G. B. Piranesi is one of the most inventive artists of the eighteenth century. The Carceri, or Prisons, are a set of etchings believed by many to be Piranesi's most original work. The extraordinary evocative power of the Carceri has fascinated many writers. Some have interpreted the Carceri as dreams, as nightmares, as disturbing allegories of human life. In this book, mostly through an analysis of the Latin quotations contained in the etchings, it is argued that Piranesi grants a metaphorical meaning to the Carceri in order to 'imprison' those he saw as obstructing the Arts and threatening...

Italo Svevo, although neglected until the last few years of his life, is now acknowledged as a writer of international stature alongside his contemporaries Kafka, Proust and Joyce. These essays focus on his three novels, Una Vita, SenilitA and La coscienza di Zeno.
Drawing on new biographical and critical research, key issues are explored such as Svevo's Jewishness; his debt to psychoanalysis; sexuality and love; structure and irony; and time and narration. The opening chapter is devoted to Trieste, which features so prominently in his oeuvre. This book will provide both the general...

Elio Vittorini holds a major position in twentieth-century Italian literature thanks to both his narrative production and his activity as editor and militant intellectual. The aim of this book is to present the English-speaking reader with a comprehensive study of the author, his times and his work. Particular attention has been paid to the interconnection between Vittorini's work as a fiction writer and his political commitment which saw him move from revolutionary fascism to communism, to independent left-wing militancy. The combination of extensive archival research with a re-appraisal of...

Although never named as such, the landscape of Sanremo was a constant visual source for Calvino's fiction. In its recognizable pattern of sea-city-hills, it appears in sixteen works written over a period of thirty two years. This recurring theme provides both a link between some very different works and an insight into the autobiographical dimension of an author whose attitude to privacy and his past is protective but detached. Italo Calvino and the Landscape of Childhood is an analysis of the criteria of representative (and of representational distortion) of a descriptive motif.
Claudia...

Comedy and Culture examines the ways on which the culture and society of the Middle Ages impacted on the works of the Sienese poet, Cecco Angiolieri (c.1260-1312). It analyses how Angiolieri's poetry conformed to medieval notions and practices of comicality. The study explores the means by which Cecco satirized important cultural movements of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, such as love literature and the ascendant Franciscan order. In addition, it looks at his relations with other writers of the day, including his three insulting sonnets addressed to Dante Alighieri....

This work presents a detailed study of the political role of a criminal organization, the Neapolitan Camorra, in its historical context, that of Naples over the last fifty years. In Campania, until 1991, the population tacitly accepted the relationship between the Camorra and the local political elite (based on the exchange of votes for state contracts and protection), and because of the lack of reliable sources it could not seriously be studied by political scientists. In 1991, however, a law was passed which gave generous remission of sentences to criminals who wanted to cooperate with the...

Italian music of the 1960s is one of the most unjustly neglected areas in the arena of twentieth-century classical music. This volume pays tribute to the astounding complexity of the music and libretti of five vocal compositions by leading experimental composers of the decade: Luigi Dallapiccola, Bruno Maderna, Luciano Berio, Giacomo Manzoni, and Armando Gentilucci. It highlights how the 'difficult' and unconventional methods of composition employed by these artists -- dodecaphony, total serialism, Webernian minimalist techniques, aleatory and electronic music -- displayed a refusal to...

Eduardo De Filippo (1900-1984) E uno dei maggiori drammaturghi del novecento. Nel suo teatro, la famiglia rappresenta il punto nevralgico della societA. Attraverso quest'unitA archetipica, le opere qui considerate si propongono come un lungo esame dei rapporti familiari e sono, al contempo, il barometro dei mutamenti sociali e culturali delle diverse epoche in cui si svolge l'azione. In questo nuovo lavoro, Donatella Fischer analizza ogni commedia come un ulteriore passo verso l'inarrestabile frantumazione dell'universo familiare e, soprattutto, della famiglia patriarcale i cui precetti si...