Semiotica dell’inglobamento. Il caso dei reliquiari

Cultures are replete with gestures and practices of wrapping and unwrapping. The semiotic perspective on such gestures and practices reveals a common th- read, which can be analyzed taking as a point of de- parture Greimas’s plastic category englobing/englobed [ englobant / englobé ]. The first part of the article theoreti- cally explores this category, claiming that it consists in a topological manifestation of the way in which a text constructs the desire of its observing actant [ actant obser- vateur ]. A tensive diagram is proposed in order to visua- lize the articulation of this category depending on the dialectics between the transparency of the englobing entity and the perceptibility of the englobed one, con- ceived as alteration of its chromatic, morphologic, and topologic characteristics. After situating the semiotic functioning of “covers”, including book covers, in this theoretical framework, the article develops an in-depth analysis of a particular englobing/englobed dialectics: the one between relics and reliquaries. Whereas the purpose of other covers, including book covers, is often that of bestowing an erotic aura upon their symbolic and/or iconic content, the main purpose of reliquaries is, on the contrary, that of downplaying the potentially idolatrous indexicality of relics by framing them within a complex anagogic network of words and images. The silver reliquary of Saint Francis Xavier in Goa is adop- ted as final case-study of the article.