Prayer, concentration, and the semiotics of space in three contemporary Italian novels (Doni, Radi, Raimo)

This study focuses on the re-mediation of a specific practice of prayer in Italian literary culture. This practice entails a particular bodily posture and way of building the discursive relationship between the praying person and the deity, according to a specific valorization of space. The first part of the article proposes an analysis based on a sample of passages taken from contemporary novels by Rodolfo Doni, Luciano Radi, and Christian Raimo. The second part contextualizes the practice of prayer emerging from literary texts in the Christian-Catholic tradition. The conclusions present some hypotheses to explain why this way of praying is so relevant and present in today’s culture that literary works represent and re-mediate it. The methodology underpinning the analysis derives from semiotics, with particular attention to theories concerning discourse and the semiotization of space.