Vittorini’s double realities in Conversations in Sicily : Embodied remembering in reading

Readers, we argue, frequently engage with the events unfolding in literary texts without relying on symbolic representation. When immersing themselves in embodied and imaginative depictions of memories during reading, readers can directly experience and engage with these cognitive processes. We construct a theoretical framework rooted in an embodied-ecological view on language and reading to argue against the ‘code view’ where reading is seen as a translation of text into symbolic, mental representations. Drawing on recent developments in research on memory, we argue instead that reading can enable readers to re-experience the memory process depicted in the text. We apply this theoretical approach to Elio Vittorini’s Conversations in Sicily and show how embodied language can establish a direct connection between readers’ minded bodies and Vittorini’s protagonist’s memories of his childhood in Sicily.