Books in the The Italian List - (Seagull Titles - CHUP) series

Kore, also called Persephone and referred to poetically by the Greeks as "the unspeakable girl," was the daughter of Demeter and Zeus who was abducted by Hades and made queen of the netherworld. This title presents three richly detailed treatments of the myth of Kore.

A translation of Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben's work, in which the author notes that academic research has lingered on the "pagan goddess," while the concept of "elemental spirit," ignored by scholars, is vital to the history of iconography.

An introduction to Franco Fortini, a Jewish communist and a major figure in postwar Italian intellectual life. It is against those who love to rush to the aid of the victors, against the widespread and racist contempt for Arabs, and against the celebration of modern civilization and technology that Israel embodies.

Originally published in 1965, this volume was immediately judged to be one of the main contributions to the intellectual life of the Italian Sixties. Three years later, in 1968, it became clear that it had anticipated many of the themes of the New Left and the student revolt. Ex-partisan, poet, literary critic and teacher, Fortini had been immersed for more than twenty years in the cut and thrust of ideological debate. In these pages, besides discussing problems of cultural organization and the consciousness industry, he described the end of militant anti-fascism and the alliance between progressivism and literature, the end of the social mandate of writers and the beginning of a 'revolution of civilization'. In writing, Fortini did not intend to speak to the young but the young, perhaps in the spirit of contradiction, listened to him. Apart from some of the crucial interventions into the literary and critical debates of the Sixties, the volume includes essays on Kafka, Pasternak, Spitzer, Auerbach, Lukacs, Lu Xun, Proust and Brecht.

Preface and third chapter translated from the Italian by Anne C. Tedeschi and John Tedeschi.

From the idyll of his Sardinian childhood to the transformative experience of the anti-Fascist resistance, and from postwar militancy to the dismal regression of Italian culture, the author captures memories that are intensely personal and inseparable from political and intellectual experience.

Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben is the rare writer whose ideas and works have a broad appeal across many fields. In March 2009, Agamben was invited to speak in Paris' Notre-Dame Cathedral in the presence of the bishop of Paris and a number of other high-ranking church officials. This title presents this speech.