Part of
Language Development: The lifespan perspectiveEdited by Annette Gerstenberg and Anja Voeste
[IMPACT: Studies in Language, Culture and Society 37] 2015
► pp. 147–166
This work individuates in the Italian autobiography of the late 18th century the most relevant cases of literary elaboration of some topoi related to linguistic awareness and the lifespan. Describing life as a linguistic (and literary) transformation of an individual from the childish ignorance to the maturity is an evident narrative strategy in the well-known masterpiece of Vittorio Alfieri’s Vita, the most elaborate example of a literary autobiography in the Italian literature. Late-modern Italian autobiographers show a typical tendency towards the description of linguistic troubles and of the individual’s linguistic learning process.