L’effetto Proust: olfatto, memoria e narrativizzazione dell’esperienza

This volume explores olfaction as a transversal operator capable of linking perception, memory, and meaning, thereby challenging dominant visuolinguistic models. From an explicitly transdisciplinary perspective, philosophy, semiotics, psychology, neuroscience, literary studies, and education converge in treating olfactory experience as a testing ground for rethinking the forms of the sensible. At the core of the volume stands Marcel Proust, approached as a theoretical laboratory: the literary and semiotic contributions (Verna, Vago, Campagnoli, Garbelli, Basso Fossali) show how olfaction destabilizes language and narrative, emerging as an atmospheric dynamic and a principle of meaning. Psychological and neurocognitive studies (Di Dio et al.; Plailly et al.) analyze olfactory memory as an affective and situated process, while educational research (Gola) highlights its role in multisensory learning. Capatti’s essay, finally, restores the material and cultural dimension of smells through the lens of gastronomic lexicon. The volume thus offers a critical mapping of olfaction as a limit-object, capable of redefining the relationships between experience, memory, and language.