The Canzone villanesca alla napolitana: Social, Cultural and Historical Contexts. By Donna G. Cardamone.

Abstract

Donna Cardamone has been the leading expert on the canzone villanesca alla napolitana, a genre of Neapolitan song of popular character, for more than thirty years. This volume brings together reprints and translations of ten of her studies that were originally published from 1975 to 2005. The studies are numbered, and the original pagination is retained except in the two that are translated from Italian to English. Cardamone's essays cover three phases in the history of the villanesca: its origin and early evolution as a product of Neapolitan culture, its reception and transformation in Rome in the 1550s, and its further transformation through the adoption of Venetian features in the mid-1560s. The first two phases are the principal focus of the book. Cardamone traces the prehistory of the villanesca in the strambotto and investigates the historical conditions that led to the creation of the new genre. She discusses the nature and functions of the early villanesca, then follows its diffusion to Rome and beyond, where its character changed in response to new social conditions and it came to be called villanella.