iii Italian Contributions

Again this year Italian contributions are numerous, rich, and, generally speaking, distinguished by their methodology and application of pertinent theoretical premises. They especially privilege subjects and authors that appeal to both the Italian academic world and general readers—the American Renaissance, James and Wharton, Faulkner, modernist poetry and poetics, postmodern prose. It cannot be a coincidence that three quarters of the contributions discussed here have a distinct intertextual orientation or a comparative, interdisciplinary, often intersemiotic perspective. Through such critical instruments Italian scholars of American literature confirm their association with the international discourse of literary criticism and with the lively debate that lies at the core of Italian intellectual life, refusing on the one hand to consider themselves trespassers into an "alien" territory and on the other to use their "specialization" as an excuse to escape the demands of the political and social context.

a. General Work, Criticism

I think it opportune to mention at the outset the "Appendice 2000" of the Enciclopedia Italiana, published by the institution founded by Giovanni Treccani; the two volumes include many items previously excluded or in need of extensive updating (to mention but a few: Auster, Barth, DeLillo, Fiedler, Hawkes, Merwin, Pynchon, Silko, Vonnegut). The results are excellent. The items are mostly short, but the incisive synthesis that characterizes them fulfills the requirement of first-class popularization and often enters the realm of literary criticism proper.

There seems to be a shared interest in New Historicism as the crucial theme that critical debate cannot avoid. Donatella Izzo, "Interrogating New Historicism (by Way of an Introduction)," pp. 291–96 in Telling the Stories of America, examines the impact of New Historicism on American Studies's attempt at redrawing boundaries. Izzo reminds us of the difficulties implied, which are summed up by such questions as: how can history be defined in New Historicist terms? what is the definition of context? what, in particular, is the "literary" text? Izzo proposes considering the New American Studies as a "counterhegemonic practice affecting the political as well as the cultural sphere," paradoxically deferring the concrete political opposition and confirming the self-sufficiency of the cultural categories. In the same volume Paolo Prezzavento's "Miller vs. Miller: The Sorrows of New Historicism" (pp. 331–38) takes it for granted that New Historicism is not monolithic and demonstrates this assumption contrasting J. Hillis Miller's critical works with those of D. A. Miller. Prezzavento stresses not only similarities and divergences, but also exhanges and the fruitful interplay; he finally provides examples comparing the two critics' readings of Hawthorne's "The Minister's Black Veil" and W. C. Williams's In the American Grain. Francesco Pontuale's "The New American Studies: Are We All New Historicists?" (pp. 323–30) starts by considering simplistic the identification of most critical trends with New Historicism; such a view overlooks pioneer studies of the 1970s and their reconfiguration of the critical field. In addition the methods of New Historicism incorporate a multiplicity of theoretical alliances; two major "currents" in New Historicism emerge from the ingredients—the "counter-hegemonic" and the "consensual." Pontuale also clarifies the relationship between feminist and New American Studies and the self-reflexive strategies employed by New Historicism. Alessandro Portelli addresses another question of the utmost importance: the relationship between the stories people tell and the way these "oral" stories are put into "written" books by interviewers ("The Oral History Interview and Its Literary Representation," pp. 22–55). Drawing examples that cover a large span of time (Washington Irving, Henry James, Anne Rice), Portelli examines the implications of "the poetics and politics of oral history," stressing the utopic quality of the researcher's desire to identify with the object of his/her research. The essay warns historians and literary critics against taking literally those constructions that are useful only insofar as they are understood as "legends" and "metaphors." Mattia Carratello's "The Course of Empire and the End of the Slant: Notes towards the Definition of an Invented Genre" (pp. 346–50) and my own "How Hard It Is Not to Tell Stories—in Art" (pp. 96–102) offer two examples of Italian Americanists...