Italian Countryside Research Articles

The musical past revives in the present: An investigation into the cultural heritage of a community

This article explores how two specific musical performances, drawing respectively on the rich repertoire of Italian sacred music and a specific sound environment of a region, can promote cultural participation and ingenuity in the Italian countryside amidst uncertainty and demographic change due to depopulation and the loosening of traditional communal ties. The first study focuses on a specific case in the town of Ortona dei Marsi in the Italian province of L’Aquila. A seemingly everyday experience – participation in community singing – is considered and appreciated from a musicological perspective, while its importance for the revitalisation of a community is recognised. The rediscovering of a forgotten musical heritage contributes to an evolving, prosaic sense of rural cultural resources. The particular case of the community of the small rural town of Ortona dei Marsi, overcoming isolation, distance and new circumstances through the revitalisation of a musicologically significant object, sheds light on how a community serendipitously uses the opportunity to make and maintain music together to demonstrate social and cultural resilience. The second study looks at the experiences of middle school students in the Italian city of Biella of a specific sound memory that guides and paves the way to a diverse learning environment.

Mobility, Displacements and Identity in and around the Medieval Italian Countryside (6th to 10th centuries)

Mobility, Displacements and Identity in and around the Medieval Italian Countryside (6th to 10th centuries)

Engaging Italy: American Women’s Utopian Visions and Transnational Networks by Etta M. Madden

Reviewed by: Engaging Italy: American Women’s Utopian Visions and Transnational Networks by Etta M. Madden Ilaria Serra ENGAGING ITALY: AMERICAN WOMEN’S UTOPIAN VISIONS AND TRANSNATIONAL NETWORKS, by Etta M. Madden. New York: SUNY Press, 2022. 342 pp. $95.00 hardback; $33.95 paperback. It is a rare treat to sit in a nineteenth-century Roman salotto where upper-class American expatriates gather and exchange their impressions of Italy. This is what happens when you open Edda M. Madden’s volume Engaging Italy: American Women’s Utopian Visions and Transnational Networks. The book’s first pages bring the reader inside a Roman salon where American poet and educator Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is the guest of honor. The following pages leave the man behind to focus on three women who frequented these receptions—Emily Bliss Gould (1822–1875), Caroline Crane Marsh (1816–1901), and Anne Hampton Brewster (1819–1892)—and who asked the question, “What can we do to make this crazy, beautiful country better?” The author’s detailed archival research and her laborious deciphering of handwritten letters unearthed from long-closed drawers afford the readers this leap in time. It is no small task, and the author immediately indicates to readers of the uniqueness of her sources by asking: “How to capture the numerous abbreviations (often singular to the author), the underlining and double underlining, the superscripts, and the strikethroughs?” (p. xv). The answer is the secret of this book: by getting to know them personally and becoming privy to their habits and peeves, allowing them to take life in the pages. [End Page 165] Madden’s book allows an unprecedented, close look at a particular slice of nineteenth-century society, the American community in Rome, which may now have been forgotten but deeply influenced Italian culture and left some tangible traces. Even rarer is to learn the pursuits of the women in this society, who were already uncommon travelers—following their husbands’ careers, in two cases out of three—but also exceptional visionaries who had minds and projects of their own. Gould was not just the wife of American physician James Gould but also the founder of a home for poor children in Rome. Marsh was the wife of the United States ambassador to Italy, George Perkins Marsh (considered the first environmentalist), and a published poet and translator, an activist, and a philanthropist who financed Salvatore Ferretti’s “Free Church” orphanage. Brewster was proudly never anybody’s wife, a pioneer journalist, one of the first women correspondents from abroad, and an independent and non-conformist spirit. These three ladies were nearly the same age and spent an important part of their lives in Italy around the same time. Two died in the country: Gould in Perugia and Brewster in Siena. All three did not just attend and organize glitzy cultural and social events as part of their social duties but also pursued their own projects. Gould kept a long correspondence with George Marsh, the ambassador, asking for his help in fundraising and complaining about the ignorance of the men around her who, according to her, did not understand the culture they lived in. These letters reveal her frustration with the Italian educational and political system, the Americans in Rome, and their religious divisions. She was even arrested for meeting with Protestants in her home and defended herself well, her motivation boosted by the affront. The ambasciatrice Caroline Marsh, working side by side with her husband, was deeply affected by the extreme poverty she saw in Rome and the Italian countryside after a big flood destroyed the living quarters of the poorer people. Moved by the “incredible amount of idleness, poverty and beggary,” she fought to alleviate this misery by opening a Roman orphanage and school (p. 30). The rebellious Brewster spent her life fighting her brother for her inheritance and opposing his prohibition against her seeing her long-time friend and partner, Charlotte Cushman. She left many poems and astute articles in the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, Boston Daily Advertiser, New York World, Chicago Daily News, and Cincinnati Commercial. Brewster never lost her irony, recognizable in her words when she conceded a fight to Roman leader Rodolfo Lanciani: “I...

A long walk in the Italian countryside: Large‐scale geophysical survey within the emptyscapes initiative: Examples from the Grosseto‐Roselle valley, South Tuscany, Italy

AbstractIn Italy, the potential of geophysical prospection for the characterization of archaeological landscapes, especially in previously unexplored rural or formerly urban areas, has rarely been acknowledged or seriously tested in the field, leaving the character and density of rural settlement across time virtually unknown outside areas favourable to aerial survey. It is obvious, however, that the open countryside must conceal a wide variety of archaeological information, difficult to detect and analyse within an Italian research framework largely dominated in the past by field‐walking survey and artefact collection. In response, this article presents some initial results and practical lessons from a programme of large‐scale magnetic survey aimed at the initial exploration of the lowland landscape of the Grosseto‐Roselle valley, a few kilometres inland from the Adriatic coast, in south‐western Tuscany. It is hoped that the results briefly illustrated here will encourage others to undertake similar work elsewhere in Italy and around the Mediterranean as part of a move away from an essentially ‘site‐based’ approach towards a truly ‘landscape’ perspective.

Knives and Sleeping Monks : Benedict’s Rule and Self-Defence in Sixth-Century Italy

According to Benedict’s Rule, a few monks used to sleep while wearing knives, a dangerous habit which the Saint condemns. Sixth century sources, both Latin and Greek, mention knives quite often, which are called either cultelli or machairai and are mostly considered as weapons. Since there was widespread public insecurity in the Italian countryside during Benedict’s times because of bandits and marauding soldiers, it is likely that many farmers were used to carrying a knife with them even in bed. Quite a few monks had difficulties in letting go of this precaution after entering Montecassino.

ROAD TRIPS, RAIL JOURNEYS AND LANDSCAPE ARCHAEOLOGY: RECONSTRUCTING RESEARCH ITINERARIES AND TRAVEL EXCURSIONS IN ITALY THROUGH THE BRITISH SCHOOL AT ROME'S PHOTOGRAPHIC COLLECTIONS

This article highlights the importance of photography for landscape archaeology and topographical studies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and explores the value of photographic collections for the reconstruction of research itineraries and reconnaissance excursions in this period. Photographs held at the British School at Rome are utilized to demonstrate the ways in which collections of images can be used to retrace and chronicle the historical paths and itineraries of early researchers in Italy. Several journeys involving pioneers in both topographical studies and the use of photography for landscape archaeology in Italy are discussed. The photographs taken by amateur photographers on these excursions are important visual records of the Italian countryside and its monuments. These images are cultural artefacts themselves and they demonstrate what was still accessible to scholars and archaeologists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The historical paths and itineraries of these trailblazers, and the visual and textual records they produced, are now an integral part of the history of topographical studies, landscape archaeology and the Roman roads and countryside of Italy. Through photographs, this article retraces the paths of several of these pioneers and brings their historical journeys to life.

AN EXPLORATION OF THE AGRO-TOWN IN THE ITALIAN COUNTRYSIDE AND RURAL DISTRICT

The primary sector has been completely reshaped by the assignation of specific functions to farmers over the last 25 years, since legislators noted the importance of quality food productions to the rural and agro-industrial sectors and formally established rural and agri-food districts as legal entities. Agro-towns and rural districts in Italy, despite their peculiarities, represent an element of continuity in the path of social and economic development of the Italian countryside, contrasting the risk of marginalisation in rural areas through a propulsive growth of social capital and human interactions. The main purpose of this research was to assess the development of rural districts in some Italian regions as a consequence of the diffusion of agro-towns. The method of investigation has been a theoretical approach aimed at assessing the diffusion of the rural districts from 2016 to 2019 and by a comparison among Italian regions using some maps. Drawing some final remarks, agro-towns represent a fundamental pillar for the growth of the rural district in Italy due to their specificities in terms of social capital and local development, which are able to give a special connotation to the surrounding rural territory in a process of economic growth. In conclusion, the model of the rural district represents a spearhead for the countryside, emphasising all the peculiarities of rural areas where the impact of agro-towns has been significant in the past. The main consequence has been a transition of agro-towns from being degraded structures, where the incidence of agricultural underemployment was high, to structures where, despite the diffusion of large estates, there is an advanced social and economic development able to create a cohesive space that works to contrast the marginalisation of the Italian countryside.

Modern Slavery Made in Italy—Causes and Consequences of Labour Exploitation in the Italian Agricultural Sector

Through this paper, the author emphasises the importance of the role that migrant women and men play in the Italian agricultural sector, and the need to better protect them from forms of labour exploitation. Italian products are well known all over the world and represent the excellency of an entrepreneurial fabric made of thousands of family-run small and medium enterprises which from the Alps to Sicily produce unique fruits, vegetables, food, and wines. But a long history of illegal recruitment and labour exploitation, known in Italy as caporalato, tarnish the long supply chain which brings Italian agri-food products to dining tables and market shelves across the globe. In addition, to cope with the forms of exploitation occurring in the Italian countryside, this the paper points out the need to harmonise norms and regulation on labour, migration, and human rights. In doing so, it also argues that both the mens legislatoris and law enforcement authorities modus operandi should progressively move from an approach which is based on a relentless pursuit of the organized crime component for criminalising the acts of labour exploitation and illegal recruitment as defined in the criminal code, to a more comprehensive and holistic approach which puts the rights of migrant agricultural workers as the agenda’s top priority.

THE ROMAN PEASANTRY IN VIRGIL’S AENEID

The recollection of the wars that took place in Latium and their concrete consequences for the Italian peasant elite in particular and the Roman peasants and laborers in general, are elements the contemporary reader of Virgil must have recognized immediately in the form of allusions and references, while for us they appear veiled and demand an exercise of search and interpretation. As a citizen of Rome at the peak of its splendor, under Augustus’s rule, and as a poet from an Italian county, Virgil is an author that is sensitive to the wounds inflicted on the social body by different wars and he has poured his recollections and his version of history into his work as an act of memory and homage, not only for the heroes who fought for Rome but also for all the soldiers and anonymous peasants who returned to find their farmlands devastated. This work aims to focus on the references to the depopulation of fields in the Aeneid and to analyze them as an act of memory, that is to say, as something that creates a reading horizon for Virgil’s contemporaries who undoubtedly bring past wars to the present through one of their most influential consequences, the transformation of the Italian countryside and the peasant elite.

Terre, mon beau souci. Quand Frédéric Boyer « fait Virgile »

This article takes as its point of departure Frédéric Boyer’s 2019 translation of Virgil’s Georgics (under the title Le Souci de la terre) and the long introductory essay that accompanies it, entitled “Faire Virgile.” These last two words, understood as an invitation or, in fact, as an imperative to follow a manner of “doing,” to emulate or to translate the most unlikely of poetic models—a text “written in the Italian countryside more than two thousand years ago”—, provide us with a way to understand what it might mean for Boyer’s poetry, and more generally for French contemporary poetics, to attempt to “speak the earth.”

Europe’s Forgotten Unfinished Revolution: Peasant Power, Social Mobilization, and Communism in the Southern Italian Countryside, 1943–45

Abstract Between 1943 and 1945, groups of peasants took over dozens of villages and small towns in southern Italy and proclaimed the birth of independent republics. During their brief existence—sometimes just a few days—the peasant republics implemented revolutionary measures, including the redistribution of land and the establishment of people’s courts. This article draws attention to these forgotten episodes and suggests that they can best be understood by adopting an anthropological perspective and viewing social mobilization through an experiential lens. It draws on court documents and personal accounts to examine the quasi-revolutionary experiences of the southern Italian peasantry. Revolutions in general can be seen as social dramas and political rites of passage in which the successive phases of rupture, liminality, and reaggregation are the distinct stages of a total process that generates a transformation. This approach makes it possible to disentangle the conceptualization of revolutions from structures as well as from ideology, culture, and agency; to comprehend revolutions that unfold unscripted or without the decisive leadership of a vanguard whose ideas and expectations pre-exist the revolution and therefore teleologically determine its development; and to initiate comparative analysis in regard to symbolism, morphology, and the dynamics of social action.

International retirement and later-life migrants in the Marche region, Italy: materialities of landscape, ‘home’, lifestyle and consumption

AbstractWithin the general framework of ‘lifestyle migration’, the paper explores three materialities associated with the arrival and settlement of British, German and Dutch later-life migrants in the Italian region of Marche, a relatively new ‘frontier’ region for international retirement migration. The first is about the aesthetics of landscape and the scenic and emotional qualities of the physical and social environment. The second concerns ‘home’, where we examine house types, property location and home-making practices in terms of ‘authenticity’, material objects and the cultivation of land for productive purposes. The paper's third thematic focus is on consumption patterns. Most of the 69 participants interviewed for this study hanker after what they perceive as a simpler, more genuine way of life, in tune with the surrounding mixed-farming agricultural environment and distinct from other regions where tourism has taken hold. Many grow their own produce, including some who have small vineyards and olive groves. They enjoy shopping in local markets, eating out in inexpensive local hostelries, visiting museums and cultural festivals, and exploring the many pretty villages and historic towns of the region. The participants embody later-life migration as ‘active ageing’, but those who are older and/or frailer must consider, often reluctantly, the reality of a less-active and more isolated life in the Italian countryside.

Requiescat in Pace: Analysis of the Rules on the Prohibition of Funerals during the COVID-19 Emergency in Italy (Presentation Slides)

For centuries art, music, and literature have described the individual and collective backlash due to a pandemic, even though today our society has forgotten these circumstances, thanks to the medical and technological advancement, with all the systemic consequences entailed to the difficulty of stopping the contagion, including burials.In a small village in the Italian countryside an elderly person passed away, it is not known whether or not affected by COVID-19, but due to the contagion and the rules that prohibited public, religious or civil cerimonies, the lady's funeral was not able to take place according to the usual ritual and with the collective participation of family members and the local community. The announcement of her death and her leave-taking were given in a completely exceptional way: instead of the usual affiche published by the funeral home and payed by the family, the announcement was made through Facebook, from the mayor's page, in a participatory and emotional tone, with a mixture of secularism and religion: “This morning we gave our last farewell at the cemetary to Ms. XX, aged ..., mother of YX, her home was at …. Her remains were blessed by the priest. The Mayor was there in representation of all those who would have liked to participate, and who were unable since the restrictions for the ongoing coronavirus emergency. The condolences of all our community to the family. The Mayor". Another image that became well-known worldwide concerned the row of military trucks that carried the coffins of the deceased people from the cemetery of Bergamo (one of the most affected places in Italy) to the cremation sites in other regions.These sad episodes show of how much the ban forbidding public funeral of whom passed away was intrusive and affected entire communities, both in countryside villages, and in towns.The farewell cerimonies to deceased is a deeply felt moment, where the communities gather together with the affected family for helping each other to mourne the beloved one who passed away: in fact the burial of the deads is a universal rule. Between 9 March and 4 May 2020, Italian law was very intrusive in this severance, forbidding funerals with criminal penalties. Although the Italian state is increasingly secularized, the farewell cerimonies are still strongly linked to religious tradition, although secular rites are growing.The aim of this abstract is to verify what was the impact in Italy of the interdictive legal rules about funeral ceremonies on the life of people who have suffered individuals and, at the same time, collective mourning.

Bordering the surplus population across the Mediterranean: Imperialism and unfree labour in Libya and the Italian countryside

In spite of much emphasis on a “migration crisis” and studies on the “refugeeization” of the agricultural workforce in Italy, there is still little research on the impact of the NATO war on Libya and the militarization of EU borders in the Mediterranean on the development of labour exploitation and unfree labour in the sector. Focusing on the period between the 2007/8 global economic crisis, the 2011 uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, until 2018, this article analyses the links between the system of neo-colonial extraction of Libyan resources that imposed itself after the war and the expansion of the reserve army of labour of Italian capital. We show that the militarization of EU borders further empowered militias involved in fuel, weapon and human smuggling, boosting a brutal system of detention, extortion and forced labour that both traps immigrants in Libya and pushes them towards Europe. Agri-business and retail corporations operating in Italy have benefitted from the continuing importation of energy and of vulnerable workers from Libya. The substitution of workers with immigrants with a status of asylum-seekers helps explain the diffusion of unfree labour in Italian agriculture over the last ten years. But immigrants’ experiences in Libya have also encouraged them to mobilize and reclaim their collective rights.

Antonio Lo Re: Mechanical Engineering in Agriculture

In light of recent historiographic guidelines that have identified machines as the prime means by which the Industrial Revolution spread to the Italian countryside, this article explains the works and studies of Antonio Lo Re (1857-1920). With his ability to combine teaching, scientific research, and technological applications in a complex district like the Italian Captainate, Lo Re played a leading role not only in the agrarian science of his times, but also in related technologies, with particular attention to the machinery that the increasingly flourishing European—and, to a more modest extent, also Italian—industry in the second half of the 19th century devoted to agricultural production. Moreover, his manuals contain valuable sketches and drawings useful in reconstructing the history of agricultural machinery of the period.

‘The Public Force of the Private State’ – Strikebreaking and Visions of Subversion in Liberal Italy (1880s to 1914)

From the end of the nineteenth century onwards, Italy witnessed a significant increase in labour conflicts, trade unionism and social protests, all of which shook the foundations of the liberal state. Following the failure of the authorities’ attempts to deal with mass protests, efforts were made under the governments of Giovanni Giolitti to adopt new policing policies that embraced state neutrality in social conflicts and the deployment at the same time of substantial police forces to prevent the escalation of conflict and bloodshed. The success of these policies is highly questionable and there were major differences in this respect between northern and southern Italy, and between rural and industrial areas. Nevertheless, these policies contributed to the fear of abandonment and desire for revenge felt by significant sections of the propertied classes, and the issue of strikebreaking was at the centre of the controversy. Focusing on the Po Valley, this article first presents a broad overview of the political situation in Italy with emphasis on policing policies and work replacement, then analyses the various forms of legal and illegal private strike-breaker protection organizations that took on clear subversive aims. Drawing on newspapers and archival records, the article highlights the overlap between private and public law enforcement and the combination of coercion and consensus in the Italian countryside. The long-term consequences of the unresolved issue of strikebreaking and private policing help explain the rise of Fascism after the Great War.

Building Collective Individualities: Residential Pavilions in the Italian Countryside

Building Collective Individualities: Residential Pavilions in the Italian Countryside

“The Little World” by Giovannino Guareschi: how the microcosm of a province becomes the image of the whole country

“The Little World” by Giovannino Guareschi is a cycle of 346 short stories, describing the world of Italian countryside in the first decades after the end of the World War II. This peasant world with its poverty and political tensions, different conflicts and contradictions, became the image of an Italian soul and cultural values for both Italian readers and foreigners. It is the most translated Italian text of 21st century. The present research provides the analysis of literary construction, narrative schemes and technics used by the author. The first part of the article is dedicated to geographical reality and illusions, to how it becomes a chronotope. The second part shows the functions and the system of main characters and the mechanism of their interaction. We also give a short overview of the Italian political background, that explains why such a literary analysis was absent until now.

The Mesothalassia Bike‐Tour: (Re)Discovering Water by Riding With Scientists

The Mesothalassia Bike‐Tour: (Re)Discovering Water by Riding With Scientists

Energy production from biogas in the Italian countryside: Modernization vs. repeasantization

Italy is experiencing a proliferation of biogas energy plants. In only a few years, the number of plants has grown from ten to nearly five hundred. Public policies have played an important role in stimulating and shaping the spread of biogas plants. Following the European Renewable Energy Directive (2009/28/EC) Italian public policy began to support the spread of biogas with a system of obligations and incentives. This system, combined with a rigid institutional framework, has shaped the organizational models adopted by farms for biogas technology implementation. From the point of view of sociological investigation, the article investigates the two main agricultural biogas organizational models: modernization and repeasantization. We present the two models through the study of two empirical cases, which highlight how different ways to introduce new technologies on farms can lead to different outcomes in ecological terms.