Italian Language and Literature Commons^™

Memory And The Realization Of The Nothingness. On A Letter Of Vittorio Sereni To Giuseppe Ungaretti, Stefano Giannini

Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics - All Scholarship

The problematic relationship of Giuseppe Ungaretti (1888-1970) with Alexandria of Egypt – his city of birth – sheds light on the interplay between memory and oblivion in his poetry and prose. The shuttling back and forth between these poles marks the nature of his unfulfilled desire to recreate a lost Alexandrian atmosphere. In Ungaretti’s works, language opacity is coupled with his attempts to represent a city—as he writes—that is suffocated by the sun and whose hidden ancient port is submerged in the depth of the sea. Blinding light and the darkness of the deep waters make the understanding of Ungaretti’s …

Paese Di Accoglienza: Il Successo Di Un Modello Innovativo Di Accoglienza Dei Richiedenti Asilo In Italia, Isabela Arena Secanechia

Senior Capstone Theses

This work discusses Italy's migrant reception system including its flaws and their effects. Furthermore, this work explores an alternative, sustainable model of migrant reception created in Riace, Calabria, that has been successful in varying towns across Italy. Ultimately, this work argues that this system, which is beneficial to both Italians and incoming migrants — specifically asylum seekers — can and should be implemented nationally to counter the current flawed system.

Pirandello And Satire. The Imaginary Journey Of Four Authors In Search Of A Character According To Charles Kenneth Scott Moncrieff (1889-1930), Stefano Giannini

Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics - All Scholarship

Drawing on a little-known work by Scott-Moncrieff, this article investigates Luigi Pirandello’s intellectual and literary reach across genres and space, from theater to pamphlets, from Italy to the English-speaking world. A talented writer and translator, Charles K. Scott-Moncrieff published “The Strange & Striking Adventures of Four Authors in Search of a Character” by P. G. Lear & L. O in 1926. The title of the pamphlet, and the acronym of the fictional author are references to Pirandello and to his Six Characters in Search of an Author. Scott-Moncrieff had all the documents in order to write about, or in …

Creating With Anger: Contemplating Vendetta. An Analysis Of Anger In Italian And Spanish Women Writers Of The Early Modern Era, Luisanna Sardu Castangia

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the vast gamut of human emotions, anger is one of the most complex, provocative, and enduring. From Greek philosophers working in antiquity to today’s most recent theories on emotions, most scholars agree that anger has a multifaceted nature. This near universal agreement across the barriers of time and geography stems from the following facts: in order to exist, anger involves the participation of other emotions; anger does not have an opposite; anger leads an individual to engage in an act of self-analysis and in an evaluation of other individuals; and, finally, anger inspires action to right a wrong that …

Facilitating Lexical Acquisition In Beginner Learners Of Italian Through Task-Induced Involvement Load, Vanessa J. Natale Rukholm

The Coastal Review

This empirical study explores the facilitation of lexical acquisition and retention through an incidental experiment examining the effect of Involvement Load on Italian vocabulary growth among beginner learners. The experiment, with a pre-test/post-test design investigates the facilitative effects of elaborate processing on L2 lexical acquisition and retention. Participants in sections of the same first-year Italian course were divided into one of five groups consisting of a Control Group and four Treatment groups. Treatment groups were divided based on level of Involvement (Laufer & Hulstijn, 2001) such that some groups processed target words elaborately (Craik, 2002; Lockhart, 2002) through vocabulary exercises …

Review: 'Unfinished Business: Screening The Italian Mafia In The New Millennium', Renato Ventura

Global Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications and Presentations

Book review on Unfinished Business: Screening the Italian Mafia in the New Millenium by Dana Renga. University of Toronto Press, 2013. ISBN: 9781442615588.

Beating The Odds: Teaching Italian Online In The Community College Environment, Giulia Guarnieri

Publications and Research

This study analyzes data collected from Italian language online classes during the course of four consecutive semesters at Bronx Community College in order to measure the impact that distance learning has on students’ retention and success rates in elementary courses. The results reveal that reconfiguring the online meetings to a lower percentage and implementing social pedagogies reduce course abandonment and favor the creation of strong learning communities. Furthermore, the data relative to the grade distribution shows no substantial difference between online courses and face-to-face instruction.

Lost In Translation? Found In Translation? Neither? Both?, Esther Allen, Mary Ann Caws, Peter Constantine, Edith Grossman, Nancy Kline, Burton Pike, Damion Searls, Karen Van Dyck, Alyson Waters, Roger Celestin, Charles Lebel

The Quiet Corner Interdisciplinary Journal

Translation specialists Esther Allen, Mary Ann Caws, Peter Constantine, Edith Grossman, Nancy Kline, Burton Pike, Damion Searls, Karen Van Dyck and Alyson Waters respond to the TQC question:

“Lost in translation”; “Found in translation”: Are these just useless commonplaces or are they indicative of something relevant to your own practice?

Modernism And The Cult Of Mountains: Music, Opera, Cinema By Christopher Morris (Review), Harald Höbusch

Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures and Cultures Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Africa, Asia, And The History Of Philosophy: Racism In The Formation Of The Philosophical Canon, 1780–1830 By Peter K.J. Park (Review), Joseph D. O'Neil

Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures and Cultures Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Fantahistorical Vs. Fantafascist Epic: “Contemporary” Alternative Italian Colonial Histories, Simone Brioni Dr.

Department of English Faculty Publications

This article focuses on Enrico Brizzi’s L’inattesa piega degli eventi [The Unexpected Turn of Events, 2008], La nostra guerra [Our War, 2009], and Lorenzo Pellegrini e le donne [Lorenzo Pellegrini and the Women, 2012], a trilogy of alternative history novels that imagines what would have happened to the Italian empire if Italy had not allied with Germany during the Second World War. Drawing on Giorgio Agamben’s reflections on contemporaneity (2009), I analyze how this trilogy represents Fascism and its colonial legacy in relation to the history of politics and soccer in Italy. I also compare Brizzi’s trilogy to Mario Farneti’s …

The Final Pagan Generation By Edward J. Watts (Review), James A. Francis

Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures and Cultures Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Embodied Cognition And The Grotesque In Calvino's La Giornata D'Uno Scrutatore And Sanguineti's Capriccio Italiano, Marco Caracciolo

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Embodied Cognition and the Grotesque in Calvino's La giornata d'uno scrutatore and Sanguineti's Capriccio italiano" Marco Caracciolo analyzes the multiple dimensions of embodied experience and how they can be brought to bear on literary texts. Drawing on scholarship in cognitive science, he argues that the embodiment of people's engagement with the world emerges from the interaction between the physical structure of the body and socio-cultural practices. Caracciolo shows how such nexus of biological make-up and culture can give rise to particularly complex meanings in the representation of grotesque bodies. In order to illustrate his postulates, Caracciolo …

Autotraduction, Traduction Interculturelle Et Intersémiotique Dans La Quarta Via De Kaha Mohamed Aden, Simone Brioni

Department of English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Intersections In Immanence: Spinoza, Deleuze, Negri, Abigail Lowe

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The connection between French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and Italian political theorist Antonio Negri has drawn attention in academic publications over the last decade. For both thinkers, the philosophical concept of immanence is central to how both respectively conceptualize the world. However, in order to consider their work with regard to a metaphysical grounding, one may benefit from turning to each thinker’s engagement with Jewish Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza whose immanent ontology, or monism, was indeed his Ethics. This essay concentrates on drawing out an ontological distinction between the philosophical projects of Deleuze and Negri by way of a close reading …

The Paradox Of Amnesia: Tondelli's Un Weekend Postmoderno, Stefano Giannini

Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics - All Scholarship

Tondelli opens his Un weekend postmoderno. Cronache dagli anni Ottanta declaring an intention opposite to the display of amnesia. In the long table of contents of his book, he writes down everything, in an excruciating streaming of details, so that the table of content becomes an exhaustive index of names and ideas. Yet, hidden within the hundreds of analytical snapshots, one of its many characters mentions the importance of dissimulation. Dissimulation, according to Tondelli, hides what is known, to protect the dissimulator and to mask the truth. Also, amnesia is a voluntary practice that can be enacted in order to …

Migrant Stories And Italian Colonialism: A Report On Two Documentaries, Simone Brioni Dr.

Department of English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Spirits, Vitality, And Creation In The Poetics Of Tommaso Campanella And John Donne, Anthony P. Russell

English Faculty Publications

In discussions over the meaning of "genius" in the Renaissance, there is at the very least agreement that the term was associated with heightened powers of perception and creativity. Whether defined in terms of Neoplatonic notions of inspiration, Aristotelian/Galenic theories of the humors (and of melancholy in particular), or rhetorical theories of invention, ingegno is acknowledged as having denoted an unusual mental energy and flexibility which facilitated the creative process. It is the psychic mobility with which ingegno was consistently linked that I intend to emphasize here, and in particular its frequent identification with those volatile spirits that were centrally …

The Strange Career Of The Biblia Rabbinica Among Christian Hebraists, 1517–1620, Stephen G. Burnett

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

The Rabbinic Bible became a standard reference tool, above all for Protestant Hebraists during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It contained not only the Hebrew Bible text, but also Aramaic-language Targums (periphrastic translations of the biblical text, mostly dating from before 500) and Jewish biblical commentaries written between ca. 1100 and 1500. To use these works required that a Christian Hebraist know not only the language of the Bible, but also Targumic Aramaic and medieval Hebrew, which was rather different from biblical or mishnaic Hebrew. For Christian scholars who mastered these languages and were able to read these different texts, …

Reconciling The Controversy Of Animal Cruelty And The Shoah: A Look At Primo Levi's Compassionate Writings, Ilona Klein

Faculty Publications

Is it ethically admissible to compare the suffering of Jews during World War II to the general suffering of animals in the Western world? Who considers this parallel to be morally obscene, and who supports the comparison? Based on the historical evidence of Nazis insulting Jews with animal verbiage and herding them into the gas chambers of concentration camps, this study looks at a few textual examples by the Italian Jewish author Primo Levi, finding a conciliatory position in his poetry and prose.

The Partisan And His Doppelganger: The Case Of Primo Levi, Ilona Klein

Faculty Publications

Published in 1982, Se non ora, quando? (If Not Now, When?) is Primo Levi's first novel proper. Perhaps Primo Levi is regretted not fully living life as an Italian Jewish partisan that he re-created his lost dream through its pages, and had his partisan brigade not been captured, perhaps Levi's underground fighting might have continued until the end of the war. If Not Now, When? thus might reflect Levi's need to explore that sought-after life as a partisan, which he had been denied after only three months of activity. Did Live write If Not Now, When? as a …

Walters Ms W720: Chapters To Be Observed By The Singers Of The Cappella Giulia (1574), Ilona Klein

Faculty Publications

The manuscript W720 that bears the title Capitoli che hanno da osseruare gli Cantori della Cappella di San Pietro is an unstudied and unpublished document held in the archives of the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, Maryland. As one of the earliest surviving written texts of its kind, W720 documents in detail the rules that the singers of the Julian Chapel had to obey during the year 1574. The following critical edition of the manuscript and the accompanying English translation are intended to provide materials that will assist Renaissance specialists in a number of areas (art history, philology, history, musicology, …

Text As Resistance In Holocaust Literature: Struggles For Personhood In Wiesel, Levi, And Delbo, Gillian M. Mozer

Honors Scholar Theses

This thesis is an examination of the memoirs of three core Holocaust writers, Elie Wiesel (Night and Day), Primo Levi (If This is A Man), and Charlotte Delbo (Auschwitz and After), exploring the ways in which each of the three authors uses his or her memoir to simultaneously document and resist the dehumanizing influence of the concentration camp experience.

"Life Is Beautiful, Or Is It?" Asked Jakob The Liar, Ilona Klein

Faculty Publications

In 1999 the 71st Academy Awards ceremony awarded to the film The Last Days the prize for Best Documentary Feature. Underwritten by Steven Spielberg's Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, this documentary depicts in a compelling, historically objective fashion what the Nazi regime called the "Endlösung" ["Final Solution"]: the effort to annihilate all of European Jewry. In the film, five Hungarian survivors are interviews with honesty and compassion. Their answers record history as it unwound. Clearly, the intent of the interviews is to assure that historical facts are not falsified, nor taken for granted. Documentaries of this kind can …

Luciano Bianciardi’S Aprire Il Fuoco: On The Function Of Literature In Society, Stefano Giannini

Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics - All Scholarship

This is the first article to assess the importance of Luciano Bianciardi’s last novel, Aprire il fuoco [Open Fire!](1969), a work often overlooked, that offers crucial insights into Bianciardi’s commitments to social causes. A so-called “irregular” of 20th-century Italian literary panorama, Luciano Bianciardi (1922-1971) in his Aprire il fuoco discusses his idea of literature as an activity that must aim at assuming the role of ethical guide in societies. In my article, I gloss the often obscure historical and literary references of the novel, and provide a critical assessment of its impact.

Hidden Sentiments, Unfinished Project: Pirandello’S Film La Nuova Colonia, Stefano Giannini

Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics - All Scholarship

This article investigates the notion of the unfinished work. In Pirandello studies the word unfinished holds particular importance. Luigi Pirandello's last, and one of his major works, I giganti della montagna [The Mountain Giants] was not completed. The many years devoted to its making weaken the assumption that Pirandello was not capable of completing it in favor of his decision not to complete his work. I considered the overlapping of the writing of I giganti della montagna and of the attempts to produce the film La nuova colonia [The New Colony] an important, and insofar unnoticed, key element for understanding …

Un Nuovo Dato Per La Cronologia Della Versione Cinematografica Della Nuova Colonia Di Luigi Pirandello, Stefano Giannini

Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics - All Scholarship

Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936) wrote numerous film-treatments inspired by his short-stories and plays that were not completed as films. Among the never completed films there is La Nuova Colonia. The history of the film-project La Nuova Colonia [The New Colony] is important for the further understanding of Pirandello’s poetics. Nestled in the plot of Pirandello’s novel Suo marito [Her Husband], La Nuova Colonia took on independent life in 1926 as the play of the same name that premiered in Rome in March 1928. The two dates indicated for the play are not the chronological limits for the La Nuova Colonia …

Piero Chiara E La Tradizione, Stefano Giannini

Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics - All Scholarship

Piero Chiara (Luino 1913- Varese 1986) wrote many novels and short stories that immediately met great public success. Critics devoted mixed attention to him but his works deserve a new critical assessment to analyze the rich and sophisticated web of cultural and literary references that permeate them. Through readings of Il piatto piange, “L’uovo al cianuro” and other novels and short stories, this paper analyses the complex textual relations Chiara entertains with Pirandello’s Il fu Mattia Pascal. Chiara investigates the themes of identity and the double. His narrative depicts an apparently lighthearted reality that in fact reveals despair. …

Un’Agra Salita. Lettura Di ‘Autostrada Della Cisa’ Di Vittorio Sereni, Stefano Giannini

Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics - All Scholarship

Luciano Bianciardi (1922-1971) wants to open a dialogue with his friend Vittorio Sereni (1913-1983) through the pages of his best-selling novel La vita agra (1962). Sereni does not respond immediately, and the approach seems not to have received Sereni’s attention. The analysis of Sereni’s 1981 poem “Autostrada della Cisa” proves that he ultimately decided to reply to his friend’s irreverent, yet congenial, comments, albeit nearly 20 years later. This article underlines the existential crisis expressed by Sereni in his poem, accompanied by his willingness to enter into a dialogue with any reader, despite the nihilistic outcomes he foresees. His efforts …

Modelli Retorici Tra Predica E Romanzol'esempio Di Anton Giulio Brignole Sale, Stefano Giannini

Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics - All Scholarship

Seventeenth-century preachers often coupled their preaching to novel writing. This essay investigates the sermons and the novels of the Jesuit Anton Giulio Brignole Sale (1605-1665), to identify rhetorical strategies that were applied both to religious and secular writings.