Pub Date : 2023-07-06DOI: 10.1177/00145858231183417
Serena A. Bassi
When, at a conference in my field, I am one of a handful of people whose research approach to Italian Studies is drawn from Queer Studies, I grapple with feelings of intellectual isolation. In those moments, the image that Pier Vittorio Tondelli (2006) used in opening Camere separate comes to mind. Leo, the novel’s queer protagonist, is on a plane above the Alps at sunset gazing at a view both beautiful and unsettling. Looking out of the airplane window, he can only make out the outline of the mountain chain, its distinct shape impressing upon him and capturing his imagination. Immersed as it is in the melancholic hue of the evening sky, the landscape looks to Leo like an abstract painting framed by the oval shape of the oblò. The “abisso cobalto” (Tondelli, 2006: 7) he is staring at feels cold and distant, yet somewhat comforting in its orderly aloofness. When the light suddenly switches on, Leo sees his own face superimposed on the landscape and the previous order becomes jumbled, confusing, uncanny even—as if the shape of the natural world could not assimilate the lines, vectors, lights, and shadows that form the outline of Leo’s queer self. Like other fields in the Modern Languages, Italian Studies has attempted to fit within its own disciplinary design the subjectivities—queer, trans, and non-binary (Amin, 2022) —that have animated Queer Studies since the seminal publication of Judith Butler’s (2006) Gender Trouble in 1990. Since the turn of the century, Queer Studies has moved towards an increasingly intersectional understanding of identity formation (Eng and Puar, 2020; Ferguson, 2003; Nash, 2019) that emphasizes the critique of normative familial, ethnic, racial, linguistic, and national communities (Boellstorff, 2005; Bond Stockton, 2009; Joseph, 2002; Puar, 2007; Stanley, 2021). Similarly, Italian Studies scholars have examined the representation of selves, bodies, and desires in both major and minor texts, showing that literature is a precious archive for the study of modern national identity and the place of gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity in its making (Duncan, 2020; Polizzi, 2022; Welch, 2014). Personally, I have had something of an obsession for the relationship between literature, identities, and the feeling of belonging—or not belonging—for quite some time. One of my most vivid memories of my own formazione
{"title":"Not straight from Italy: Seeking anti-national killjoys in Italian Studies","authors":"Serena A. Bassi","doi":"10.1177/00145858231183417","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00145858231183417","url":null,"abstract":"When, at a conference in my field, I am one of a handful of people whose research approach to Italian Studies is drawn from Queer Studies, I grapple with feelings of intellectual isolation. In those moments, the image that Pier Vittorio Tondelli (2006) used in opening Camere separate comes to mind. Leo, the novel’s queer protagonist, is on a plane above the Alps at sunset gazing at a view both beautiful and unsettling. Looking out of the airplane window, he can only make out the outline of the mountain chain, its distinct shape impressing upon him and capturing his imagination. Immersed as it is in the melancholic hue of the evening sky, the landscape looks to Leo like an abstract painting framed by the oval shape of the oblò. The “abisso cobalto” (Tondelli, 2006: 7) he is staring at feels cold and distant, yet somewhat comforting in its orderly aloofness. When the light suddenly switches on, Leo sees his own face superimposed on the landscape and the previous order becomes jumbled, confusing, uncanny even—as if the shape of the natural world could not assimilate the lines, vectors, lights, and shadows that form the outline of Leo’s queer self. Like other fields in the Modern Languages, Italian Studies has attempted to fit within its own disciplinary design the subjectivities—queer, trans, and non-binary (Amin, 2022) —that have animated Queer Studies since the seminal publication of Judith Butler’s (2006) Gender Trouble in 1990. Since the turn of the century, Queer Studies has moved towards an increasingly intersectional understanding of identity formation (Eng and Puar, 2020; Ferguson, 2003; Nash, 2019) that emphasizes the critique of normative familial, ethnic, racial, linguistic, and national communities (Boellstorff, 2005; Bond Stockton, 2009; Joseph, 2002; Puar, 2007; Stanley, 2021). Similarly, Italian Studies scholars have examined the representation of selves, bodies, and desires in both major and minor texts, showing that literature is a precious archive for the study of modern national identity and the place of gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity in its making (Duncan, 2020; Polizzi, 2022; Welch, 2014). Personally, I have had something of an obsession for the relationship between literature, identities, and the feeling of belonging—or not belonging—for quite some time. One of my most vivid memories of my own formazione","PeriodicalId":12355,"journal":{"name":"Forum Italicum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-07-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43776520","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-02DOI: 10.1177/00145858231171904
Teresa Fiore
The transnational approach to Italian Studies continues to be a particularly fruitful one in the development of new syllabi, and by extension in the rethinking of the entire curricula aimed at expanding and complicating the concept of Italianness. The approach’s ability to encompass a wide array of forms of mobility in and out of the country over a long period of time preceding and following the country’s unification allows for the analysis of topical issues that transcend cultural borders, and as such infuses dynamism to the classroom and engages students with different backgrounds and multiple interests. Yet, as this approach opens new routes, does it compromise venues that are still relevant to define, if not anchor, the field? Or, to reformulate a crucial question posed in the introduction of Transcultural Italies: Mobility, Memory and Translation: how inclusive can a culture be without losing its distinctiveness? (Burdett et al., 2020: 3). This question remains at the core of any inquiry into Transnational Studies, a field that rests on the fruitful paradox of attending to the nation while superseding it, as the very term “trans-national” indicates (it retains the nation, but extends it). In this article, I investigate the application of the transnational paradigm at the graduate level, which is an ideal context to assess its relevance: in combining a description of the content and goals of a specific graduate course titled “Transnational Italy: Imperial Legacies and Migratory Routes,” the article also relies on the direct feedback provided by the students who attended it. The syllabus illustrated in this article contains texts that are by now generally adopted in courses of this nature; yet, it does not claim to be a model, and it instead, for now, acts as a lab for new experimentation, especially based on students’ responses and ideas collected during and
{"title":"Introducing Transnational Italian Studies to a graduate program","authors":"Teresa Fiore","doi":"10.1177/00145858231171904","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00145858231171904","url":null,"abstract":"The transnational approach to Italian Studies continues to be a particularly fruitful one in the development of new syllabi, and by extension in the rethinking of the entire curricula aimed at expanding and complicating the concept of Italianness. The approach’s ability to encompass a wide array of forms of mobility in and out of the country over a long period of time preceding and following the country’s unification allows for the analysis of topical issues that transcend cultural borders, and as such infuses dynamism to the classroom and engages students with different backgrounds and multiple interests. Yet, as this approach opens new routes, does it compromise venues that are still relevant to define, if not anchor, the field? Or, to reformulate a crucial question posed in the introduction of Transcultural Italies: Mobility, Memory and Translation: how inclusive can a culture be without losing its distinctiveness? (Burdett et al., 2020: 3). This question remains at the core of any inquiry into Transnational Studies, a field that rests on the fruitful paradox of attending to the nation while superseding it, as the very term “trans-national” indicates (it retains the nation, but extends it). In this article, I investigate the application of the transnational paradigm at the graduate level, which is an ideal context to assess its relevance: in combining a description of the content and goals of a specific graduate course titled “Transnational Italy: Imperial Legacies and Migratory Routes,” the article also relies on the direct feedback provided by the students who attended it. The syllabus illustrated in this article contains texts that are by now generally adopted in courses of this nature; yet, it does not claim to be a model, and it instead, for now, acts as a lab for new experimentation, especially based on students’ responses and ideas collected during and","PeriodicalId":12355,"journal":{"name":"Forum Italicum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47213806","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-28DOI: 10.1177/00145858231178527
Simonetta Casini
This article analyses the current condition of teaching Italian abroad and the ways in which second-language programmes can engage learners and meet their educational goals. While we are aware of the need for systematic action amongst various actors to ensure the future of Italian-language teaching, we choose to focus on the concept of Experiential Learning (EL). EL is a didactic action (i.e. a linguistic policy) which can be directly implemented into university courses or programmes and represents an innovative method of teaching Italian as a second language. Research on the theme of EL was conducted on Italian L2 courses at the University of Toronto Mississauga and involved instructors and students from various departments. These results lay the foundation for the creation of concrete educational policies, consistent with international literature on the action-oriented approach (CEFR, ACTFL), and for the ‘power of feasibility’ of individual classes (and individual teachers) of L2.
{"title":"Challenges and opportunities for teaching Italian as a second language: A case study at the University of Toronto Mississauga","authors":"Simonetta Casini","doi":"10.1177/00145858231178527","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00145858231178527","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyses the current condition of teaching Italian abroad and the ways in which second-language programmes can engage learners and meet their educational goals. While we are aware of the need for systematic action amongst various actors to ensure the future of Italian-language teaching, we choose to focus on the concept of Experiential Learning (EL). EL is a didactic action (i.e. a linguistic policy) which can be directly implemented into university courses or programmes and represents an innovative method of teaching Italian as a second language. Research on the theme of EL was conducted on Italian L2 courses at the University of Toronto Mississauga and involved instructors and students from various departments. These results lay the foundation for the creation of concrete educational policies, consistent with international literature on the action-oriented approach (CEFR, ACTFL), and for the ‘power of feasibility’ of individual classes (and individual teachers) of L2.","PeriodicalId":12355,"journal":{"name":"Forum Italicum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46620990","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-26DOI: 10.1177/00145858231176717
Li-Yu Daisy Liu
This article investigates the spatial poetics of disruption in Ubah Cristina Ali Farah's second novel Il comandante del fiume. The book sets a unique stage around fragmented flashbacks to resignify the configuration of Afro-Italian urban identity and community. These flashbacks are rendered through a complicated recoding of Rome's urbanscape by its protagonist, Yabar, a young Somali immigrant who experiences a mysterious disfigurement of his body and narrates his past as he recuperates in the hospital. The Black body thus becomes the primary shifting site through which new paradigms of spatial arrangements against power and authority are articulated. This article argues that, by having Yabar fantasize, observe, and live through Rome's urban physicality, Ali Farah delineates a poetics of disruption that functions to redraw the conceptual boundaries of Blackness and postcoloniality in contemporary Italy. Ali Farah's experiment with the city as an actual character de-romanticizes it as a historical fixed site, and instead displays the possibility of plurality in the shape of Black corporeal relationality in determined stances. In this novel, not as observed objects, the protagonists remap Rome as a Black city and carry forward a Benjaminian mode of flâneur to observe the city's fragmented and chaotic arrangements, demystifying its undercurrent construction of racial exclusion.
{"title":"Contesting the Black Flâneur: The rhetoric of disruption and Ubah Cristina Ali Farah's urban literature","authors":"Li-Yu Daisy Liu","doi":"10.1177/00145858231176717","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00145858231176717","url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates the spatial poetics of disruption in Ubah Cristina Ali Farah's second novel Il comandante del fiume. The book sets a unique stage around fragmented flashbacks to resignify the configuration of Afro-Italian urban identity and community. These flashbacks are rendered through a complicated recoding of Rome's urbanscape by its protagonist, Yabar, a young Somali immigrant who experiences a mysterious disfigurement of his body and narrates his past as he recuperates in the hospital. The Black body thus becomes the primary shifting site through which new paradigms of spatial arrangements against power and authority are articulated. This article argues that, by having Yabar fantasize, observe, and live through Rome's urban physicality, Ali Farah delineates a poetics of disruption that functions to redraw the conceptual boundaries of Blackness and postcoloniality in contemporary Italy. Ali Farah's experiment with the city as an actual character de-romanticizes it as a historical fixed site, and instead displays the possibility of plurality in the shape of Black corporeal relationality in determined stances. In this novel, not as observed objects, the protagonists remap Rome as a Black city and carry forward a Benjaminian mode of flâneur to observe the city's fragmented and chaotic arrangements, demystifying its undercurrent construction of racial exclusion.","PeriodicalId":12355,"journal":{"name":"Forum Italicum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48230638","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-22DOI: 10.1177/00145858231171922
S. Hom
Taking aim at the myth that il razzismo non esiste in Italy, this article explores the rhetorical mechanisms that underpin anti-black racism vis-à-vis Italian colonial fiction—fictions that give life to the deceit that Italy is colorblind. It focuses attention on the work of Orio Vergani (1898-1960) who was one of the most prolific documentarians of Italian East Africa. His reportage established a vast image repository of exoticized, black bodies that reinforced prevailing colonial stereotypes about Africa in the Italian cultural imagination during the early-20th century. Yet his novel, Io, povero negro (1929)—claimed to be Italy's first with a black protagonist—was written before Vergani ever set foot in Africa. The text presents a formulation of blackness conceived of obliquely, in the absence of Italy, and belonging to an elsewhere, that is, between an unnamed colony in Africa, France, and the United States. In so doing, it advances a rhetoric of race defined by absence, blockage, and deflection that was conceived transnationally, which, in turn, helps to set the conditions for both the denial and naturalization of racism in Italy today.
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Pub Date : 2023-06-22DOI: 10.1177/00145858231180868
Teresa Agovino
L’esperienza lavorativa di Levi, in qualità di chimico impiegato – non esclusivamente ma in maggior misura – presso la Siva, torna a più riprese nella sua scrittura, in particolar modo nei racconti brevi contenuti all’interno della raccolta Il sistema periodico. Nonostante la visione del lavoro in fabbrica certamente positiva e ottimistica, – come appare all’interno de La chiave a stella, testo ampiamente analizzato dalla critica – una lettura approfondita dei racconti sopra menzionati mostra anche una certa posizione critica di fondo, specie nel trattamento destinato ai lavoratori che si fa, a tratti, ancora metafora del trattamento disumano subìto in Lager. Questo saggio analizza, dunque, cinque tra i racconti contenuti nella raccolta (Nichel, Cromo, Arsenico, Azoto e Vanadio) allo scopo di cercare di ottenere una panoramica, quanto più possibile completa, del problema trattato. Lungi, dunque, dallo sconfessare la visione ottimistica del lavoro in Levi, questo testo vuole accostare agli studi sul tema una nuova prospettiva di lettura che apra, come sempre in Levi, alla complessità.
李维作为一名受雇于西瓦的化学家，他的工作经历在他的写作中多次回归，尤其是在《Il sistema periodico》系列中的短篇小说中。尽管对工厂工作有着肯定积极乐观的看法——正如评论家们广泛分析的《La chiave a stella》中所出现的那样——但深入阅读上述故事也表明了某种关键的基本立场，尤其是在工人待遇方面，仍然隐喻着拉格所遭受的非人待遇。因此，本文分析了该系列中包含的五个故事（镍、铬、砷、氮和钒），以获得对所处理问题的完整概述。因此，本文远没有否定李维对工作的乐观看法，而是以一种新的解释视角来研究这一主题，就像李维一样，这种解释视角向复杂性开放。
{"title":"“Una sostanza instabile per definizione”: Primo Levi dall’esperienza del lavoro in fabbrica alla stesura dei racconti","authors":"Teresa Agovino","doi":"10.1177/00145858231180868","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00145858231180868","url":null,"abstract":"L’esperienza lavorativa di Levi, in qualità di chimico impiegato – non esclusivamente ma in maggior misura – presso la Siva, torna a più riprese nella sua scrittura, in particolar modo nei racconti brevi contenuti all’interno della raccolta Il sistema periodico. Nonostante la visione del lavoro in fabbrica certamente positiva e ottimistica, – come appare all’interno de La chiave a stella, testo ampiamente analizzato dalla critica – una lettura approfondita dei racconti sopra menzionati mostra anche una certa posizione critica di fondo, specie nel trattamento destinato ai lavoratori che si fa, a tratti, ancora metafora del trattamento disumano subìto in Lager. Questo saggio analizza, dunque, cinque tra i racconti contenuti nella raccolta (Nichel, Cromo, Arsenico, Azoto e Vanadio) allo scopo di cercare di ottenere una panoramica, quanto più possibile completa, del problema trattato. Lungi, dunque, dallo sconfessare la visione ottimistica del lavoro in Levi, questo testo vuole accostare agli studi sul tema una nuova prospettiva di lettura che apra, come sempre in Levi, alla complessità.","PeriodicalId":12355,"journal":{"name":"Forum Italicum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49582454","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-20DOI: 10.1177/00145858231176506
M. Monserrati
The article focuses on Andrea Sbarboro's (1839–1923) Italian-Swiss Colony of Asti in Sonoma County and the success of his winemaking company created in 1881. By exploring the relationship between the symbolic space of the vineyard (which I refer to as a ‘winescape’) and the predominant racial narratives of the time in California, I argue that Sbarboro created an Italian space in which Italian Americans could be recognized as ‘white.’ Sbarboro's representations of winemaking as a tradition rooted in Greek/Roman civilization appealed to a Victorian cultural elite that intended to project a Classical and imperialist aesthetic into California. Even today, it is still possible to find in Sonoma and Napa Valley Italian American winemakers that link their business to a similar aesthetic with the unintended result of excising from the landscape non-white contributions to the history of winemaking in California.
{"title":"A Victorian taste of Italy: Situating the “Italian-Swiss Colony” in California wine culture","authors":"M. Monserrati","doi":"10.1177/00145858231176506","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00145858231176506","url":null,"abstract":"The article focuses on Andrea Sbarboro's (1839–1923) Italian-Swiss Colony of Asti in Sonoma County and the success of his winemaking company created in 1881. By exploring the relationship between the symbolic space of the vineyard (which I refer to as a ‘winescape’) and the predominant racial narratives of the time in California, I argue that Sbarboro created an Italian space in which Italian Americans could be recognized as ‘white.’ Sbarboro's representations of winemaking as a tradition rooted in Greek/Roman civilization appealed to a Victorian cultural elite that intended to project a Classical and imperialist aesthetic into California. Even today, it is still possible to find in Sonoma and Napa Valley Italian American winemakers that link their business to a similar aesthetic with the unintended result of excising from the landscape non-white contributions to the history of winemaking in California.","PeriodicalId":12355,"journal":{"name":"Forum Italicum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49011345","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-20DOI: 10.1177/00145858231183403
Lauren Surovi
borates her nevertheless compelling argument by resorting to musicologist Emily Wilbourne’s recent scholarship on the aural relation between improvisational theatre and early opera (Seventeenth-Century Opera and the Sound of the Commedia dell’Arte, 2016). The final part of the chapter focuses on gesture, for which analysis Schmitt draws on visual representations contained in both the Scala scenarios and the Corsini collection. The author rightfully stresses the potential effectiveness of gesture and its tight correlation with speech (aptly citing Quintilian in this regard) and argues that this “serve[s] to refine our understanding of the comprehension of characters’ use of dialects” (49). Chapter Three analyzes the uses of masks, perhaps the most recognizable aspect of commedia dell’arte performance. The author begins bymaking a distinction between character masks (i.e., Pantalone, Arlecchino, Dottore, etc.) and other types of masks (i.e., animals, gods, spirits, classical figures, etc.), specifically concentrating on three fundamental scenario collections, that is the Corsini, the Locatelli and, of course, the Scala. Of note are Schmitt’s acute observations regarding the social conflicts that the different types of masks would bring to the forefront of the dramatic action, building on an argument that had been already proposed by Stephen Orgel with regards to the “fantasies of freedom” for women and servants alike in a markedly patriarchal, hierarchical society (63). In the final section of the book, the author brings her discussion of performance techniques to a close by examining the presumed or actual persistence of commedia dell’arte in contemporary theatre. Despite emphasizing the presence of broadly intended improvisational modes in groups active today (she makes a point of referencing several, most notably the Improvised Shakespeare Company, based in Chicago), Schmitt ultimately dampens the idea that the phenomenon she analyzed throughout the book survived the centuries in a meaningful way (any mention of Dario Fo and his Nobel-Prize-worthy work, however, would have been necessary). More than a thesis-oriented monograph, Performing Commedia dell’Arte is a rich repository of intelligent observations and clever suggestions that one would have liked to see developed in a more cohesive way. The publisher, also, should have done a much stronger job of polishing the text and readying it for print. The egregious number of typos (i.e., “commedia erudite” instead of “commedia erudita,” throughout the book), misspellings (i.e., “Luigi Riccobone” instead of “Luigi Riccoboni,” 26), and typographical inconsistencies contributed to the impression of dealing with an unfinished product, which is unfortunate given the author’s—and the publisher’s, as a matter of fact—reputation and abilities.
{"title":"Book review: Deanna Shemek, In Continuous Expectation: Isabella d’Este’s Reign of Letters","authors":"Lauren Surovi","doi":"10.1177/00145858231183403","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00145858231183403","url":null,"abstract":"borates her nevertheless compelling argument by resorting to musicologist Emily Wilbourne’s recent scholarship on the aural relation between improvisational theatre and early opera (Seventeenth-Century Opera and the Sound of the Commedia dell’Arte, 2016). The final part of the chapter focuses on gesture, for which analysis Schmitt draws on visual representations contained in both the Scala scenarios and the Corsini collection. The author rightfully stresses the potential effectiveness of gesture and its tight correlation with speech (aptly citing Quintilian in this regard) and argues that this “serve[s] to refine our understanding of the comprehension of characters’ use of dialects” (49). Chapter Three analyzes the uses of masks, perhaps the most recognizable aspect of commedia dell’arte performance. The author begins bymaking a distinction between character masks (i.e., Pantalone, Arlecchino, Dottore, etc.) and other types of masks (i.e., animals, gods, spirits, classical figures, etc.), specifically concentrating on three fundamental scenario collections, that is the Corsini, the Locatelli and, of course, the Scala. Of note are Schmitt’s acute observations regarding the social conflicts that the different types of masks would bring to the forefront of the dramatic action, building on an argument that had been already proposed by Stephen Orgel with regards to the “fantasies of freedom” for women and servants alike in a markedly patriarchal, hierarchical society (63). In the final section of the book, the author brings her discussion of performance techniques to a close by examining the presumed or actual persistence of commedia dell’arte in contemporary theatre. Despite emphasizing the presence of broadly intended improvisational modes in groups active today (she makes a point of referencing several, most notably the Improvised Shakespeare Company, based in Chicago), Schmitt ultimately dampens the idea that the phenomenon she analyzed throughout the book survived the centuries in a meaningful way (any mention of Dario Fo and his Nobel-Prize-worthy work, however, would have been necessary). More than a thesis-oriented monograph, Performing Commedia dell’Arte is a rich repository of intelligent observations and clever suggestions that one would have liked to see developed in a more cohesive way. The publisher, also, should have done a much stronger job of polishing the text and readying it for print. The egregious number of typos (i.e., “commedia erudite” instead of “commedia erudita,” throughout the book), misspellings (i.e., “Luigi Riccobone” instead of “Luigi Riccoboni,” 26), and typographical inconsistencies contributed to the impression of dealing with an unfinished product, which is unfortunate given the author’s—and the publisher’s, as a matter of fact—reputation and abilities.","PeriodicalId":12355,"journal":{"name":"Forum Italicum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47485263","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-12DOI: 10.1177/00145858231176752
Tenley Bick
When I received the editors’ invitation to contribute an article to this special issue of Forum Italicum on transnational Italian studies, I was delighted to have the opportunity to expand my thoughts—some still developing—on a question that has for many years shaped my scholarship and teaching on Italian art: how do we do art history today, on Italian art (in my case, on Italian modernism, postwar art, and contemporary art) without serious attention to histories of colonialism, empire, and decolonization that are foundational to Italian nationhood and identity? How do we do Italianist art history—the discipline of studying and writing histories of Italian art—without confronting the ideological constructions, and exclusions, of italianità? These questions feel especially important in the days following the election of Giorgia Meloni, when I am finishing this article. Meloni’s victory represents a milestone for the rise of national populism and far-right politics and culture in recent decades in Italy and broader Europe, not to mention the UK and USA. These questions also seem pressing, however, within art history as a discipline, as the field seeks to confront its long-held Eurocentrism. Indeed, the history of Italian art has been central to the discipline of art history and its methods from the field’s inception, beginning with Giorgio Vasari in the Cinquecento, through the work of foundational, field-shaping art historians and philosophers in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, including Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Hegel, Heinrich Wölfflin, and Bernard Berenson, to name a few. The Renaissance, or art of early modern Italy, remains essential to the Eurocentric art historical canon. With the rise of
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Pub Date : 2023-06-12DOI: 10.1177/00145858231178234
Eline Batsleer
La scrittrice e giornalista Stefania Türr (1885–1940) è ricordata come una delle prime inviate di guerra italiane. Tuttavia, il lavoro di corrispondente di guerra costituisce soltanto una parte della sua carriera giornalistica e letteraria, di cui merita di essere approfondito anche un altro aspetto altrettanto fondamentale, ossia l’attivismo politico, che trova la sua migliore espressione sulle pagine della rivista La Madre Italiana da lei fondata nel 1916. Questo saggio vuole proporre un’analisi approfondita del modo in cui Stefania Türr dà forma al proprio progetto politico-editoriale, e illustrare come La Madre Italiana si sia evoluta in sintonia con il percorso politico-ideologico della sua fondatrice. La prima parte dell’articolo è dedicata alla ricostruzione editoriale della rivista nonché alla sua contestualizzazione storico-culturale. La seconda e la terza parte si concentrano sul progetto politico-editoriale della Türr, con particolare attenzione per la dimensione nazionalista e la questione dell’emancipazione femminile. Infine, l’articolo analizza il modo in cui il suo viaggio al fronte (1917) e l’impresa fiumana (1919–1920) hanno influenzato le convinzioni ideologiche della Türr e perciò anche la linea editoriale della rivista.
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