Revisiting Interpretatio Nominis: Naming Strategies in Selected Recent Italian Novels

Abstract

This essay highlights a sustained metalinguistic focus on onomastic strategies, as well as a deliberate interpretatio nominis, in Alessandro D’Avenia’s novel L’appello (2020). This phenomenon is likewise evident in the corpus of Premio Strega laureates, most notably in Sandro Veronesi’s Il Colibrì (2019). Possible interpretative frameworks include: a symbolic significance ascribed to proper names in contemporary cultural consciousness; a deliberate emphasis on the work’s metanarrative structure; or, alternatively, a certain stylistic impoverishment accompanied by an orientation toward an inexperienced Implied Reader.