This study presents an experiment that uses reading times as a measure of the processing effort demanded by ‘difficult’ poems, where difficulty is defined as a text-driven response phenomenon associated with resistance to reading fluency. Reading times have been used before to explore the processing of literature, but seldom with the aim of shedding light on difficulty. There is then scope to redress this research gap, also in light of Shklovsky’s claim that the technique of art is ‘to increase the difficulty and length of perception’. In the current experiment, a group of participants read six poems on-screen. The poems are by Mark Strand, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, Geoffrey Hill, Susan Howe and Jeremy Prynne, and have been selected based on critics’ remarks on their difficulty or lack thereof. An extract from a novel by JG Ballard was also included to find out how its narrativity would compare, in processing terms, to the more elliptical narrativity of Strand’s and Pound’s poems. The time spent on each line was recorded by software E-Prime, commonly used in psycholinguistics. The results indicate that three of these texts – Ballard’s, Strand’s and Pound’s – were read at a much higher speed than non-narrative poems by Stevens, Hill, Prynne and Howe. The proposed explanation was that it is sufficient for readers to recognize traces of a narrative schema to read the text fluently, even if such text is low in coherence. By contrast, when prototypical narrative features cannot be mapped onto a text, the processing effort as measured by reading times remarkably increases. Overall, the results refine our understanding of the relationship between difficulty and the stylistic strategies associated with it.

In analysing a range of 20* century poems and excerpts, stylisticians and literary critics have individuated a number of linguistic and textual features which they relate -with various degrees of explicitness -to the complex notion of 'difficulty'. While there is a fair amount of agreement in the set of phenomena identified, to the best of my knowledge these have never been analysed, grouped and classified from a linguistic and unified perspective. This is the chief aim of the present paper, in which I reconsider previously discussed poetic excerpts in order to derive a checklist of linguistic phenomena demanding further investigation and even future empirical testing. Another major aim is that of illustrating how widespread and problematic the use of 'difficult' and 'difficulty' is, often implying quite distinct senses. The meaning of this pair will be kept indeterminate throughout the whole paper, where it simply refers to the personal usage of the critic or stylistician at stake. At the end of the paper, by contrast, a clearer characterization will emerge in the light of the textual excerpts analysed: difficulty is regarded as a combination of semantic opacity and hypothesized processing effort at syntagmatic level. However, being part of a wider ongoing research project, a more satisfactory formulation is still to come. Finally, an additional outcome of the paper is that of adding some evidence to the study of poetic language by taking into account recent poetic developments that so far have been given little attention in stylistics.

As its title suggests, Difficulty in Poetry: A Stylistic Model tackles poetic difficulty. The question here is, why would one consider a poem difficult? Is it a semantic issue, facing unfamiliar meanings of words? Alternatively, it can be a pragmatic issue, the unfamiliar context to readers. Or is it a cultural issue? Or can it be a combination of all the factors mentioned above? The author endeavors to define difficulty based on previous relevant work that dealt with the same vein. In previous work, Castiglione (2017) defined difficulty “as a text-driven response phenomenon associated with resistance to reading fluency”(p.99). In general, this book in review addresses difficulty in poetry with the aim of finding understanding and analyzing difficulty. Readers need to know what poetic difficulty means and why some poems are considered complex and difficult to understand. Castiglione (2018) used an interesting metaphor to make the idea of his book more reachable to the readers. He describes difficulty as a metropolis. The ways of understanding it are described as vehicles. Issues might be faced during the journey to the center of this city. Moreover, the author advertently shows how difficulty is different from ambiguity and obscurity. This book achieves the following main goals: (1) it presents a definition of difficulty in poetry (2) it aims at approaching difficulty in poetry.

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The aim of this study is twofold: on the one hand, it purports to develop a model to investigate universal or generic propositions (e.g., theses, maxims, proverbs, aphorisms) and their effects in poetry; on the other, it applies such model to four poetry collections by Cristina Annino, Milo De Angelis, Marco Giovenale, and Guido Mazzoni. The analysis, guided by the criteria and parameters established by the model, has allowed to discover in what textual forms and pragmatic functions the aforementioned authors express contents worth of memic transmissibility, as well as related effects of authority, necessity, wisdom, intuition, collective relevance. Mazzoni’s reliance on theses, for instance, has been interpreted as an attempt to gain an objective knowledge of the world, differently from Annino’s more subjective aphorisms or De Angelis’ utterances, which are rooted in the here-and-now and yet capable of transcending themselves by virtue of their archetypal relevance. The model proposed has also enabled to shed light on less prototypical forms, such as Annino’s creative manipulation of proverbs and Giovenale’s parodic redeployment of stereotypes. The article concludes by suggesting paths for future research in which the model could be profitably applied.   Il presente studio si pone due obiettivi principali: da un lato, quello di sviluppare un modello per lo studio delle proposizioni universali o comunque a carattere generale (per es. tesi, massime, proverbi, aforismi) e dei loro effetti in poesia; dall’altro, quello di applicare tale modello a quattro libri recenti di altrettanti autori: Cristina Annino, Milo De Angelis, Marco Giovenale e Guido Mazzoni. L’analisi, guidata da criteri e parametri indicati dal modello, ha permesso di comprendere in quali forme testuali e funzioni pragmatiche questi autori esprimono contenuti degni di una trasmissibilità memica, nonché le annesse sensazioni di autorità, necessità, saggezza, intuizione, rilevanza collettiva. Si è per esempio ricondotto l’uso della tesi in Mazzoni al tentativo di raggiungere una conoscenza oggettiva del mondo, diversamente dalle forme più soggettive dell’aforisma in Annino o degli enunciati deangelisiani, situati nel qui-e-ora ma capaci di trascendersi grazie alla loro portata archetipica. Il modello proposto ha inoltre consentito di far luce su forme-limite, come il reimpiego creativo del proverbio in Annino e l'uso parodico degli stereotipi in Giovenale. L’articolo si conclude suggerendo ulteriori studi nei quali l'uso di questo modello potrebbe rivelarsi proficuo.   English title: Full of Wisdom: Forms and Uses of Maxims in Contemporary Italian Poetry