Building Worlds: Io, venditore di elefanti. Una vita per forza fra Dakar, Parigi e Milano by Pap Khouma and Oreste Pivetta

Abstract In Io, venditore di elefanti (1990), Pap Khouma and Oreste Pivetta evoke vivid basic images that will engender complex processing and detailed representations of an existential condition: that of a black, illegal immigrant, smuggling illicit goods. It takes a few prompts for readers to create in their minds precise and iconic images, leading to a sophisticated conceptual configuration of an elaborate, abstract social phenomenon related to several domains of knowledge, experience, and pragmatic and cultural factors: migration (Langacker 2008; Gavins 2007; Iser 1980). Details or minimal elements and concepts are outlined and grouped, generating a multi-level and dynamic perceptual encounter with the other, which in this essay will be investigated by focusing on how readers respond, make or negotiate textual meanings, construing conceptual content evoked, elicited and imposed by textual or compositional building elements and devices (Langacker 2008, 43; cf. Stockwell 2009; Iser 1974 xi). The current analysis refers to Text World Theory as a methodological base (Werth 1999; Gavins 2007), opening flexibly to other cognitive models (Iser 1974, 1980; Langacker 2008; Stockwell 2009).