e-ISSN 2385-3042 Annali ISSN 1125-3789 di Ca’ Foscari Serie orientale Vol. 54 Edizioni Giugno – Supplemento – 2018 Ca’Foscari e-ISSN 2385-3042 Annali di Ca’ Foscari ISSN 1125-3789 Serie orientale Direttore Antonio Rigopoulos Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Digital Publishing Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia Dorsoduro 3246, 30123 Venezia URL http://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/it/edizioni/riviste/annali-di-ca-foscari- serie-orientale/ Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie orientale Rivista annuale Direzione scientifica Antonio Rigopoulos (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Aldo Ferrari (Vicedirettore) (Univer- sità Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Comitato scientifico Frédéric Bauden (Université de Liège, Belgique) Giuliano Boccali (Università degli Studi di Mila- no, Italia) Adriana Boscaro (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Michel Bozdemir (INALCO, Paris, France) Lucia Dolce (SOAS, London, UK) Mahmud Fotuhi (Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran) Roger Greatrex (Lunds Universitet, Sveri- ge) Christian Henriot (Université Lumière-Lyon 2, France) Elguja Khintibidze (Tbilisi State University, Georgia) Ross J. King (The University of British Columbia, Canada) Michel Lagarde (Pontificio Istituto di Studi Arabi e d’Islamistica, Roma, Italia) Gregory B. Lee (Université «Jean Moulin» Lyon 3, France) Olga Lizzini (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Ne- derland) José Martínez Delgado (Universidad de Granada, España) David R. McCann (Harvard University, Cambridge, USA) Francesca Orsini (SOAS, London, UK) Tudor Parfitt (Florida International University, Miami, USA) Mario Sabattini † (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Giuliano Tamani (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Theo M. van Lint (University of Oxford, UK) Stefano Zacchetti (University of Oxford, UK) Comitato di redazione Attilio Andreini (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Giampiero Bellingeri (Università Ca’ Fo- scari Venezia, Italia) Paolo Calvetti (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Piero Capelli (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Ita- lia) Marco Ceresa (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Vincenza D’Urso (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Antonella Ghersetti (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Federico Greselin (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Tiziana Lippiello (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Daniela Meneghini (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Stefano Pellò (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Sabrina Rastelli (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Massimo Raveri (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Marco Salati (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Gaga Shurgaia (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Ita- lia) Aldo Tollini (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Ida Zilio-Grandi (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Editor associato Marcella Mariotti (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Editors in chief Claudia D’Ortona (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Marcella Festa (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Direttore responsabile Magda Abbiati (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Redazione | Head office Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia | Dipartimento di Studi sull’Asia e sull’Africa Mediterranea | Palazzo Vendramin dei Carmini | Dorsoduro 3462 - 30123 Venezia | Italia | [email protected] Editore Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Digital Publishing | Dorsoduro 3246, 30123 Venezia, Italia | [email protected] Stampa Logo srl, via Marco Polo 8, 35010 Borgoricco (PD) © 2018 Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia © 2018 Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Digital Publishing per la presente edizione cb Quest’opera è distribuita con Licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione 4.0 Internazionale This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License Certificazione scientifica delle Opere pubblicate da Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Digital Publishing: tutti i saggi pubblicati hanno ottenuto il parere favorevole da parte di valutatori esperti della materia, attraverso un processo di revisione anonima sotto la responsabilità del Comitato scientifico della rivista. La valutazione è stata condotta in aderenza ai criteri scientifici ed editoriali di Edizioni Ca’ Foscari. Scientific certification of the works published by Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Digital Publishing: all essays published in this volume have received a favourable opinion by subject-matter experts, through an anonymous peer review process under the responsibility of the Scientific Committee of the journal. The evaluations were conducted in adherence to the scientific and editorial criteria established by Edizioni Ca’ Foscari. Annali di Ca’ Foscari e-ISSN 2385-3042 Serie orientale (46) ISSN 1125-3789 Vol. 54 – Supplemento – 2018 Summary Foreword 445 TEXT IN BETWEEN ACTION AND NON-ACTION GENESIS, STRATEGIES, AND OUTCOMES OF TEXTUAL AGENCY The Roots of Textual Agency The Semiotics of Motivation and Demotivation Massimo Leone 451 PART 1. THE GENESIS OF ACTION De-orientalising Ritual Blood Calabria’s vattienti, a Case study Simona Loi 461 Life Stories and Living Texts The Political Use of Oral Sources in the Storytelling of Turkey’s Past Carlotta De Sanctis 491 Artistic Representations of Urban Shamans in Contemporary Japan Texts, Inter-actions and Efficacy Silvia Rivadossi 513 PART 2. THE STRATEGIES OF ACTION The Narrative Structure of Ambiguity A Semiotic Analysis of a Tawriya-Epigram by Ibn al-ʿAṭṭār (d. 794/1392) Luca Rizzo 537 URL http://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/it/edizioni/riviste/annali-di-ca-foscari-serie- orientale/2018/54supplemento/ DOI 10.30687/AnnOr/2385-3042/2018/02 The Imported Culture: Who Is the Dummy? Considering ‘Agency’ in the Circulation of Chinese Books in Europe during the Seventeenth-Eighteenth Centuries Arianna Magnani 575 Doing Things with Metaphors in Contemporary China Analysing the Use of Creative Metaphors in the Discourse on the Chinese Dream Beatrice Gallelli 595 PART 3. THE OUTCOMES OF ACTION The Italian Opera Culture in Constantinople During the Nineteenth Century New Data and Some Ideological Issues Vittorio Cattelan 621 Literary Agency in the Wake of Catastrophe The Canonization of the Literary Responses to Trauma Veronica De Pieri 657 Texts in Between Action and Non-Action Genesis, Strategies, and Outcomes of Textual Agency edited by Massimo Leone, Luca Rizzo and Pier Carlo Tommasi Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie orientale e-ISSN 2385-3042 Vol. 54 – Supplemento – 2018 ISSN 1125-3789 Foreword The current issue of Annali di Ca’ Foscari – Serie Orientale gathers contri- butions from a doctoral workshop held at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice in December 2017. The workshop, and thus the present volume, attempted to reconsider the mutual understanding inherent in ‘area studies’, gener- ally conceived as an autonomous field of research, which seldom questions the nature of its role. The initiative was organized by the guest editors of this journal issue with the generous support of the Student Office. Overall, it offered a precious opportunity for sharing ideas and fostering interdis- ciplinary dialogue. Considering the variety of specializations expressed by each contributor, we have identified the broad topic of textual agency as a thought-provok- ing ground on which to lay the foundations for our debate. The primary question this collection of essays intends to address is the rethinking of the concept of ‘text’ and exploring the multiple forms of meaning it engenders. The familiarity with the text as a closed, self-standing unit of meaning has put aside the multi-dimensional process of signification, leading to a widespread misperception of the text’s value in its full complexity. Rather, we should delve into the factors or ‘strategies’ – rhetorical, visual, aural, kinaesthetic – that a text might employ in order to convey its message and thereby re-orient human thought and action. In other words, what conditions may enhance or hinder the text’s potential of ‘doing things’? Opinions on this matter vary considerably among intellectuals, traditions, historical periods, and cultural spheres; thus no answer can be easily found. Yet, such questions have triggered our interest as young scholars from different backgrounds and areas of expertise, opening a lively dis- cussion around the theme of textual agency. This notion has been central to theoretical reflection over the past few decades and has recently gained momentum thanks to the influential work of Bruno Latour. In particular, his efforts moved beyond the common phil- osophical ground which posits a strict ontological divide between subject and object. A similar shift in perspective resulted in a more inclusive idea of ‘network’, a social space produced by both human and non-human agents through their interaction. Within this framework, the textual arte- fact has been entrusted with previously unnoticed functions – and respon- sibilities –, but how can we discern when a text is just an inert object and when it is capable of – or culpable for – eliciting a specific audience’s reac- tion? How can we detect the agenda underpinning its emergence and keep 445 e-ISSN 2385-3042 Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie orientale, 54, Supplemento, 2018, 445-448 ISSN 1125-3789 track of its reception? The problem becomes even more compelling when it is intertwined with cultures distant from our own in time and space. Often criticized for being too self-referential, area studies are now facing the challenge of proving their relevance by contributing to the creation of a border-crossing, transcultural knowledge. At the same time, area stud- ies may well profit from this mutual encounter by developing innovative tools