Research: “Away from me, Satan!” (Mt, 4:10): The Infinite Web of Time in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years, or the Renunciants (1829). Interlacements, Legacies and Prospects of the Semantics of Renunciation
Alessandro Niero graduated in Languages, Civilization and Language Sciences (literary-cultural curriculum with German and Swedish) from Ca’ Foscari University of Venice in 2019 with a thesis entitled “Knut Hamsuns Auf überwachsenen Pfaden. Zur ausgeklügelten Überlebensstrategie eines kompromittierten Wortkünstlers.” In 2023 he received a master’s degree in European, American and Postcolonial Languages and Literatures (Germanistics curriculum) from Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, discussing a thesis entitled “Die Dialektik zwischen Form und Seele in Goethes Roman Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. Wilhelms Bildung im Spiegel arkadischer Motive.” He is currently a doctoral candidate in “Germanic and Slavic Studies” (curriculum of “Germanic Studies”) at La Sapienza University of Rome and Univerzita Karlova in Prague. His research project intends to propose a novel hermeneutic-semiological analysis of Goethe’s last novel, Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years, or the Renunciants (Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre oder die Entsagenden), in which the text is conceived as a polysemous web woven with threads of time and aimed at propagating the semantics of renunciation as it is depicted in the Christian motif of "abrenuntiatio diabuli". Alessandro Niero’s research interests focus mainly on the work of Johann Wolfgang Goethe, interpreted not only from a literary point of view, but also approached from an anthropological-philosophical and comparative perspective. Alongside Germanistic studies, Alessandro Niero is interested in Scandinavian philosophy and literature, particularly in the thought and work of Søren Kierkegaard and Knut Hamsun. His interests also regard translation from both German and Nordic languages.