Italian StudiesPub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/00751634.2022.2070348
Charles L. Leavitt
{"title":"Deicide and the Drama of the Holocaust: Gian Paolo Callegari’s Cristo ha ucciso (1948)","authors":"Charles L. Leavitt","doi":"10.1080/00751634.2022.2070348","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00751634.2022.2070348","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Gian Paolo Callegari’s prize-winning 1948 play, Cristo ha ucciso, marks an overlooked milestone in Italy’s response to the Holocaust. Among the earliest Italian creative works to confront the genocide of the European Jews, Callegari’s play challenged the legacies of anti-Semitism in European culture. Yet it also concealed the troubling history of its author’s own Fascist anti-Semitism. Exploring this apparent paradox, the present essay situates both play and playwright in the post-war Italian context. I argue that Cristo ha ucciso makes possible a substantial reconsideration of the public reckoning that attended news of the liberation of the death camps. This is because, with its provocative claim that Christian forgiveness had to be abandoned as an impediment to justice, Callegari’s play offered a radical alternative to the Christian humanist framework predominant in Italian narratives of the Second World War.","PeriodicalId":44221,"journal":{"name":"Italian Studies","volume":"77 1","pages":"298 - 312"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46292425","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Italian StudiesPub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/00751634.2022.2069409
MariusWarholm Haugen
{"title":"The Lottery Fantasy and Social Mobility in Eighteenth-Century Venetian Literature: Carlo Goldoni, Pietro Chiari, and Giacomo Casanova","authors":"MariusWarholm Haugen","doi":"10.1080/00751634.2022.2069409","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00751634.2022.2069409","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article examines the lottery fantasy as a cultural figure and literary topic in the works of Carlo Goldoni, Pietro Chiari, and Giacomo Casanova. The lottery fantasy is to be understood as the dream of social ascension through sudden, life-changing wealth, which exercised a powerful allure on eighteenth-century Europe. The three authors addressed this figure in literary form, through the comedy, the novel, and the memoir, giving distinctly different representations and moral assessments of the lottery as a social and cultural practice. Despite their differences, all three works engage with the fundamental issue underlying the lottery fantasy: an increasing pressure towards social mobility in the nonmeritocratic society of the Old Regime. The article uses Roger Caillois’ categorisation of play as an analytical lens for examining how the three works link the aleatory game of the lottery to cultural practices aimed at meritocratic, social mobility.","PeriodicalId":44221,"journal":{"name":"Italian Studies","volume":"77 1","pages":"253 - 270"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46786280","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Italian StudiesPub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/00751634.2022.2103778
Nicolò Maldina
{"title":"San Giacomo, la Speranza e i Salmi a Paradiso XXV","authors":"Nicolò Maldina","doi":"10.1080/00751634.2022.2103778","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00751634.2022.2103778","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT L’articolo si propone di indagare l’allusione a Ps 114 (113A) che si registra a Paradiso xxv, 55–56 alla luce della tradizione medievale di questo Salmo e, in particolare, del possibile legame tra il suo celebre incipit (‘In exitu Isreael de Aegypto’) e la figura di san Giacomo Maggiore, ossia l’apostolo che in questo canto è chiamato a interrogare Dante personaggio sulla virtù della Speranza. Su queste basi, il contributo mira a valorizzare il ruolo di san Giacomo ai fini dell’autorappresentazione autoriale di Dante, con particolare riferimento alla sua complementarietà rispetto al più noto modello offerto, sempre nel venticinquesimo del Paradiso, da David.","PeriodicalId":44221,"journal":{"name":"Italian Studies","volume":"77 1","pages":"230 - 240"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43395578","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Italian StudiesPub Date : 2022-06-28DOI: 10.1080/00751634.2022.2070827
Giovanni Genna
{"title":"‘Cupidone buggerone’, ovvero Gadda e la demistificazione dello stilnovismo","authors":"Giovanni Genna","doi":"10.1080/00751634.2022.2070827","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00751634.2022.2070827","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Il pastiche gaddiano è un fenomeno particolarmente complesso, poiché stravolge tanto gli elementi linguistici quanto quelli iconografici della tradizione letteraria contaminandoli e, di fatto, riscrivendoli. Un esempio di questo fenomeno è certamente la riscrittura dei tòpoi della tradizione lirica amorosa che l’Ingegnere compie ribaltando i canoni dello stilnovismo – che già nei secoli precedenti erano mutati dando vita ai rifacimenti di maniera –, attraverso la deformazione dell’immagine di Amore e della domina angelicata. Partendo dalla lettura di alcuni passi tratti da articoli, racconti e romanzi, l’intento di questo saggio è sottolineare come, mediante la manipolazione dei tòpoi canonici dello stilnovismo, Gadda pervenga a delineare una propria dichiarazione di poetica in una commistione di toni tragici, umoristici e caricaturali.","PeriodicalId":44221,"journal":{"name":"Italian Studies","volume":"77 1","pages":"313 - 327"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47221477","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Italian StudiesPub Date : 2022-06-24DOI: 10.1080/00751634.2022.2081783
M. Angelucci, S. Kolsky
{"title":"Franca Rame Won the Nobel Prize: Approaching the Works of Dario Fo and Franca Rame as Collaboration","authors":"M. Angelucci, S. Kolsky","doi":"10.1080/00751634.2022.2081783","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00751634.2022.2081783","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this article, we seek to modify the view that Fo is the driving force behind the theatrical production of the various incarnations of the Compagnia Fo–Rame. We review certain theoretical aspects of authorship, emphasising it as an intrinsically collaborative process. In particular, we want to move away from the dichotomy that sees Fo as the solitary writer-actor-genius, and Rame as the ancillary manager and editor of ‘his’ works. Not only is the reality far more complex, but those roles are in fact creative authorial functions inside a collaborative practice. Why has this not been done before? In part because of a cultural practice that puts the individual (male) and his ‘genius’ at the centre, and in part because of a strong narrative put forward by Fo and Rame themselves, never truly questioned by scholars; as a consequence, Rame’s contribution has been either side-lined, or reclaimed in problematic ways.","PeriodicalId":44221,"journal":{"name":"Italian Studies","volume":"77 1","pages":"341 - 353"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48045358","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Italian StudiesPub Date : 2022-06-24DOI: 10.1080/00751634.2022.2082070
Francesco Brenna
{"title":"Donne interpreti della Bibbia nell’Italia della prima età moderna: Comunità ermeneutiche e riscritture","authors":"Francesco Brenna","doi":"10.1080/00751634.2022.2082070","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00751634.2022.2082070","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44221,"journal":{"name":"Italian Studies","volume":"77 1","pages":"354 - 355"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47215893","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Italian StudiesPub Date : 2022-06-24DOI: 10.1080/00751634.2022.2088667
S. Ross
{"title":"Tuscany Beyond Tuscany: Rethinking the City from the Periphery","authors":"S. Ross","doi":"10.1080/00751634.2022.2088667","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00751634.2022.2088667","url":null,"abstract":"playing with words [‘Non dico che sia una bella storia. È la Storia’]. In this respect, the volume effectively captures the sense of Munari’s ‘perturbazione cibernetica’, to use again Eco’s words, where nature becomes an epistemological tool for the artist, as brilliantly argued by Antonello. It goes without saying that, by the time Eco and Munari reflected upon this relationship with nature, they did not mean that nature that we see every day by perceptive habit, but that which we conceptually define in the laboratory. And therefore, by meaning ‘nature’ in the only correct possible sense, art does not imitate nature, but our way of interpreting and defining nature, imitating our operational relationship with nature, imitating nature as an ‘oggetto possibile di una nostra definizione che sa di definire non definitivamente’. Research, experimentation, opentextuality, total art, political awareness: if Calvino has inspired the title of this volume, in light of the many associations one can identify between his style and Munari’s, it is through Eco’s perceptive gaze that we can fully grasp the wonderful portrait of the Milanese artist.","PeriodicalId":44221,"journal":{"name":"Italian Studies","volume":"77 1","pages":"359 - 361"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43255282","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Italian StudiesPub Date : 2022-05-25DOI: 10.1080/00751634.2022.2070368
Eveljn Ferraro
{"title":"‘La tradizione è come il mare’: Giuseppe Pitrè’s Transnational Approach to Folk and Fairy Tales in the New Italy","authors":"Eveljn Ferraro","doi":"10.1080/00751634.2022.2070368","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00751634.2022.2070368","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Recent English and Italian translations of Giuseppe Pitrè’s Fiabe, novelle e racconti popolari have revived attention to the Sicilian folklorist. In Italy, collecting oral traditions emerged as a practice of regional cultural preservation during the political unification, modernisation, and redefinition of local identities within the new nation. This essay examines Pitrè’s introductory commentaries to his Fiabe in order to contextualise his comparative methodology and transnational approach to Sicilian folk and fairy tales. Pitrè’s ‘Preface’ and preliminary essay ‘Of folk tales’ offer insights into local history, women as storytellers, and Sicilian tales in relation to other regional traditions and transcultural folk repertoires. Mindful of Pitrè’s reinforcement of Sicilian stereotypes, this essay highlights his articulation of cultural difference as intervention and resistance to cultural totalisations. Pitrè’s simile of the sea-tradition best encapsulates his connections with transnational oral narratives and their power to cross national borders and disturb rigid national identity constructs.","PeriodicalId":44221,"journal":{"name":"Italian Studies","volume":"77 1","pages":"271 - 283"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46867383","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Italian StudiesPub Date : 2022-05-20DOI: 10.1080/00751634.2022.2061770
Nicla Riverso
{"title":"Claiming Social and Cultural Dignity: Isabella Andreini’s Rime","authors":"Nicla Riverso","doi":"10.1080/00751634.2022.2061770","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00751634.2022.2061770","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Isabella Andreini strove to establish a public image as a woman who, though an actress, was also a pious, virtuous, and learned writer. She showed that it was possible to perform on stage and, at the same time, embody the Christian values promoted by the Counter-Reformation Church. Andreini was well aware that although she was a talented actress, dancer, singer, and musician, earning respect as an honourable woman and receiving the recognition of posterity would depend on self-elevation through her writing. This essay reflects on Andreini’s critically under-investigated Rime, with a particular focus on those written in a religious vein, in order to demonstrate how the actress used her literary skills to emphasise her image as a virtuous woman. These skills brought her prestige and literary immortality, but they also helped her to claim social and cultural dignity for herself, for her profession, and for the women of her age.","PeriodicalId":44221,"journal":{"name":"Italian Studies","volume":"77 1","pages":"241 - 252"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48525850","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Italian StudiesPub Date : 2022-05-12DOI: 10.1080/00751634.2022.2051926
Marta Kaliska
{"title":"‘Cultural Activities’ in Foreign Language Teaching: A Multimodal Perspective on Italian Language Textbooks","authors":"Marta Kaliska","doi":"10.1080/00751634.2022.2051926","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00751634.2022.2051926","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article focuses on the cultural content present in the cultural sections of selected Italian-as-a-foreign-language (FL) textbooks used at the University of Warsaw to teach Italian courses. To explore such content, we apply both a multimodal approach based on visual social semiotics (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006) and a framework of cultural paradigms, via the use of which culture is usually introduced in foreign language education. We also conceptualise the notion of cultural activity as a basic research unit with the primary goal of organising a textbook’s cultural content. While exploring the identified cultural activities, we observed that the dominant cultural paradigm is the national one. The explicit focus is put on Italian artistic heritage, geography, and literature, whereas contemporary social problems are less frequently presented, often without references to different points of view. In the discussion, certain pedagogical and content solutions for teaching culture are indicated.","PeriodicalId":44221,"journal":{"name":"Italian Studies","volume":"77 1","pages":"470 - 486"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49209819","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}