magazines and appears in local and national media.