The project aims to investigate the possibility of extending the issues posed by Warburg to other humanities (philosophy, anthropology, psychoanalysis) and applying his methodology to the history of literature – with particular reference to German literature – and to the history of the arts (theater, cinema, photography, dance), preferring a critical analysis which is not chronological, but rather dynamic, transversal and interdisciplinary.

Through the reading and contextualization of Warburg's work, heir to the German classic-romantic culture, the project intends to underline the importance of the concept of 'dynamic energy' of images and apply it to the study of literature and other humanities in order to investigate the power of an artwork to move and constantly change over time. In an artwork – whether it is a literary or visual one – it is in fact possible to find particular iconological motifs, fragments or Pathosformel in a sedimented or latent form, to wit, discordant and pathological elements, phantoms that "survive" in time and space revealing the profound meaning of an entire cultural era through their emergence.

The objective of this research project is to break the cultural, temporal and disciplinary boundaries and follow the invisible traces of the cultural memory sedimented in the work, paying attention to the apparently disturbing or "pathological" elements, in order to reconstruct some aspects of our culture and trace a "pathology of the modern".

Although in recent years studies dedicated to Warburg have multiplied, both in the field of art history and in other disciplinary fields, such as German Studies or Cultural History, a study still seems to be missing that considers Warburg's work as the nerve center of an absolutely modern constellation of ideas which might serve for a deep, multifaceted, dynamic and lively analysis of the most intrinsic aspects of European culture.