Italian Literature Commons^™

Beyond The Veil Of Modernity: René Guénon, Prophet Of The Metapolitical Imaginary, Frederic Colier

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Heralded by some as one of the greatest intellectuals of the 20th century, French metaphysician René Guénon (1886-1951) is also the controversial father of Primordial Tradition, a metaphysics designed to remedy the decline of Western civilization. Guénon viewed the West in the grip of a prolonged cycle of degeneration. He sought to implement a pseudo-authoritarian spiritual reset that required a total rejection of its Western intellectual heritage and an embrace of Eastern doctrines.

Focusing on his landmark book The Crisis of the Modern World (1927), the dissertation examines how Guénon implemented his controversial reset. After outlining the religious, cultural, and …

Twitteratura: Digital Social Reading And Active Reception Of Literary Texts In The Context Of Italian Contemporary Literature, Iuri Moscardi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores Digital Social Reading (DSR) as a novel mode of literary engagement, focusing on the Italian project Twitteratura, a series of social reading experiments conducted on Twitter (2012–2016) and later on the Betwyll app. The research situates Twitteratura within the intersection of Reader-Response Theory, Digital Humanities, Reception Studies, and Sociology of Literature, demonstrating how digital environments reshape the act of reading and interpretation. Through detailed analyses of four DSR projects centered on major twentieth-century Italian authors—Cesare Pavese, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italo Calvino, and Natalia Ginzburg—this dissertation argues that Twitteratura provides a concrete, data-rich demonstration of Wolfgang Iser’s reader-response …

The Desire Of Strict Souls: The Poetry, Criticism, And Letters Of Paul Valéry And Wallace Stevens, Michael Healy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation compares the poetic, critical, and epistolary oeuvres of Paul Valéry and Wallace Stevens and the influence of the former on the latter. Valéry famously advocated for the pursuit of “poésie pure” (“pure poetry”) and influenced Stevens especially in this way, though both of them concluded it was not achievable. I establish an approximation of a critical framework based on the work of the following critics and scholars: Wendy Lesser, Wendy Steiner, Anthony Cuda, Michael Clune, Paul Bové, and Liesl Olson. Harold Bloom’s passionate advocacy and deep, sustained engagement with Stevens and his work strongly influenced my choice to …

Italian Culture Through Film, Monica Rossi-Miller

Open Educational Resources

Introduction to important themes of Italian culture by viewing and analyzing
representative Italian films from the post-World War II era to the present. Topics examined include: the Italian family, how World War II has shaped contemporary Italian culture, Italy as a country of emigrants and immigrants, and an examination of religion and the Catholic Church.
This is a Writing Intensive course conducted in English, and all films have English subtitles.

A Writing Intensive Course Specifically is a designated course sections that—in addition to providing the established disciplinary-oriented student outcomes—incorporate approved instructional strategies and course assignments designed to enhance students’ writing …

Singing Petrarch In The Cinquecento: Embodied Reading And The Italian Madrigal, Thomas A. Hedrick Iii

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines how composers of sixteenth-century Italian madrigals highlighted poetic line rhythm, repeated vowel sounds (or assonance), and word repetition in figures of speech—all elements of the verse that have been previously overlooked by scholars, who have traditionally focused on musical depictions of the text’s semantics. The analysis in chapters 2, 3, and 4 shows that composers used a consistent set of techniques from the madrigals of Arcadelt to those of Monteverdi, and musical examples draw from large collection of madrigals on Petrarch sonnets. The analytical methodology is built on the premise that Cinquecento encounters with poetry can be …

Genere E L’Identità Femminile In Ariosto E Castiglione, Patricia Stumpp

Theses and Dissertations

A discussion of the attitude toward women expressed in Orlando Furioso and The Book of the Courtier seen through an historical and cultural lens. Included is an English translation of portions of Cantos 9 and 10 of Orlando Furioso important in the development of the character of Olimpia.

The Redemption Of History: Poetics And Politics In The Modern Epic, Giacomo R. Bianchino

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation, “The Redemption of History: Poetics and Politics in the Modern Epic.” provides a materialist theory of the modern epic, focusing on the way that the poets deployed this form towards political ends. Building on theories of the epic going back to the German Romantics, it argues that the modern form is predicated on the idea that it has departed from the conditions that made the ancient form possible. It examines the way that writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century developed the idea that the immediacy of the social “totality” expressed by the ancient epopee was …

Failure To Mourn: Challenges To The Work Of Mourning In Twentieth-Century Italian Literature, Mattia Mossali

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project brings together, in a novel combination and through a comparative and transnational perspective, three Italian authors from the Twentieth century who around the same years have produced texts in an effort to verbalize the pain caused by the loss of a loved one: Gina Lagorio (1922-2005), Lalla Romano (1906-2001), and Pier Vittorio Tondelli (1955-1991). Through a variety of literary forms, from fictional self-representations in “autobiographical” novels to the desire for authenticity that characterizes so-called grief memoirs, each of them confronts the challenge of how to write about the deeply painful experience of mourning. After witnessing death, they look …

I Mondi Incrociati Di Machiavelli: Il Principe E La Mandragola, Carrie Tighe Cristiano

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores Machiavelli’s ideas of virtù and fortuna and how, through an exploration of these terms, we can better understand the writer and theorist. By examining his works, principally Principe and Mandragola, we see many consistent ideas as well as gain a clearer understanding of Machiavelli’s character.

Exploring Dante’S Sources Online: Interactive Reading, Visualizations, And The Study Of Dantean Intertextuality In The Digital Age, Julie Van Peteghem

Publications and Research

Dante’s Commedia is a highly allusive text, and readers throughout time have noted the many parallels between Dante’s verses and those of others. Now that the text of the Commedia and various scholarly and artistic interpretations of the poem (commentaries, translations, illuminated manuscripts) have become accessible online, also the concordance, the lists of parallel passages in Dante’s poem and other works, has become a digital resource. In this essay I explore the study of Dante’s sources in a digital environment mainly through the Intertextual Dante project and its Dante-Ovid edition, published on Digital Dante. Intertextual Dante visualizes moments of …

Female Spaces And Exceptional Women Under Fascism: Anna Banti’S Early Writings (1930s–1940s), Matilde Fogliani

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation looks at the early literary production of Anna Banti during 1930’s and 1940’s in newspapers and magazines. Female Spaces and Exceptional Women Under Fascism studies how Banti was able to publish and portray women who did not always comply with fascist propaganda’s standards, despite the harsh censorship. Banti employed dissimulation using umorismo, in order to avoid the censorship. Many scholars attributed the use of irony to Banti’s early writings to ridicule her female characters. She instead used umorismo because it leads the readership to an initial amusement but later to a reflection on women’s conditions. This research …

A House Of One’S Own: Challenges And Re-Definitions Of Female Subjectivity And Domestic Space In Italian Women Writers From The 1950s To The Early 2000s, Nicole Paronzini

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

With an in-depth analysis of selected Italian novels written by female writers from the 1950s to the early 2000s, this dissertation addresses and discusses the challenging relationship between female identity and the home, perceived both as constraining space and metaphor of human interiority. The projects aim to show that these characters, as representative of the female individual, are capable to use the domestic space as a privilege universe in which re-defining themselves, modifying their own and other perception as passive objects of patriarchal society to the one of subjects in fieri.

If, on one hand, the house has been …

Maurice Scève Avant La Délie (1535–1544). Une Étude Des Genres Mineurs À L’Origine D’Une Nouvelle Esthétique Poétique, Elizaveta Lyulekina

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cette thèse propose d’étudier l’influence du poète lyonnais Maurice Scève, actif entre 1535 et 1562, sur la formation de genres littéraires et le développement de la poésie française de la Renaissance. Elle explore également la contribution considérable du poète à la création de l’identité linguistique et culturelle française.

This dissertation studies the influence of the Lyonnais poet Maurice Scève, active between 1535 and 1562, on the formation of literary genres and the development of French Renaissance poetry. It also explores the poet’s considerable contribution to the creation of French linguistic and cultural identity.

Virility And Defeat: Masculinities In Italy Between Fascism And The Sexual Revolution, Davide Giuseppe Colasanto

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This is the history of how masculinity evolved in a postfascist western European country. Militaristic virility was a core tenet of fascist Italy. World War Two weakened it profoundly, as men’s and women’s conceptions of their own sexual identities were fundamentally reshaped by violence and defeat. At the same time, consumer culture, exemplified by American GIs and expanding continuously through the 1950s and 1960s, encouraged the emergence of a new kind of man, only for this type, too, to be contested in turn in the wake of the New Left rebellions of 1968 and through the tumultuous 1970s. In all …

Quod Inane Vocamus: Lucretius’ Void In Seventeenth-Century Italy, Carlo Bottone

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

During the seventeenth century, the revival of atomic theories and the beginning of barometric experiments sparked a philosophical debate on the existence and the nature of void, which in turn generated new attention to the ancient disputes on void and prompted new interpretations of Lucretius’ examination of inane (De Rerum Natura, I.329-397). Commentators began to discuss the passage beyond the ancient philosophical tradition and in relation to modern ideas and recent discoveries, while Vacuists appealed to Lucretian arguments to prove or deny the existence of an absolute void interspersed among corpuscles.

My research contributes to the scholarship on …

The Surreal Voice In Milan's Itinerant Poetics: Delio Tessa To Franco Loi, Jason Collins

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Over the course of Italy’s linguistic history, dialect literature has evolved a s a genre unto itself. The scope of research presented in this study examines the question of dialect literature as a valid genre which bears lines of demarcation that would assign it the distinction of genre. Research reveals that in fact the simple election of a language, or dialect, does not itself constitute a genre; moreover, most dialect literature bears characteristics that would neatly place it in another genre.

To examine this verity, this research compares two dialect poets who employ Milanese as a means of transmission …

Narrating Intensity: History And Emotions In Elsa Morante, Goliarda Sapienza And Elena Ferrante, Stefania Porcelli

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the representation of emotions in My Brilliant Friend and in two Italian novels written between the 1960s and the 1970s – La Storia (1974, History: A Novel) by Elsa Morante (1912-1985) and L’arte della gioia (The Art of Joy, 1998/2008) by Goliarda Sapienza (1924-1996). However, rather than remaining centered on these works’ emotive landscapes alone, I seek instead to trace the continuities that link these two “historical” novels of the past to Ferrante’s successful and more recent tetralogy. I look at the representation of emotions and at what I call “moments of intensity” – …

Il Giudizio Universale Tra La Scolastica Medievale E La Divina Commedia Di Dante, Amanda R. Latrenta

Theses and Dissertations

In The Divine Comedy, Dante presents his readers with an interpretation of The Last Judgement. Although this interpretation bears distinct markers of Dante’s originality, it also closely aligns with medieval scholastic writings on the phenomenon. This thesis examines how Dante’s interpretation aligns with or diverges from medieval theology.

The Prince -- Brief Synopsis -- Powerpoint, Zach Davidson

Open Educational Resources

This is a very brief PowerPoint covering some key ideas in Machiavelli's THE PRINCE.

The Manuscript Copy Of Sfera In The Morgan Library, Dana Hart

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the literary origins of the fifteenth century text Sfera, a rhyming Italian treatise by Gregorio Dati, and considers the patronage, creation, and function of the manuscript copy in the Morgan Library and Museum, focusing on the illustrated maps and cities.

The Body And Its Signifiers: Bodily Depictions In Niccolò De’ Conti And Odorico Da Pordenone, Antonella Dalla Torre

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines textual, bodily depictions in two western European, medieval and late-medieval travel accounts, which describe the eastern travels of the Venetian merchant Niccolò de’ Conti and those of the Franciscan friar Odorico da Pordenone. My analysis show how a connection between the characterizations of the body and the process of identity definition is forged and sustained in these texts.

Through a cultural-studies perspective, my work focuses specifically on depictions of the body in Poggio Bracciolini’s account of the travels of Niccolò de’ Conti and in the text of a vernacular rendition of Odorico da Pordenone’s Relatio, the …

Magic Performances: Rituals And Practice In Italian Theatre And Culture, 1520–1650, Erika Mazzer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation investigates theatrical and historical sources that deal with early modern magic, in order to re-evaluate its role in Italian society between the 16th and the mid-17th century. During this period, many were the attempts carried out by the Catholic Church to avoid the spread of heretical beliefs among people. By the middle of the 16th century, the battle against heresy focused on magic, which was considered a dangerous practice. Despite the Inquisition’s prohibition of books of magic and the condemnation of magic rituals, magic still survived in literary works, especially theatrical. Many performances brought magic on the Italian …

The Body And The Sacred In Contemporary Italian Women Writers, Laura R Feola

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation explores the presence of what has been called the “persistence of the sacred” in modern and contemporary Western culture. More specifically, I focus on the intertwining dimensions of the human body and the experience of the sacred in selected works by Dacia Maraini, Elena Ferrante, Cristina Campo, and Alda Merini. Despite their different voices, and the “secular” or “religious” labels with which each of these Italian authors could be defined or confined, I identify and analyze patterns, similarities, and differences in the interwoven realities of the body and the sacred present in their works.[1]

[1] See Snyder, …

Ansiedades Épico-Criollas Y El Mecenazgo De Indias En El Arauco Domado De Pedro De Oña, Andrea L. Fernandez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Among the characteristics of epic poetry are the topic of war, love encounters, heroism of exemplary individuals, and the narration of events contemporary to the audience to reinforce a collective historical identity. Arauco domado by Pedro de Oña, born in Angol (modern Chile), reiterates these traditional expectations with its protagonist, characters, setting, and latter theatrical representations within the viceregal context. The poem was made possible by the sponsorship of García Hurtado de Mendoza y Manrique, IV Marquis of Cañete and Viceroy of Peru. If the title of “espíritu cesarino novelo” [Caesar’s new spirit] (V.76.3) corresponds to the patron, Pedro de …

From Amherst To The Other Side: The Integration Of Emily Dickinson Into The Italian Consciousness, Mia Jozwick

Dissertations and Theses

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Emily Dickinson’s poetry appeared in Italy in two key forms: anthologized alongside other American authors and in select translations by prominent Italian intellectuals including poet Eugenio Montale and writer Emilio Cecchi. Dickinson was both touted as one of the great American writers, but also kept as somewhat of an underground poet who spoke to a specific literary identity in Italy. The cross-hairs of history brought together increased knowledge of Dickinson’s poetry just as Mussolini and his fascist agenda threatened the influence of literature whether homegrown or international. What materialized was a dynamic in …

Pirandello Proto-Modern: A New Reading Of L’Esclusa, Bradford Masoni

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Luigi Pirandello’s first novel, L’Esclusa, written in 1893, but not published in its definitive edition until 1927, straddles two literary worlds: that of the realistic style of the Italian veristi, and something new, a style and approach to narrative that anticipates the theory of writing Pirandello lays out in his long essay L’Umorismo, as well as the kinds of experimental writing that one associates with early-20^th-century modernism in general, and with Pirandello’s later work in particular. The novel’s living in both worlds, however, makes it an interesting and problematic text. First, it gives readers insight into …

Mermaid Song: The Notebooks Of The Writing Woman, Gianna T. Ward-Vetrano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis is built on the model of Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, that is, it is a feminist project of holistic integration that does not reject fracturing, ambiguity, or contradiction, but aims to attain a more complex and thus truer portrait of the woman writing. Lessing’s notebooks examine conflicts between communism and capitalism, racial conflict in Africa, conflict between men and women, and the conflict between the protagonist Anna Wulf’s identity as a woman and her identity as a writer, each of which she then attempts to integrate into the singular golden notebook of the title. I propose …

Lyrical Mysticism: The Writing And Reception Of Catherine Of Siena, Lisa Tagliaferri

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Lyrical Mysticism: The Writing and Reception of Catherine of Siena (https://caterina.io) affirms the 14th-century mystic Catherine of Siena as a writer through contextualizing her texts among the corpus of contemporary Italian literature, and studying her reception in the Renaissance period of Italy and England. Joining an increasing body of recent meaningful scholarship that has been making significant progress to recover many overlooked and peripheral female voices of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, this work serves to fully assert Catherine as a writer of work that is literarily significant and worthy of textual analysis alongside contemporary male Italian …

Poesía Amorosa De Una Erudita Del Xvii: Traducción Y Creación En El Pastor Fido De Isabel Correa, Almudena Vidorreta

Publications and Research

Este trabajo pretende insertar en el contexto humanista de su tiempo la escritura poética de Isabel Rebeca Correa, erudita portuguesa del siglo XVII que residió en Ámsterdam. Aunque no se conserva buena parte de su obra, podemos conocer el estilo de la autora a través de su traducción al español de El pastor Fido, tragicomedia pastoril de Guarini. Se incluye por primera vez una transcripción completa y modernizada de los fragmentos de dicha versión que, según la traductora, proceden de su propia inventiva. Por medio de esta amplificación de la obra del italiano, Isabel Correa legitima y justifica su …

Dialogic Faiths: Multi-Genre Expression In Religious Narrative, Rosemary L. Demos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As persuasive or expository texts, religious conversion narratives tend towards monologic language, and texts that advocate one particular creed or institution often reflect the unity of faith through linguistically totalizing methods. This study, however, examines the dialogic interactions found in certain religious narratives. The texts included in this analysis recount unusual conversion outcomes: not to formally established church institutions, but rather to a heightened religious experience and in some cases a call to leadership in establishing new social orders. In these texts, the dynamic between personal and communal religious experience is tense, sometimes precarious; the difficulties of engaging in social …