This issue brings together the papers of a workshop focusing on the theme of man and animal: human beings speak about themselves through the animal, and make the animal in their image and, sometimes take its appearance. The exploration of the resemblance between human beings and animals constitutes, because it allows us to question human nature.

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.

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

The cultural heritage we have received from Alfonso X is measureless in the different fields of knowledge he promoted during his reign. The works included in this monographic volume focus on three of the significant areas of great interest to the Wise King: devotional and miraculous literature, historiography and legal literature.

This volume dedicated to the "contactless worlds" aims to reflect upon the social uses and functions of proximity and distance, relationships with others and on the breakdown of these relationships in social and historical contexts.

The aim of the papers brought together in this volume is to show how the Homeric text and the figurative representations can be complementary to each other, and how they shed light on each other.We have tried to take into consideration the different modes of representation, giving a preponderant place to figurative,pictorial or sculptural represent