Conspiracy is a narration (but also a confabulation)
Abstract
Starting from a lexicological analysis, a general model of the conspiracy figure is identified: a secret narrative program with respect to the gaze of the implicit recipient of the narrative, harmful and evil with respect to the same point of view, conceived by people who are described as a group (foreign but camouflaged) united by certain characteristics. The narrative dimension is therefore considered, showing that in every conspiracy story there is a complex enunciation structure, made up of layers: that of the alleged perpetrators of the conspiracy, of those who tell them as such, of those who possibly unmask this narrative. This model is applied to an important historical case, that of the “slander of the blood” applied for the first time to the Jews of Norwich in 1144.
References
Boccaccio, Giovanni (1360), Genealogie deorum gentilium libri, Basileae, apud Io. Heruagium, 1951, https://gutenberg.beic.it/view/action/nmets.do?OCCHOICE=9442999.xml&dvs=1643363921122~205.
Cassieri, Giuseppe (2011), I protocolli del savio di Alessandria. Umberto Eco nel romanzesco mon-do dei savi di Sion, Chieti, Solfanelli.
Clark, Cecily (1970), a cura di, The Peterborough Chronicle, Oxford, The Clarendon Press.
Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome (2004), «The Flow of Blood in Medieval Norwich», in Speculum 79, no. 1, pp. 26-65.
Cortellazzo, Manlio, Zolli, Paolo (1983), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, Bologna, Zanichelli.
De Michelis, Cesare (1998), Il manoscritto inesistente, Venezia, Marsilio.
Despres, Denise (2010), «Adolescence and Sanctity: The Life and Passion of Saint William of Norwich», in The Journal of Religion, vol. 90, n. 1, pp. 33-62.
Eco, Umberto (2010) Il Cimitero di Praga, Milano, Bompiani.
Eco, Umberto (1994), Sei passeggiate nei boschi narrativi, Milano, Bompiani.
Esposito, Anna, Quaglioni, Diego (1990), Processi contro gli ebrei di Trento (1475-1478), Pa-dova, CEDAM.
Ginzburg, Carlo (1996), I benandanti. Ricerche sulla stregoneria e sui culti agrari tra Cinquecento e Seicento, Torino, Einaudi.
Ginzburg, Carlo (1989), Storia Notturna. Una decifrazione del Sabba, Torino, Einaudi.
Johnson, Hannah (2007), «Rhetoric’s Work: Thomas of Monmouth and the History of Forgetting», in New Medieval Literatures, n. 9, pp. 63-91.
Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel (1975), Montallou, village occitaine, Paris, Gallimard.
McCulloh, John M (1997), «Jewish Ritual Murder: William of Norwich, Thomas of Monmouth, and the Early Dissemination of the Myth», in Speculum 72, n. 3, pp. 698-740.
Menetti, Elisabetta (2010), «Il Decameron tra divagazione e conoscenza» (Intervento pre-sentato al convegno Associazione degli Italianisti. XIV Congresso Nazionale - Genova nel 15-18 settembre 2010, https://iris.unimore.it/retrieve/handle/11380/738072/5181/02%20MENETTI.pdf
Menetti, Elisabetta (2010a), «Boccaccio e la fictio», in Studi sul Boccaccio, vol. XXXVIII, pp. 69-87, https://www.academia.edu/8166517/Boccaccio_e_la_fictio_in_Studi_sul_Boccaccio_vol_XXXVIII_2010_pp_69_87.
Monmouth, Thomas of (1173) The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich, Cambridge University Press 2011.
Mir, A. (2020), Postjournalism and the death of newspapers. The media after Trump: manufacturing anger and polarization, New York, I.P.
Morin, Violette, (1978), «L’information télévisée. Un discours contrarié», in Communica-tions, n. 28, pp. 187-201.
Rose, Emily (2015), The Murder of William of Norwich: The Origins of the Blood Libel in Medie-val Europe, Oxford University Press.
Sprenger, James, Krämer, Heinrich (1486), Malleus Malleficarum, Strasburgo, (consultato online il gg/mm/aaaa), http://digitale.beic.it/primo_library/libweb/action/dlDisplay.do?vid=BEIC&docId=39bei_digitool9477645.
Teter, Magda (2020), Blood Libel. On the Trial of an Antisemitic Myth, Cambridge, Massa-chusetts-London, Harvard University Press.
Toaff, Ariel (2008), Pasque di sangue: Ebrei d'Europa e omicidi rituali, Bologna, Il Mulino.
Volli, Ugo (2021), «Qualche riflessione semiotica sulla temporalità della cronaca e della storia», in E|C Rivista dell’Associazione Italiana di Studi Semiotici, vol. XV, n. 32, pp. 49-55.
Works published in RIFL are released under Creative Commons Licence:Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.