L’aura ritrovata: icone, fotografie e iconografie nei romanzi di Ali Smith

Starting from Benjamin’s definition of aura, the purpose of this article is to interpret such a concept in the narrative production of the Scottish writer Ali Smith, in particular in her novels Artful (2012) and How To Be Both (2014). In the first part of the article, I will dwell upon Benjamin’s notion of aura and its epistemological functions. In the second part, I will analyse the representation of the images (especially photographic and cinematic ones) in Smith’s novels in order to demonstrate that the concept of aura is applicable to interpreting contemporary images too.