Book excerpt: This book draws an updated Euro-American conceptual map, starting from a limited number of strategic terms whose meanings today are judged univocal and permanent, while in fact daily use has turned them into “common sense”, depriving them of their ambiguity – an original feature of language, particularly relevant when it comes to literary use. By re-examining the proper noun for each of the selected notions, the contributors’ common intent is to shed light on their polysemous nature and linguistic fluidity, in spite of the common tendency towards simplification and homogeneity imposed by hegemonic cultural paradigms. Along this line, the book explores the great divides between identity and otherness (or common or alien) in order to recover a sense of cultural identity which is at once polymorphous and polyphonic.