Italian Literature Commons^™

Flarr Pages #55: Teaching Curzio Malaparte's The Skin: Life Is Not Always Beautiful, Victor Berberi

FLARR Pages

Anxiety over whether or not to teach literary works that may be deemed offensive is not limited to the perennial example of Conrad's Heart of Darkness. This problem is felt at least as keenly by foreign language teachers, who act as ambassadors of cultures even less familiar to our students than the former British Empire. In deciding whether to assign Curzio Malaparte's novel The Skin (La Pelle, 1949) in a recent course on Italian civilization through literature and film, I was hesitant for a number of reasons.