Disasters and catastrophes are considered here in the forms of writing they elicit within the human world they disrupt. The different case studies examined illustrate how far the variety and fluidity of the rhetorical-literary forms used in 14th-17th century Italy are a powerful factor in the evolution of language, literature and hermeneutic models

In the wake of the recent publications on the centrality of culture in the Fascist totalitarian project, this issue examines Mussolini's relationship to the arts and vice versa more specifically, probing the aesthetic and political aspects of representations of the "duce" – both in Italy and in their circulation abroad.