Prospettive sull’energia fra lingua e letteratura tedesca. Introduzione

This article introduces the topic and outlines the contributions of this special issue of «Studi Germanici – I quaderni dell’AIG». The article tackles the challenging concept of energy from different angles – from literary to linguistic and translation – with the aim of providing new food for thought on a topic worthy of attention and investigation in the context of linguistics and in the field of literary criticism. The aim of the essay is, in fact, to identify and discuss the dialectics of energy in different literary and textual genres, illuminating the areas of intersection between science and literature (mesmerism, magnetism, galvanism, etc.) and the repercussions of scientific, linguistic, philosophical and literary-critical theories on energy on the German-speaking language and literature, also on a stylistic and structural level. Dealing with the concept of energy in German linguistics and literature means, in fact, referring to various philosophical attitudes with which, especially in the transition between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the phenomenon of ‘language’ was viewed.