Project MUSE®: Italian Culture - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/328
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Italian Culture.daily12026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 23 (2005) through Vol. 26 (2008)Latest Articles: Italian CultureTWOProject MUSE®Italian Culture1559-09090161-4622Latest articles in Italian Culture. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Editor's Note
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/253755
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This year's issue of Italian Culture covers the spectrum of the Italian canon. We begin with an article on the Vita Nuova by Carin McLain, to then touch on the Renaissance ("Sacra Rappresentazione e Autorappresentazione nel Giovanni e Paolo di Lorenzo il Magnifico" by Marina Marinetti). After an article on Campanella ("Prometheus, Jonah, Christ: Tommaso Campanella's Self-Representational Models in His Philosophical Poetry" by Sherry Roush) and Carrie E. Beneš's "Mapping a Roman Legend: The House of Cola di Rienzo from Piranesi to Baedeker," we 'close the circle,' so to speak, with an analysis of reception of the Divina commedia in modern times with "Dante's Introduction to the United States as Investigated in
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/328/image/coversmallEditor's Note2008-11-09text/htmlen-USEditor's Note2008-11-092008TWOProject MUSE®39502026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002008-11-09Screening the Past: Shifting Desire in the Vita Nuova
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/253756
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In Vita Nuova IV-XII/3–5,1 Dante tells the complicated and chaotic tale of his ostensibly fake love for the two donne-schermo, and of the poetry that this "simulato amore" inspires. In this article, I will examine Dante's methods and motives in this section of the libello, paying particular attention to the first prose ragione and its attendant sonnet, O voi che per la via d'Amor passate. Although the narrative of the screen ladies has traditionally been ignored or glossed over by critics of the Vita Nuova, I will show that it is a crucial step in the poet's long quest to create his Beatrice, the embodiment of perfect love.The Vita Nuova opens with a strong assertion of narrative and interpretive authority. In the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/328/image/coversmallScreening the Past: Shifting Desire in the Vita Nuova2008-11-09text/htmlen-USScreening the Past: Shifting Desire in the Vita Nuova2008-11-092008TWOProject MUSE®749162026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002008-11-09Sacra Rappresentazione e Autorappresentazione nel Giovanni e Paolo di Lorenzo il Magnifico
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/253757
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Molto prima che il segretario fiorentino elargisse al principe i ben noti consigli circa l'importanza che la sua immagine di uomo pio aveva per il popolo,1 Lorenzo il Magnifico aveva capito che la pratica religiosa non riguarda soltanto una convinzione e un fervore personali, ma può anche assicurare o sottrarre il potere al principe. Nessuno potrà mai sapere quali fossero le convinzioni profonde di Lorenzo in materia religiosa; egli però fece sempre in modo che dall'esterno non lo si potesse giudicare altrimenti che come un perfetto cristiano. Uno dei mezzi per manifestare la propria religiosità e al tempo stesso frequentare da vicino gli uomini su cui esercitava il potere era, per Lorenzo, la personale
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/328/image/coversmallSacra Rappresentazione e Autorappresentazione nel Giovanni e Paolo di Lorenzo il Magnifico2008-11-09text/htmlen-USSacra Rappresentazione e Autorappresentazione nel Giovanni e Paolo di Lorenzo il Magnifico2008-11-092008TWOProject MUSE®522212026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002008-11-09Prometheus, Jonah, Christ: Tommaso Campanella's Self-Representational Models in His Philosophical Poetry
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/253758
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One of the great difficulties in understanding tommaso campanella's philosophical poetry—aside from his labyrinthine syntax, and the depth and breadth of his metaphysical, theological, and scientific allusions—is the fundamental problem of understanding the impetus for his poetic production. After all, Campanella's poetry does not declare openly its intent to praise a lady, nor does it seek the honor of a laurel crown or strive to impress its readers with the meraviglia of any artful artifice of its composition. Scholars have tended to leave his motivations implicit or unspoken, if they attempt to address the issue at all.1 After all, to ask why Campanella wrote his poetry in the first place entails having to deal
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/328/image/coversmallPrometheus, Jonah, Christ: Tommaso Campanella's Self-Representational Models in His Philosophical Poetry2008-11-09text/htmlen-USPrometheus, Jonah, Christ: Tommaso Campanella's Self-Representational Models in His Philosophical Poetry2008-11-092008TWOProject MUSE®874892026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002008-11-09Mapping a Roman Legend: The House of Cola di Rienzo from Piranesi to Baedeker
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/253759
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The small town of Rienzi, in northern Mississippi, is chiefly famous for having inspired the naming of Union general Philip Sheridan's famous warhorse Rienzi, now mounted and displayed in the Smithsonian Institution under his later name of Winchester. The town's own name, however, betrays a certain cosmopolitanism on the part of its original settlers in the early 1830s, since it derives from a medieval revolutionary named Cola di Rienzo (fig. 1), who ruled the city of Rome for a short time in the fourteenth century. In naming their town Rienzi, these rural Mississippi settlers took part in a transcontinental craze for Cola di Rienzo and everything for which he stood—which, by the mid-nineteenth century, was
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/328/image/coversmallMapping a Roman Legend: The House of Cola di Rienzo from Piranesi to Baedeker2008-11-09text/htmlen-USMapping a Roman Legend: The House of Cola di Rienzo from Piranesi to Baedeker2008-11-092008TWOProject MUSE®1328352026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002008-11-09Dante's Introduction to the United States as Investigated in Matthew Pearl's The Dante Club
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/253760
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A pivotal figure for european culture, dante began to be widely recognized in the United States only in the nineteenth century.1 Among the earliest and most notable of American Dantists was the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who published the first complete American translation of the Inferno in 1865 and of the entire Divina commedia in 1867. This moment in the history of literature, when Dante became a part of American culture, is accurately reconsidered, yet creatively retold in Matthew Pearl's The Dante Club, published by Random House in 2003. The novel is a historical detective story in which the illustrious members of Longfellow's actual Dante Club (which later became the Dante Society of America) engage in
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/328/image/coversmallDante's Introduction to the United States as Investigated in Matthew Pearl's The Dante Club2008-11-09text/htmlen-USDante's Introduction to the United States as Investigated in Matthew Pearl's The Dante Club2008-11-092008TWOProject MUSE®912352026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002008-11-09Forgetting Fascism: Memory, History, and the Literary Text in Umberto Eco's La misteriosa fiamma della regina Loana
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/253761
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È certo che l'esercizio (in questo caso la frequente rievocazione) mantiene il ricordo fresco e vivo, allo stesso modo come si mantiene efficiente un muscolo che viene spesso esercitato; ma è anche vero che un ricordo troppo spesso evocato, ed espresso in forma di racconto, tende a fissarsi in uno stereotipo, in una forma collaudata dall'esperienza, cristallizzata, perfezionata, adorna, che si installa al posto del ricordo greggio e cresce a sue spese.On April 25, 2004, a small but noteworthy event was reported by the Italian press. The news item, which came across the ANSA newswire, describes an encounter between Gesuino Demontis and Bruno Corso—the former a "fascista convinto," the latter a "fiero partigiano,"
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/328/image/coversmallForgetting Fascism: Memory, History, and the Literary Text in Umberto Eco's La misteriosa fiamma della regina Loana2008-11-09text/htmlen-USForgetting Fascism: Memory, History, and the Literary Text in Umberto Eco's La misteriosa fiamma della regina Loana2008-11-092008TWOProject MUSE®1188202026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002008-11-09After the post
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/253762
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I. La lettura di una pagina del recente libro di memorie di Carlo Lizzani potrebbe essere un utile e sobrio punto di partenza per evitare le esasperazioni che spesso caratterizzano le discussioni sul ruolo degli intellettuali. Lizzani (2007, 56) racconta come Blasetti, subito dopo la liberazione di Roma ad opera degli Alleati, fosse dominato da un profondo pessimismo, che lo portava a pronosticare la scomparsa del cinema italiano a fronte della potenza produttiva del cinema americano e del prestigio di quello dei paesi vincitori (francesi, inglesi, russi). Si era invece, come oggi tutti sappiamo e come allora non potevano sapere neanche i protagonisti, alla vigilia della stagione probabilmente più fortunata del
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/328/image/coversmallAfter the post2008-11-09text/htmlen-USAfter the post2008-11-092008TWOProject MUSE®584522026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002008-11-09Images, Relics, and Devotional Practices in Medieval and Renaissance Italy (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/253763
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This solid, varied and well-researched collection of essays explores the relationship and interaction between images and relics of late Medieval and early Renaissance Italy. It will assuredly be of interest to all students of Art History, Religious History, and Italian culture from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. Images, Relics, and Devotional Practices in Medieval and Renaissance Italy builds upon Peter Brown's seminal study of modern hagiography, The Cult of the Saints (1980), but adds to it a much stronger focus on iconography. As Scott Montgomery explains in his introduction, iconographical representations in reliquaries and altarpieces from chapels and sanctuaries served as "effective sacral
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/328/image/coversmallImages, Relics, and Devotional Practices in Medieval and Renaissance Italy (review)2008-11-09text/htmlen-USImages, Relics, and Devotional Practices in Medieval and Renaissance Italy (review)2008-11-092008TWOProject MUSE®79002026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002008-11-09Phyllis of Scyros (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/253764
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Nicolas J. Perella's skillful translation and his critical remarks on the work, the pastoral genre, and the Baroque era may succeed as a first step in securing a larger English readership for Bonarelli's Filli di Sciro (1607). The two predecessors of the play, Tasso's Aminta (1573) and Guarini's Il pastor fido (1589–1602), have always been seen as the best of the Italian pastoral dramas written in that epoch, with Filli di Sciro considered a distant third. The play fits into the core of Italian works which sparked the rise in interest in the pastoral genre, starting in 1509 with Jacopo Sannazzaro's blend of prose and eclogues in Arcadia. Translations of Filli di Sciro in France and England show that, to a more
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/328/image/coversmallPhyllis of Scyros (review)2008-11-09text/htmlen-USPhyllis of Scyros (review)2008-11-092008TWOProject MUSE®96082026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002008-11-09Writing to Delight: Italian Short Stories by Nineteenth-Century Women Writers (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/253765
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Readers in North America may be familiar with contemporary Italian narrators such as Dacia Maraini, Elena Ferrante, Melania Mazzucco and Margaret Mazzantini, to name only a few. The work of contemporary Italian women poets has also been anthologized and Italian women authors of the twentieth century are drawing critical attention, aided, no doubt, by the increasing scholarly interest in the history of the women's movement and feminist literature in Italy, and in issues of gender applied to modernism, fascism and migration. However, Anglophone readers have had little opportunity yet to appreciate the diversity and originality of Italian women's voices in the nineteenth century, a time of political, social and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/328/image/coversmallWriting to Delight: Italian Short Stories by Nineteenth-Century Women Writers (review)2008-11-09text/htmlen-USWriting to Delight: Italian Short Stories by Nineteenth-Century Women Writers (review)2008-11-092008TWOProject MUSE®78322026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002008-11-09Col freddo nel cuore. Uomini e donne nell'emigrazione antifascista (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/253766
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In Col freddo nel cuore, Patrizia Gabrielli admirably investigates numerous letters written by Italian antifascist émigrés in the 1920s and 1930s. In particular, the author demonstrates how women in exile developed a strong sense of their own political and personal efficacy purchased through opposition to fascism. Since they share so many themes and topoi, the individual letters, read today as a whole, speak to a common experience and mass phenomenon. They form a rich tapestry of Italian Resistance memorials.Gabrielli situates her study—developed from a November 2003 conference held in Arezzo and sponsored by the Archivio Diaristico di Pieve Santo Stefano—in its historiographical context, providing a chronological
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/328/image/coversmallCol freddo nel cuore. Uomini e donne nell'emigrazione antifascista (review)2008-11-09text/htmlen-USCol freddo nel cuore. Uomini e donne nell'emigrazione antifascista (review)2008-11-092008TWOProject MUSE®81192026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002008-11-09My Father, Il Duce: A Memoir by Mussolini's Son (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/253767
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Part of responsible participation in a civilized, democratic society entails the duty to learn objectively—even dispassionately—from a wide array of sources. This means that we are often open-minded to what would appear, at first glance, the antithesis to the human values that we prize in ourselves, and for which we look as we sift through history. Unfortunately, this reasoned look at even the darker side of human events in history involves often entertaining the ideas and perspectives of those whom we would normally find abhorrent, thereby seeming to offer legitimacy to their views. However, our intellectual curiosity should never be mistaken for our endorsement of them; rather, it is precisely what allows us, for
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/328/image/coversmallMy Father, Il Duce: A Memoir by Mussolini's Son (review)2008-11-09text/htmlen-USMy Father, Il Duce: A Memoir by Mussolini's Son (review)2008-11-092008TWOProject MUSE®178432026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002008-11-09The Jews in Mussolini's Italy: From Equality to Persecution (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/253768
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"The Jews of Italy," declared Mussolini in an article printed in the New York Times on 25 June 1936, "have had, presently have, and will continue to have the same treatment as any other Italian citizen, and […] there is no place in my mind for any form of racial or religious discrimination'"(120). Mussolini's respect for the foreign press is one of many attributes that differentiate him from his German allies. And his supposed 'honesty' has, in many ways, paid off. Even today, many students and scholars of Italian fascism adopt the stance that Mussolini himself put forward regarding his benevolent treatment of Italy's Jews.There is a stark difference, however, between the images that Mussolini projected of himself
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/328/image/coversmallThe Jews in Mussolini's Italy: From Equality to Persecution (review)2008-11-09text/htmlen-USThe Jews in Mussolini's Italy: From Equality to Persecution (review)2008-11-092008TWOProject MUSE®140402026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002008-11-09Cesare Pavese. La dialettica vitale delle contraddizioni (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/253769
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Sono vari anni, precisamente dal 2001, che Antonio Catalfamo coordina un'intensa attività critica sull'opera di Cesare Pavese nell'ambito dell'Osservatorio permanente sugli studi pavesiani nel mondo. Si tratta di un'organizzazione, sorta all'interno del Centro Pavesiano Museo casa natale (CE.PA.M), alla quale hanno aderito studiosi di vari paesi. Catalfamo ha già curato sei volumi di saggi che stanno a testimoniare l'attenzione internazionale verso lo scrittore piemontese e la pluralità di prospettive e indirizzi critici a cui la sua opera continua ad andare incontro. Questo straordinario fervore critico di Catalfamo verso Pavese è ora ulteriormente espresso dal suo volume Cesare Pavese. la dialettica vitale delle
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/328/image/coversmallCesare Pavese. La dialettica vitale delle contraddizioni (review)2008-11-09text/htmlen-USCesare Pavese. La dialettica vitale delle contraddizioni (review)2008-11-092008TWOProject MUSE®118462026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002008-11-09Cesare Pavese and Anthony Chiuminatto: Their Correspondence (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/253770
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Cesare Pavese was still a university student in 1928 when, through his friend Massimo Mila, he met Anthony "Tony" Chiuminatto, an Italian-American musician who had been studying music in Italy for the previous three years. Chiuminatto moved back to Green Bay, Wisconsin, the following year, but while still living in Turin he gave the two young men English lessons. After returning to the United States, Chiuminatto would hold a four-year correspondence with Pavese, providing him with a number of glosses to American texts Pavese was reading, as well as serving as a foil for the Turinese writer's critical thoughts on translation, language, and cultural events. The encounter would deeply affect Pavese's career as a
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/328/image/coversmallCesare Pavese and Anthony Chiuminatto: Their Correspondence (review)2008-11-09text/htmlen-USCesare Pavese and Anthony Chiuminatto: Their Correspondence (review)2008-11-092008TWOProject MUSE®81092026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002008-11-09The Selected Poetry and Prose of Vittorio Sereni (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/253771
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Nel canone della poesia italiana della seconda metà del Novecento, Vittorio Sereni (1913–1983) occupa un posto centrale e che sembra aumentare d'importanza con il passare del tempo. Se anche non tutte le posizioni critiche sono concordi sul valore complessivo da attribuire alla sua opera, nessuno potrebbe però negarne il ruolo storico. Sereni rappresenta la generazione del post-ermetismo, che senza adottare pienamente le premesse e la lingua dell'ermetismo fiorentino ne accetta tuttavia la lezione, stilistica e morale, di riserbo espressivo. Testimonia il cauto ma costante allargarsi di un iniziale, intimissimo lessico poetico alle grandi tematiche della storia, e incarna infine un ideale di 'poesia media' (nel
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/328/image/coversmallThe Selected Poetry and Prose of Vittorio Sereni (review)2008-11-09text/htmlen-USThe Selected Poetry and Prose of Vittorio Sereni (review)2008-11-092008TWOProject MUSE®92352026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002008-11-09Montale e la parola riflessa. Dal disincanto linguistico degli Ossi attraverso le incarnazioni poetiche della Bufera alla lirica decostruttiva dei Diari (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/253772
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La dialettica tra identità e alterità è argomento di riflessione ricorrente durante il Novecento, spesso in chiave trasversale rispetto alle distinzioni disciplinari all'interno del campo umanistico. Si ricordi, ad esempio, l'influenza esercitata dalle scoperte di Emile Benveniste sui concetti di io e tu quali funzioni linguistiche, o quelle di Jacques Lacan sulla solidità illusoria del soggetto nelle manifestazioni del desiderio—l'elenco potrebbe continuare a lungo. Uno dei pregi del libro della Ott è quello di accogliere senza riserve la complessità della questione dei rapporti tra soggettività e linguaggio e, forte di un retroterra critico dall'amplissimo ventaglio, in cui spicca la lezione di Karl Alfred Blüher
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/328/image/coversmallMontale e la parola riflessa. Dal disincanto linguistico degli Ossi attraverso le incarnazioni poetiche della Bufera alla lirica decostruttiva dei Diari (review)2008-11-09text/htmlen-USMontale e la parola riflessa. Dal disincanto linguistico degli Ossi attraverso le incarnazioni poetiche della Bufera alla lirica decostruttiva dei Diari (review)2008-11-092008TWOProject MUSE®88402026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002008-11-09La farmacia degli incurabili. Da Collodi a Calvino (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/253773
<p></p>
Questo libro non è un libro di mera critica letteraria. Piuttosto è un esercizio di elaborazione testuale condotto dopo aver assunto un farmaco affatto speciale: 'la derridina'. Così, infatti, ammette l'autrice considerando gli effetti pratici del magistero di Jacques Derrida: assumere 'la derridina' significa sentire che non è più possibile compiere una semplice lettura, ma che si è chiamati ad una nuova indagine testuale guidata dal pensiero che ciò che non è presente nel testo è rivelatore del suo senso. Per questo, tutte le categorie della decostruzione vengono messe all'opera: la ricerca degli spazi vuoti, i referenti antinomici impliciti, le note a margine dove, secondo Derrida, andrebbero ricercati i
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/328/image/coversmallLa farmacia degli incurabili. Da Collodi a Calvino (review)2008-11-09text/htmlen-USLa farmacia degli incurabili. Da Collodi a Calvino (review)2008-11-092008TWOProject MUSE®64492026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002008-11-09Stupendous Miserable City: Pasolini's Rome (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/253774
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In Stupendous Miserable City. Pasolini's Rome, John David Rhodes takes the reader on a vivid journey to Rome in the 1950s and 1960s. However, this is not the glamorous Rome of Fellini's La dolce vita or of Wyler's Roman Holiday. Rather, it is the wretched, forgotten, peripheral Rome of Pasolini's early films, and the various tappe or stages of the trip reflect a Calvary that ended in allegorical sublimation. From Pasolini's first experiences as a non-native inhabitant of the city and his struggle to find work, to his literary production during his first decade in the capital, to his cinematic collaborations with several masters, we arrive at Pasolini's own film career. The first, fundamental period of filmmaking
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/328/image/coversmallStupendous Miserable City: Pasolini's Rome (review)2008-11-09text/htmlen-USStupendous Miserable City: Pasolini's Rome (review)2008-11-092008TWOProject MUSE®130462026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002008-11-09Lo spessore della letteratura. Presenze neotestamentarie nella narrativa italiana degli anni Sessanta e Settanta (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/253775
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The term "spessore" in the beguiling title Francesca Parmeggiani has given her new book has apparently been taken from thinking in metaethics, a field in which a distinction is sometimes made between 'thick', or more problematic concepts and 'thin', or less problematic ones. Parmeggiani's title, then, can be understood as referring to the richness or problematic nature of the literary works her book discusses within a scholarly context that is both philosophical and historical. As its subtitle specifies, the work focuses on rewritings of New Testament stories in Italian fiction, film, and drama between 1960 and 1970. In it Pier Paolo Pasolini, Mario Pomilio, and Giuseppe Berto receive special attention, though
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/328/image/coversmallLo spessore della letteratura. Presenze neotestamentarie nella narrativa italiana degli anni Sessanta e Settanta (review)2008-11-09text/htmlen-USLo spessore della letteratura. Presenze neotestamentarie nella narrativa italiana degli anni Sessanta e Settanta (review)2008-11-092008TWOProject MUSE®84632026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002008-11-09Speaking Out and Silencing: Culture, Society and Politics in Italy in the 1970s (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/253776
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As the editors of this impressive volume of 16 interdisciplinary essays state in their introduction, interpretations of the 1970s in Italy as a period of political and ideological conflict tout court, have "cast a long shadow which led to a collective repression of the memory of that period, as well as to a suppression of debate and conscious manipulation of facts and events" (1). These essays shift the focus of the debate from "the phenomenon of organized terrorism and political violence which has until now dominated analyses of the period" (1) to the role of generational and gender conflicts. Both the Communist and the Christian Democratic parties were in trouble as younger generations rejected them and proposed
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/328/image/coversmallSpeaking Out and Silencing: Culture, Society and Politics in Italy in the 1970s (review)2008-11-09text/htmlen-USSpeaking Out and Silencing: Culture, Society and Politics in Italy in the 1970s (review)2008-11-092008TWOProject MUSE®142172026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002008-11-09The Sack of Rome: How a Beautiful European Country with a Fabled History and a Storied Culture Was Taken Over by a Man Named Silvio Berlusconi (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/253777
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Over the last two decades, Alexander Stille has emerged as America's most insightful observer of Italy and the Italians. Stille is today the San Paolo Professor of Journalism at Columbia University's School of Journalism and a regular contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and The New York Review of Books. In addition, he is also the author of well-received works such as Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian Jewish Families Under Fascism; Excellent Cadavers: The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic; and The Future of the Past. His latest book, The Sack of Rome, is an eye-opening work, and most readers not familiar with contemporary Italy will surely be amazed by the events and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/328/image/coversmallThe Sack of Rome: How a Beautiful European Country with a Fabled History and a Storied Culture Was Taken Over by a Man Named Silvio Berlusconi (review)2008-11-09text/htmlen-USThe Sack of Rome: How a Beautiful European Country with a Fabled History and a Storied Culture Was Taken Over by a Man Named Silvio Berlusconi (review)2008-11-092008TWOProject MUSE®63892026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002008-11-09Sacco and Vanzetti, and: Excellent Cadavers (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/253778
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La vicenda di Sacco e Vanzetti ha da sempre destato un enorme interesse nell'opinione pubblica internazionale ispirando, fra l'altro, il lavoro di vari artisti e letterati. La conseguenza più profonda dell'odissea giuridica di questi due immigrati italiani, condannati a morte nel Massachusetts per rapina a mano armata e duplice omicidio, è stata però quella di aver minato ogni certezza sulla reale imparzialità del sistema giuridico americano. Infatti, le numerose testimonianze a favore dei due imputati furono considerate inaffidabili all'epoca dei processi da parte della corte responsabile del verdetto proprio perché provenienti da altri immigrati italiani. Lo stesso giudice Webster Thayer si oppose poi ai vari
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/328/image/coversmallSacco and Vanzetti, and: Excellent Cadavers (review)2008-11-09text/htmlen-USSacco and Vanzetti, and: Excellent Cadavers (review)2008-11-092008TWOProject MUSE®155932026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002008-11-09Buried Caesars, and Other Secrets of Italian American Writing (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/253779
<p></p>
According to Robert Viscusi, "Italian America looks like Pizzaland. But it thinks with the mind of a lost empire." In Buried Caeasars, and Other Secrets of Italian American Writing, Viscusi unpacks this intriguing paradox, combining incisive literary criticism with wide-ranging cultural analysis to construct an illuminating exploration of the complex relationships that exist among Italian, American, and Italian American literatures, languages, histories, and ideologies. Situating Italian American literature in a cultural context deftly woven out of the interplay among all of these elements, the book examines in detail the profound shaping force that Italy exerts on Italian America and its writing. The Italy that
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/328/image/coversmallBuried Caesars, and Other Secrets of Italian American Writing (review)2008-11-09text/htmlen-USBuried Caesars, and Other Secrets of Italian American Writing (review)2008-11-092008TWOProject MUSE®103922026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002008-11-09Divas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/253780
<p></p>
From the very first pages of his volume Philip Gossett sets the tone for his investigation: he identifies himself as "a fan, a musician, and a scholar," making it clear that these three aspects are, to him, inextricably linked. Being a serious scholar and theater practitioner, he would find it absurd to write on a subject about which one is neither passionate nor an expert. The book is a pure pleasure to read, and makes the reader wonder why so much scholarship does not follow the same simple guidelines that Gossett follows. Divas and Scholars defends the merits of Italian opera against its detractors, and discusses the problems involved in determining which versions are more accurate, and which liberties directors
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/328/image/coversmallDivas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera (review)2008-11-09text/htmlen-USDivas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera (review)2008-11-092008TWOProject MUSE®120322026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002008-11-09