Amelia Rosselli and the anguish of breathing: style or pathological speech?

This research aims to delve into a distinctive and compelling example of poetic discourse, marked by features that may imply an affinity with the domain of pathological speech. For the study were selected eight poetic readings by Amelia Rosselli (1930-1996), one of the most renowned female poets of the Italian literary tradition. The interest in studying the (potential) poet’s pathological speech arises first of all from the reconstruction of her clinical history, which finds a reflection in the analysed oral data. The recordings cover a period from 1985 to 1990 and reflect the last phase of Rosselli’s brief life. The analysis reveals interesting information on the nature of her speech, offering insights into the possible prosodic reflections of a pathological substrate. Her reading style is characterized by fragmentation through emphasized silence and noise, as well as a peculiar use of pauses. Nevertheless, the stylistic, pathological, or potentially dual nature of Rosselli’s discourse remains uncertain. This study employed the VIP-Voices of Italian Poets methodology, and a General-VIP-Radar was constructed to summarize her distinctive style.