ODI and BACODI: a study on Destini incrociati by Italo Calvino with Semantic Web Technologies

On the centenary of Italo Calvino's birth, this research aims to investigate the “macchina narrativa combinatoria” [1] using Semantic Web technologies to formalise and analyse textual and iconographical aspects that concern narrative and compositional structures, plot concepts and character roles in the collection Il castello dei destini incrociati by Italo Calvino. In particular, ODI Ontology (Ontologia dei Destini incrociati di Italo Calvino) and its corresponding Knowledge Base (BACODI, Base di Conoscenza dell’Ontologia dei Destini incrociati di Italo Calvino), represent and describe the publication of the edition, the description of the cards - both as parts of the deck and as narrative instances in Calvino’s text - and, finally, the semantic links and narrative relations between cards in each story, considering their coexistence in a single environment. Data has been analysed under three main aspects: the semantics conveyed by the tarot cards, the text structure and the relations between cards.