Italian Studies最新文献

{"title":"Dante’s Masterplot and the Alternative Narrative Models in the Commedia","authors":"Tristan J Kay","doi":"10.1080/00751634.2023.2168892","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00751634.2023.2168892","url":null,"abstract":"In his relationship to his readership, Dante can easily be regarded as the most autocratic of writers. Throughout his oeuvre, whether in the use of self-exegesis in the Vita nova and Convivio or in the highly determined linear narrative of the Commedia, punctuated by direct injunctions to its reader, he demonstrates an intense preoccupation with controlling how his work is to be read and interpreted. Scholars have, nevertheless, begun to identify a different Dante, one whose work shows signs of vulnerability and is open to a wider range of interpretative possibilities. A key example of this critical tendency came in the recent Oxford Handbook of Dante, edited by Manuele Gragnolati, Elena Lombardi, and Francesca Southerden. As the editors of the volume write in their introduction: ‘the Handbook is interested in letting another figure emerge alongside that more solid and consistent (one might say overly consistent) Dante: a Dante who is (made) open to interpretation, unbound from the shackles of completion and wholeness haunting [his work]. As such, the Handbook does not want to systematize Dante, nor repeat the gesture of the Vita nova of imposing a unitary narrative and fixing the porosity of the rime. Instead, the Handbook invites openness and the plurality of interpretation, similar to the process of recovering the dialogic character of the rime outside of the prose frame’ (p. xxxii). Nicolò Crisafi’s first monograph, based on his doctoral project, emerges from the intellectual environment at the University of Oxford that fostered the Handbook and it shares that collection’s interest in proposing a more open and plural Dante. Its focus is on the ineluctable ‘masterplot’ of the Commedia: ‘the trajectory of progress through which the poet, at various stages of his path, understands in retrospect the most significant events of his autobiography, his writing career, and his protagonist’s progress in the Commedia’ (p. 1). The masterplot represents poem’s dominant, ‘teleological’ narrative mode, whereby ‘the poet is able to subjugate earlier works or earlier parts of the poem to the revisionist gaze of an endpoint’ (p. 1). Rather than taking this masterplot at face value, however, Crisafi attempts to deconstruct its workings, draw attention to some of the critical and hermeneutical problems associated with its dominance, and shed light upon some of the alternative, ‘non-linear’ forms of narrative that are also at work within the poem. The substantial introductory chapter first shows how Dante’s masterplot has impacted upon and shaped the language of modern critical literature. Crisafi examines a selection of keywords in the critical discourse surrounding the Commedia (examples include ‘conversion’, ‘palinode’, ‘synthesis’,","PeriodicalId":44221,"journal":{"name":"Italian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46210973","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}

{"title":"Queering Two Resistance Novels: Historical Trauma, Open Secrets, and Non-Genealogical Plot in Carlo Coccioli’s Il migliore e l’ultimo and Beppe Fenoglio’s Il libro di Johnny","authors":"M. Codebò","doi":"10.1080/00751634.2023.2168420","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00751634.2023.2168420","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT A queer reading of Coccioli’s Il migliore e l’ultimo and Fenoglio’s Il libro di Johnny complicates the narration of the Italian Resistance by following a zig-zag path. This path begins on 8 September 1943, a traumatic day in which the national fiction fell apart, leaving the two novels’ heroes stranded without an army, a country, or a king. The path continues through the Resistance in the form of youth secession: the escape of thousands of young women and men away from home to build their own territorial, resistant communities. The last stage in this path consists of the rejection of the vertical link with the father and the establishment of horizontal connections between individuals who until recently were unknown to one another.","PeriodicalId":44221,"journal":{"name":"Italian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41924584","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}

{"title":"‘Il sospetto di un altro mondo’: appunti per una storia originaria (1936–1945)","authors":"Riccardo Gasperina Geroni","doi":"10.1080/00751634.2023.2166766","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00751634.2023.2166766","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Che cosa accomuna le poetiche di autori diversi tra loro come Cesare Pavese, Elio Vittorini e Carlo Emilio Gadda? Il presente contributo intende indagare da una prospettiva inedita il problema dell’originario nella letteratura italiana contemporanea, a cavallo tra la fine degli anni Trenta e i primi anni Quaranta del secolo passato (1936–1945). Seguendo la lezione inaugurata da Edward Said con Beginnings, l’autore riflette sulla vitalità del tema dell’origine, qui nella fattispecie dell’infanzia riletta alla luce del mito eziologico del Paradiso perduto, entro la cultura italiana tra le due guerre, in cui si intrecciano le suggestioni della Scienza nuova di Vico in combinato disposto con le teorie di Giacomo Leopardi e Henri Bergson. È, difatti, alla luce della funzione della memoria (individuale e collettiva) che questi autori ripensano il fascismo, alla ricerca di spunti capaci di redimere la violenza del presente.","PeriodicalId":44221,"journal":{"name":"Italian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43355464","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}

{"title":"Boccaccio and the Consolation of Literature","authors":"Olivia Holmes","doi":"10.1080/00751634.2023.2168377","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00751634.2023.2168377","url":null,"abstract":"manage and produce social and moral order, examining the extent to which rhetorical strategies and fiction can preserve this order and avoid danger. Grace Delmolino’s essay examines the gendered dynamics of IX, 7. She presents a non-misogynist reading of the tale and argues that the tale leads us to understand that the agency of all parties and the avoidance of both tyranny and servitude is essential in the foundation of social order. Johnny L. Bertolio examines IX, 8 beyond the apparent comic fiction, as a depiction of civic, moral, and bodily disorder through his reading of the tale in parallel both with Dante’s Inferno and the biblical metaphor of ‘wine of wrath’. Albert Russell Ascoli’s article on the ninth tale examines the figure of Solomon in contrast with the tale’s narrator Emilia. Situating the tale within the microtext, he argues that this understudied tale is an overlooked and essential point of consideration in the critical trend of examining Emilia. In his view, Emilia represents an interpretive and political contradiction in her simultaneous power and defence of the misogyny that challenges that power; as such, she is shown to be central to Boccaccio’s investigation of governance in the Decameron. The final essay in the volume, penned by Max Matukhin, presents a close reading of IX, 10 and an intertextual study of its various antecedents. Matukhin’s investigation reveals that Dioneo subverts the medieval understanding that sodomy was a practice of the upper class and intellectuals as a result of excessive learning, by having a rural Puglian priest demonstrate a corrective to a sodomy born of ignorance. This collection of thought-provoking essays on the ninth day of the Decameron makes a significant contribution to existing critical literature, through the continuation of the Lectura’s project of ensuring neglected tales, and indeed a neglected day, are brought centre stage. The volume offers a renewed perspective of the ninth day as a diverse and yet cohesive collection of tales and provides an insightful investigation of the role of the ninth day in the macrotext, through both the perceptive contributions regarding the individual novelle and the innovative addition of the highly productive introductory essay by the volume’s editors.","PeriodicalId":44221,"journal":{"name":"Italian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43612847","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}

{"title":"‘Occhi Fissi’: Fixing the Gaze in Dante’s Commedia","authors":"Rebecca Bowen","doi":"10.1080/00751634.2022.2158272","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00751634.2022.2158272","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Moments of visual fixation appear throughout the Commedia. Reconstructing their connotations in relation to contemporary discourses on sight, this article argues that, as well as a literary trope, Dante’s depictions of fixing the gaze function as a metaliterary device, an invitation to the reader’s critical eye that, when interrupted, draws attention to the multiple cultures of gazing circulating at the time – from erotic obsession to contemplative ecstasy via visionary philosophical and theological inquiry. The roots of the trope are traced in Dante’s rime and analysed in key episodes of the Commedia, including the dream of the Siren (Purgatorio xix), Dante’s ‘too fixed’ gaze (Purgatorio xxiii), and the climatic gazes pilgrim and guide turn to God in Paradiso. By encouraging the reader to fulfil the poet’s vision in her imagination, the fixed gaze, and its frequent interruption, emerges as a uniquely suitable trope for negotiating the representational challenges of transcendental topics.","PeriodicalId":44221,"journal":{"name":"Italian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44670889","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}

{"title":"Leopardi’s Disaster","authors":"P. Nicholls","doi":"10.1080/00751634.2023.2166755","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00751634.2023.2166755","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article explores an idea of ‘disaster’ (‘sciagura’) that figures prominently in Leopardi’s early Canzoni (1818–22). While English versions have generally rendered this word as ‘unhappiness’, ‘woes’, ‘ills’ etc., the emphasis on lyric melancholy misses Leopardi’s sense of a universal ‘calamity’ that is closely bound up with the acquisition of language and with humanity’s increasing separation from nature. The article finds suggestive analogies between Leopardi’s handling of this nexus of ideas and Maurice Blanchot’s much later concept of disaster which is similarly geared to a perception of language as something ‘neutral’ and ‘external’. The article goes on to examine the elevated style and ‘unnatural’ syntax of the Canzoni as a means by which Leopardi cultivates his own version of an impersonal sublime.","PeriodicalId":44221,"journal":{"name":"Italian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42693419","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}

{"title":"Esuli: scrittori e scrittrici dall’antichità a oggi","authors":"Gennaro Ambrosino","doi":"10.1080/00751634.2023.2173388","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00751634.2023.2173388","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44221,"journal":{"name":"Italian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46808293","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}

{"title":"L’antichità «crudele». Etruschi e Italici nella letteratura italiana del Novecento","authors":"G. Litrico","doi":"10.1080/00751634.2023.2173387","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00751634.2023.2173387","url":null,"abstract":"in reading. By experimenting with various consolatory strategies and oscillating between them, Boccaccio shows that there is no one universal solution to hardship and that consolation should be attuned to the sufferer’s particular circumstances. He thereby propels readers to take an active role in determining their own source of comfort, and embraces an individualistic attitude towards earthly goals that anticipates aspects of Renaissance humanism.","PeriodicalId":44221,"journal":{"name":"Italian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48987390","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}

{"title":"Pia Pera’s Poetics of the Planetary Garden","authors":"Marina Spunta","doi":"10.1080/00751634.2022.2148190","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00751634.2022.2148190","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article explores Pia Pera’s poetics of the garden. As the first in-depth study of Pera’s work on the subject, it aims to position her as an original voice within contemporary (garden) writing and to locate garden writing in relation to current ecological, ecocritical, and environmental debates. By drawing on philosophy, aesthetics, and critical plant studies, I demonstrate how Pera’s work engages both with the aesthetic tradition of garden representation and with ecocritical concerns. In particular, I discuss how Pera establishes a close dialogue with Gilles Clément’s ‘humanist ecology’, in order to shape her ‘orto/giardino’ as a ‘planetary garden’. Through an analysis of her main garden books, I show how Pera fashions herself as a ‘scrittrice-giardiniera’ while proposing a virtuous example of care for the planet that recognises the centrality of plants in our world.","PeriodicalId":44221,"journal":{"name":"Italian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41405408","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}

{"title":"La sintassi marcata in Le menzogne della notte di Gesualdo Bufalino: eroi romantici, tono favoloso e colpi di scena del novellare","authors":"S. Bergamini","doi":"10.1080/00751634.2023.2177941","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00751634.2023.2177941","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT L’articolo intende presentare uno studio dettagliato dell’ordine degli elementi della frase in Le menzogne della notte (1988) di Gesualdo Bufalino (1920–96). Il presente contributo disamina le modalità e le finalità che la sintassi marcata esplica all’interno del progetto romanzesco, che è caratterizzato da sperimentazione del complesso congegno narrativo e linguistico. Adottando un taglio storico-linguistico, si esaminano la posposizione del soggetto al verbo (soggetto rematico e soggetto tematico parentetico), la dislocazione a sinistra e il tema sospeso. Mediante analisi qualitative di selezionati campioni testuali, si mostrano tre funzioni-chiave della sintassi marcata utili per l’interpretazione del romanzo: i colpi di scena del novellare; la caratterizzazione degli eroi romantici e della loro lingua; la tecnica del ritratto e il tono favoloso. Lo studio rivela che l’uso della sintassi marcata è volto alla creazione di un’epopea leggendaria e favolosa, i cui eroi hanno tratti romantici e melodrammatici.","PeriodicalId":44221,"journal":{"name":"Italian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47113015","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}