Books in the The Fairleigh Dickinson University Press Series in Italian Studies series

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 20 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 this volume also lies in the fact that the author have not limited her investigation to a series of cities, but rather she has considered the different forms of (social) landscape in which Italian crime novels are set. Through the analysis of the way in which cities, the urban sprawl, and islands are represented in the serial novels of 11 of the most important contemporary crime writers in Italy of the 1990s, Pezzotti articulates the different ways in which individual authors appropriate the structures and tropes of the genre to reflect the social transformations and dysfunctions of contemporary Italy. In so doing, this volume also makes a case for the genre as an instrument of social critique and analysis of a still elusive Italian national identity, thus bringing further evidence in support of the thesis that in Italy detective fiction has come to play the role of the new social novel.

Imperial Designs is the first text in English to deal comprehensively with the subject of the Italian colonial experience in China in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Recent scholarship on both the Liberal and Fascist Italian colonial enterprises centers on the Mediterranean and Northern Africa: expeditions, wars, ultimate occupation of territories, and their effect on Italy. This study looks at three Italian enclaves on the other side of the globe: Beijing, Tianjin, and Shanghai. These present both a window into the Italian experience in the Far East and confirmation of imperial policy. Their very presence confirms the rhetoric of conquest. Journalist Luigi Barzini, Sr.; diplomats Salvago Raggi, Vare, and Ciano; various military personnel; and other foreign nationals tell the story through letters and diaries. They all interact with the local metropolitan and rural poor and cultivate a generalized colonial white man's detachment from their surroundings. A brief summary of the presence of chinoiserie in the Italian imaginary shows how the Celestial Empire has continued to function in the construction of Italian identity as part of the dichotomy between self and other.

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 second part focusing in on a number of specific works.

This is the first edited volume in English on the Sicilian author Goliarda Sapienza, contextualizing her work within Italian and European literature. The 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.

Annie Chartres Vivanti: Transnational Politics, Identity, and Culture explores the workof British Italian writer Annie Chartres Vivanti (1866-1942). This volume provides amultidisciplinary approach to the study of Vivanti in order to analyze the diverse andcomplex writing experiences in which she engaged. Essays examine Vivanti's workthrough multiple perspectives, taking into account her politics and her career asjournalist, writer, and singer as well as her literary works.

In this monograph, Gregory M. Pell provides a full-length study on the poetry of Davide Rondoni, one of Italy's most active contemporary writers and thinkers. This book includes comparative studies of Jorie Graham, Gjertrud Schnackenberg, Charles Wright, John Ashbery, Patrizia Fazzi, and Mario Luzi. As the first book in English on Davide Rondoni's poetry, this study explores how the Italian poet deals with art, and the places of art, in a way that transcends the notion of ekphrasis (or, verbal representation of pictorial art) to see poetry as the transcription of an experience with art, thus becoming a sort of anti-ekphrasis, or an atmospheric ekphrasis. The social and religious aspects of art take precedence over aesthetic concerns, without discounting them, in Rondoni's unsentimental poetry, which takes the form of recitative theatrical monologues. Thus, art becomes more than simple visual representation or the subject of an art history catalogue. Instead, in certain poets, such as Rondoni, we experience life through art's complete process: from the artist's originary idea to the work's execution to our interaction with it in the here and now.

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 seemingly revolutionary art movement, at one point having some support among revolutionary left-wing movements in Italy, could eventually become so intimately tied to the repressive Fascist regime. Ialongo traces Marinetti's politics from before the foundation of Futurism, through the Great War, and then throughout the twenty-year Fascist dictatorship, using a wide range of published and unpublished sources. Futurist politics are presented within the wider context of developments in Italy and Europe, and Ialongo further highlights how Marinetti's political choices influenced the art of his movement.

This book focuses on the notion of desire in the Italian fin de siecle. It narrates how this notion informs the works of two of Italy's most prominent authors in the fin de siecle, Giovanni Pascoli and Gabriele D'Annunzio.

This book analyzes the process of cultural production and consumption in late-eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Italy and the ways in which authors, composers, publishers, performers, journalists, and editors engage with the anxieties and aspirations of their diverse audiences.

This critical volume offers an overview and close analysis of Italian women's autobiographical writings from the twentieth century, engaging with issues of form and content and identifying recurring paradigms. It will be of interest to students of Italian literature and culture, autobiographical studies, and gender studies.

This collection examines the multifaceted opus of Pier Paolo Pasolini through a contemporary critical lens. It offers new interpretations to some classic works such as Salo or the 120 Days of Sodom and Decameron while considering some lesser studied pieces, for example Orestiade and his Friulian verse.