This volume traces the construction between 1848 and 1948 of a republican political and literary language both local and national at the same time, the confrontation with foreign republican models and counter models; the Italian republican discourses under the monarchy and fascism.

From the medieval period to the modern world, prophecy has remained a privileged medium for interpreting and shaping Italian political thought and reality. The twelve contributions of this thematic issue show, by exploring the modalities and potentialities of prophetic discourse and the need for it, in different key moments of the history of Italy.

From 1969 to 1992, Italy experienced violent episodes perpetrated by far-right terrorists and then by far-left activists, while the South of the country was hit by mafia violence. These expressions of violence gave rise to a strong resistance among civil society that kept with a traditional protest but "didn't resort to violence".

The aim of this issue of Laboratoire italien is to consider the narratives of men and women who comment their experiences of the Nazi extermination and concentration camps. They have built a shared cultural memory that has today been brought into question through the rhetorical instruments of the post-truth era.

This issue explores a little-studied aspect of works about the body: the interactions between the two semiotic systems of verbal language and gesture, an aspect of body language. In their interferences, from the 16th century onwards, a profound transformation of the social and individual functions of the "visibile parlare" took place

Between the 19th and 20th centuries, women's magazines were the main instrument of debate and collective action for Italian feminism. They played a crucial role in Italian women’s engagement with international feminist associations and illustrate the complexity of feminist motivations and struggles.

The twelve contributions in this Laboratoire italien issue examine the record of the Genoa G8 counter-summit in July 2001, twenty years after its ferocious repression by the Italian police, by cross-referencing perspectives from social sciences, literary studies, oral narrative, film studies and visual studies.