Italian Women at War consists of eight articles and an introduction on the topic of Italian women s participation in war and conflict throughout Italy s modern history. Part one of the book focuses on heroines who fought for Italy s Unification and on the anti-heroines or brigantesse, as well, who opposed such a momentous change. Part two considers exceptional individuals, such as Eva Kuhn Amendola, who combatted both with her body and her pen, but also collective female efforts during the world wars, whether military or civilian. In part three, where the context is twentieth-century society,...

Body of State offers a translation of Marco Baliani's acclaimed dramatic monologue, Corpo di stato, concerning the 1978 kidnapping and assassination of Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro by the terrorist Red Brigades. Corpo di stato was commissioned by Italian state television in 1998 to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the "Moro Affair." Baliani's monologue, refracted through the prism of the intervening twenty years, consists of a merciless self-examination, alternately anguished and affectionate, in an effort to confront his generation's complicity in the dissolution of Italian...

By taking as its point of departure the privileged relationship between the crime novel and its setting, this book is the most wide-ranging examination of the way in which Italian detective fiction in the last twenty years has become a means to articulate the changes in the social landscape of the country. Nowadays there is a general acknowledgment of the importance of place in Italian crime novels. However, apart from a limited scholarship on single cities, the genre has never been systematically studied in a way that so comprehensively spans Italian national boundaries. The originality of...

Dreamscapes in Italian Cinema explores different representations of dreams, visions, hallucinations, and hypnagogic states in Italian film culture, covering the works of some of the most significant auteurs in the history of Italian cinema (Fellini, Pasolini, Moretti, Bellocchio, among others). Dreams are discussed both in a filmic context, considering the diegetic and formal techniques employed to construct and represent them, and as allegories or metaphors in a broader cultural, political, and social sense (the film industry itself as the proverbial dream factory, and dreams as hopes,...

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti: The Artist and His Politics explores the politics of the leader of the Futurist art movement. Emerging in Italy in 1909, Futurism sought to propel Italy into the modern world, and is famously known for outlandish claims to want to destroy museums and libraries in order to speed this transition. Futurism, however, also had a much darker political side. It glorified war as the solution to many of Italy s ills, and was closely tied to the Fascist Regime. In this book, Ialongo focuses on Marinetti as the chief determinant of Futurist politics and explores how a...

The book focuses on literary representations of the northern Italian region of Liguria, whose landscape has been portrayed by internationally-known Italian poets and novelists, from Eugenio Montale to Italo Calvino. The author argues that the most perceptive authors situate themselves on a metaphorical ridge dividing the "dark side" of Mediterranean landscape, with its harsh and mountainous territory, from the sun-drenched Riviera, celebrated by the tourist industry and for the most part destroyed during the so-called economic boom. The complex and often antithetical concepts of landscape...

This book is divided into three sections. The first section deals with the general situation of Italian/American literature and its reception both in the United States and in Italy. It also discusses other social and cultural issues that pertain to Italian Americana. Section two consists of six chapters, each discussing a specific author; three dedicated to prose (Pietro di Donato, Mario Puzo, Luigi Barzini), three dedicated to poetry (Joseph Tusiani, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Rina Ferrarelli). Section three examines the current state of criticism dedicated to Italian/American literature, the...

Dacia Maraini's Narratives of Survival: (Re)Constructed focuses on Dacia Maraini's narrative from about 1984 to 2004 and makes substantive use of her interviews and essays. While acknowledging the importance and ongoing validity of feminist scholarship of Maraini's work, this book seeks to take scholarship on Maraini beyond feminist readings by identifying a critical framework that cuts across gender and genre and thereby invites alternative readings. Using a method of close textual analysis, the author includes studies of men, children, animals, and imaginary characters in Maraini's...

The present edited collection of essays on the Sicilian author Goliarda Sapienza includes contributions from established and emerging scholars working in the field of contemporary women's writing. Essays in this volume examine Sapienza through multiple perspectives, taking into account the articulation of subjectivity through autobiographical writing and the complex representation of gender and sexual identities. Also considered here is Sapienza's oblique position within the Italian literary canon, with contributions moving beyond isolated textual analyses whilst attempting to situate the...

In Italy and the Cultural Politics of World War I, well-known scholars of history, political science, film, literature, and cultural studies explore the impact that the Great War had on twentieth-century culture and the enduring legacy of the cultural products that it engendered.