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Context

The project is dedicated to the novel Il Giuoco dell’Oca written by Edoardo Sanguineti and published in 1967.

The work is considered an example of combinatory literature1 for its unique structure and content. The title itself suggests that the author draws inspiration from the traditional game of the goose, where each chapter is like a box of the board game. This structure allows the reader to approach the novel sequentially from the first to the last chapter or to jump between chapters, engaging with the text as if participating in a game, inspired by the interplay of images, words, and concepts created by the author.

A key element of the novel is indeed the use of the rhetoric strategy of the ekphrasis since each chapter corresponds to a description of a cultural object. These objects pertain mostly to the culture of the '60s, the period in which Sanguineti lived and worked, and span various domains, including art, advertising, cinema, magazines, and music.

Sanguineti's use of ekphrasis challenges traditional forms of description by juxtaposing images and emphasizing specific aspects of the objects. These aspects connect the described items to other related objects. Additionally, another type of connection emerge, namely the relationships between different chapters that describe the same cultural object (intratextual relations).

For these reasons, Il Giuoco dell'Oca is an ideal foundation for a project aimed at connecting different cultural objects from the Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museum (GLAM) domain. The project intends to highlight the intratextual and intermedial connections within Sanguineti's work, enriching the reader's understanding and appreciation of the novel. In identifying the intermedial relationships in the text, we have drawn upon the insights of three scholars who have studied the text over time 123.

  1. Portesine, C. (2021). «Una specie di Biennale allargata» : Il giuoco dell’ecfrasi nel secondo romanzo di Edoardo Sanguineti. https://ricerca.sns.it/handle/11384/125303 ↩↩

  2. Risso, E. (2023). La regola del giuoco. ITA. https://www.iris.unisa.it/handle/11386/4831092 ↩

  3. Sotgiu, E. (2016). Il giuoco dell’Oca nella trilogia di Edoardo Sanguineti. Italianistica : Rivista Di Letteratura Italiana : XLV, 2, 2016, 141–156. https://doi.org/10.1400/246096 ↩