Italian Story Research Articles

Italy's Sovereign Debt Crisis

The Italian story shows what happens when changes in market confidence outpace politics. Unless market participants will benefit more by staying in the game, what happened to Italy will happen elsewhere.

Gothic’s Death Drive

Abstract‘Every thing tends directly to the catastrophe.’ Is this not to specify theleitmotivof the Gothic? Here, in the Preface to the first edition ofThe Castle of Otranto, Horace Walpole articulates the interest of what is presented as a recovered manuscript of a 16th‐century Italian story. But if this statement appears right at the front ofOtranto– that is, the novel which will bear the crucial appellation ‘A Gothic Story’ on the occasion of its second edition – so it seems to stand, at the same time, at the head of Gothic itself as structured in terms of a certaintelosof catastrophe. Thus, as we shall see, to get to grips withThe Castle of Otrantoas well as the generic fictions it helps to inspire is to get to grips with Gothic’s death drive. If this phenomenon manifests itself in terms of a certain ‘compulsion to repeat’, to invoke the most familiar Freudian formulation of the death drive, then there is, to be sure, a great deal of evidence as regards its actual reality. We could adduce in this regard the formulaic – in this sense, repetitive – nature of the Gothic and its generic conventions as a distinguishing characteristic of the Gothic that is widely agreed upon. But for the sake of a perhaps more penetrating analysis, we shall examine other ways in which a repetition compulsion appears at work inThe Castle of Otranto(amongst other things, this is a story that begins with a death, featuring several others afterwards). In this article, the logic of this then carries through into an examination of some of the key imitations ofOtrantothat appeared after the ‘Gothic Story’ of 1765: ‘Sir Bertrand, A Fragment’ by Anna Laetitia and John Aikin (the former, later known as Anna Laetitia Barbauld), andThe Old English Baronby Clara Reeve. Forliterary imitationin itself offers a further perception of what repetition, at the level of a certain sublimation of Gothic’s death drive, looks like here in the Gothic.

Veículos alegóricos em crônicas machadianas e em Novecento, de Alessandro Baricco doi:10.5007/2175-7917.2010v15n1p219

Taking Walter Benjamin’s concept of allegory as a theoretical basis, this essay aims at carrying out an allegorical reading of two means of transportation: the streetcar, present in some Brazilian writer Machado de Assis' cronicas ( short literary commentaries on facts of daily life), and the ship Virginian , from Italian fictional story Novecento, un monologo , by Alessandro Baricco. The streetcar is considered an allegorical vehicle, in accordance with the ideas of Ana Luiza Andrade, who sees it as a means of transportation for the cronica itself. It is possible to think of a similarity with the Italian fictional ship, which was also a vehicle that conveyed not only passengers, but also their life stories. Therefore, both of them can be thought of as allegorical vehicles representing the historical context of nineteenth and twentieth centuries, respectively.

Ringing the justice bell

By using traditional stories from other countries and re-working them for a modern audience, we can help children to become more globally aware. Ruth Davies explores the Italian story, King John's Bell.

Narrative Innovation in Loriano Macchiavelli's Sarti Antonio Stories

Recently described as the 'padre vivente del giallo italiano', Loriano Macchiavelli is responsible for the longest-running Italian detective story series with his Sarti Antonio books. The status of the genre is still in question, especially in Italy, and Macchiavelli's books have been published in some of the less prestigious, more popular collections. Although analyses of detective fiction often focus on its subject matter or take a psychological or sociological approach, in this study I will seek to demonstrate that Macchiavelli's books, whilst situated at the popular end of the genre, are written with a level of narrative sophistication and innovation not normally associated with the genre or its mass readership. In particular I will focus on the narrative functions of the main characters in the books, the position of the narrator, and the use of present-tense narration.

An Italian Story? Berlusconi and Contemporary Democratic Politics

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Birth of a science centre. Italian phenomenology

In May 2004 the Balì Museum, Planetarium and interactive science museum, was opened to the public in Italy: 35 hands-on exhibits designed according to the interactive tradition of the Exploratorium in San Francisco, an astronomic observatory for educational activities, a Planetarium with 70 places. With a total investment of about three million euros, about two thirds of which were spent on restructuring the splendid eighteenth-century villa in which it is housed, the undertaking may be considered a small one in comparison with other European science centres. Three million euros: perhaps enough to cover the cost of only the splendid circular access ramp to the brand-new Cosmocaixa in Barcelona, an investment of one hundred million euros. But the interesting aspect of the story of the Balì Museum (but also of other Italian stories, as we shall see) lies in the fact that this lively and advanced science centre stands in the bucolic region of the Marches, next to a small town of only 800 inhabitants (Saltara, in the Province of Pesaro and Urbino), in a municipal territory that has a total of 5000. Whereas in Italy the projects for science centres comparable with the Catalan one, for example projects for Rome and Turin, never get off the ground, smaller ones are opening in small and medium-sized towns: why is this? And what does the unusual location of the centres entail for science communication in Italy? This Focus does not claim to tell the whole truth about Italian interactive museums, but it does offer some phenomenological cues to open a debate on the cultural, economic and political premises that favour their lives.

Stendhal: La Chartreuse de Parme, and: Concordances des Chroniques italiennes (review)

Reviewed by: Stendhal: La Chartreuse de Parme, and: Concordances des Chroniques italiennes James T. Day Jefferson, Ann. Stendhal: La Chartreuse de Parme. Critical Guides to French Texts. London: Grant and Cutler, 2003. Pp. 87. ISBN-0-7293-0440-X Concordances des Chroniques italiennes. Jean-Jacques Hamm and Gregory Lessard, eds. New York: Olms-Weidmann, 2002. 2 vols. Pp. 1048. ISBN3-487-11757-6; 3-487-11758-4 By their striking dissimilarity, these two works are testimony to the enduring vitality of Stendhal studies. Ann Jefferson's diminutive volume capably addresses the needs of undergraduates who are still discovering why Stendhal's last masterpiece is such an important novel, while the hefty tomes of Jean-Jacques Hamm and Gregory Lessard are not so much intended to be read as to furnish textual data to specialists studying language use and thematic patterns in one of Stendhal's less well-known works, his Italian stories. Considering the many shelves of commentary available on La Chartreuse de Parme, Jefferson's manual is remarkable for its blend of concision and thoroughness. In straightforward prose, Jefferson sheds essential light on the novel's origins, on the puzzle of its narrative structure, on point of view, narrative voice, attributes of the characters, the theme of writing, the status of art in the work, and Stendhal's notion of style. Citing Balzac's published response to the Chartreuse, she locates the originality of Stendhal's novel in its improvizational composition, which stands in stark contrast to the blueprinted organization of most Balzacian fiction. Without reducing the Chartreuse in any way to a series of narrative riffs, Jefferson argues effectively for using Stendhal's improvization to account for most of the work's salient features, including its paradoxes, anomalies, and imponderables. The novel betokens improvization, as she points out, in its subordination of plot to action, for action thrives on chance encounters and requires little or no preparation. The spontaneity of the Italian characters, moreover, fits well with the narrator's discursive style, which tends to rely on motifs and formulaic features that are consistent with the traditions of oral narrative. Frequent shifts in point of view, comic reversals, and the narrator's equivocal judgments contribute to the improvisational tone, as do the unreliable eyewitnesses who cannot explain the incongruities of Waterloo. With so little interest in plotting as a means of achieving a desired outcome, Stendhal beams his most flattering light on characters who seek above all to enjoy the present moment. Jefferson offers useful commentary on the difference between "personality" and the superior attributes of une âme passionnée and provides incisive character analysis of Fabrice, Gina, Clelia, and Mosca. In a final chapter, she notes that the characters spend considerable time sending messages and reading letters, such that an "urgent, responsive, impromptu quality of writing" (76) reflects the improvisatory composition of the novel itself. In this spirit, art and natural landscapes, much like language, can be a medium of communication to lofty souls. [End Page 447] Stendhal's style, as Jefferson concludes, is more conversational than literary, and its effectiveness, paradoxically, depends greatly on what is not spoken. This handy guide to the Chartreuse will be useful to all readers, professors of literature included, who seek a deeper understanding of "one of the most discon-certing novels in French literature" (9). Stendhal's modernity, in Jefferson's view, is more accidental than prescient: the Chartreuse has baroque qualities and looks backward as much as it looks to the future. Specialists may take issue with this position, or with the lack of attention to other interpretational perspectives: biographical, political, symbolic, psychoanalytical, and so on. But as a serious student guide (supporting quotations appear in untranslated French!), this slim volume provides an exceptionally coherent overview of La Chartreuse de Parme. The concordance by Hamm and Lessard is no less admirable. Having completed similar projects on Armance (1991), Le Rouge et le noir (1998), and La Chartreuse de Parme (2000), they have now provided scholars with a resource that lists all occurrences of more than 9000 words in the Chroniques italiennes, from "a" to "zélés." Each occurrence appears in the middle of some 15 words of...

(review)

some of Stendhal'sfiction, with specialreferenceto the theme of claustrationin the Italian stories. Mariella Di Maio suggests that the final isolation of several protagonistsreflectsan unconscious Stendhalianwish to abolish the outsideworld. In 'Russie, melancolie' she argues that the hardship experienced in the Russian campaign was one of the important factors confirming Stendhal in his literary vocation. The majorpart of her book concerns itselfwith the Italianstories,and this is the most interestingsection. Di Maio compares Stendhal'streatment of the tragic real events of the Cenci storywith those of Artaudand Moravia.The latterwas closerto historicalfact, she explains, as in his version Beatrice was not raped by her father before she killed him. She reminds us that Stendhal was attractedto the character of Beatrice because of her energy. Other chapters deal with Stendhal's use of manuscriptsourcesin La Chartreuse deParme and his lifelong admirationfor Tasso, a sensitive, imaginative, and excessive individual with whom he felt much affinity. The section on 'Lecoeurmange' considersStendhal'srevivalof the dramatictheme of the woman who unknowingly eats her lover's heart when it has been removed and cooked by a jealous husband. The old topos is full of symbolism, principally that of perfect sacrificiallove, and was treated by a number of medieval writers. Stendhal refersexplicitlyto it in De l'amour and there are also allusionsin LeRouge et leNoir,which isof coursea splendidanachronism.Di Maio alsoconsidersStendhal's returnto another old Italian theme, that of young women forced to become nuns, and she agreeswith Croce that his manuscriptsourcesdo not have much historical authenticity. She reminds us that the novelist had the good taste to reduce the bizarreand sadisticelement in these old accountsof cruelconvents and randynuns. Her book is a useful synthesis of the main critical writings inspired by Stendhal's shortItalianstories. UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL RICHARD BOLSTER HonoredeBalzac. Memoirede la critique. Ed. by STEPHANE VACHON. Paris: Presses de l'Universit6de Paris-Sorbonne. 1999. 560 pp. g99 F. Given the recent bicentenary of Balzac's birth and the I5oth anniversaryof his death, it is appropriate that reprints of notable if somewhat arbitrarilyselected critiquesof Balzac (Ambriere,Barberis,Lukacs,Mozet) should be followed by this collection of landmark critical texts that founded and forged what have become Balzac studies.As StephaneVachon showsin his introductory'cheminsde traverse' of 'l'tat de la critique',Balzac'sstatusas a latterdayHomer and as the fatherof the (modern) novel was being established well before his death, with both admirers (suchas Champfleury)and detractors(suchas Sainte-Beuve)drawingup the agenda of Balzac criticismforyearsto come: Balzac 'l'homme et l'oeuvre'(confirmedby the 1876 publication of the correspondence); Balzac between Romanticism and Realism;Balzac'sfrequentlyimpugned style;his morality/immorality;his religious and political conservatism/radicalism. Although much of Vachon's introductory materialwas covered in greaterdetail and depth by David Bellos in BalzacCriticism in France 1850-900o (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), it is useful to be reminded that whether enlistedbyjournalists,by emerging or establishedcritics,or by fellow novelists,Balzacwaslionized, 'manualized',politicized,andfinallymonumentalized with the inaugurationof Rodin's sculptureinJuly 1939.In the seeminglyinexorable stages so well charted by Bellos and, more recently, in Balzac,edited by Michael Tilby (London and New York:Longman, 1995),Balzac'sreputationwas made, his canonization assured. some of Stendhal'sfiction, with specialreferenceto the theme of claustrationin the Italian stories. Mariella Di Maio suggests that the final isolation of several protagonistsreflectsan unconscious Stendhalianwish to abolish the outsideworld. In 'Russie, melancolie' she argues that the hardship experienced in the Russian campaign was one of the important factors confirming Stendhal in his literary vocation. The majorpart of her book concerns itselfwith the Italianstories,and this is the most interestingsection. Di Maio compares Stendhal'streatment of the tragic real events of the Cenci storywith those of Artaudand Moravia.The latterwas closerto historicalfact, she explains, as in his version Beatrice was not raped by her father before she killed him. She reminds us that Stendhal was attractedto the character of Beatrice because of her energy. Other chapters deal with Stendhal's use of manuscriptsourcesin La Chartreuse deParme and his lifelong admirationfor Tasso, a sensitive, imaginative, and excessive individual with whom he felt much affinity. The section on 'Lecoeurmange' considersStendhal'srevivalof the dramatictheme of the woman who unknowingly eats her lover's heart when it has been removed...

Same tunes, different voices: Contemporary use of traditional models in the Italian folk ensemble'sBallata grande per Francesco fantin(Adelaide 1990)

Abstract This paper discusses the Ballata grande per Francesco Fantin, a piece of musical theatre performed by the Italian Folk Ensemble (IFE) in Adelaide in March 1990 to accompany a photographic exhibition on the life and death of the Italian anarchist, killed by Fascist countrymen in 1942 in South Australia's Loveday Internment Camp. This quintessentially Australian Italian story is recounted through a mixture of spoken word and narrative song: for the latter, the IFE set new words to melodies taken from the recorded repertoire of the cantastorie (travelling popular singers) of Northern, Central, and Southern Italy. Through discussion of the textual and musical changes evident when comparing the IFE's performance with the source recordings, issues of reproduction and adaptation of traditional musical practices are addressed. The focus of the musical discussion is on the extent to which the Ensemble's performance has in fact maintained the ‘same tunes’, while the textual analysis points to the ways in w...

Lope de Vega’s and Webster’s Amalfi Plays

Lope de Vega’s and Webster’s Amalfi Plays John Loftis Few Spanish and English plays offer more attractive subjects for comparative study than Lope de Vega’s El mayordomo de la Duquesa de Amalfi and John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, plays with a common source in a novella by Matteo Bandello and yet having resemblances to each other that cannot be ex­ plained by reference to that source. Here are two major dram­ atists transforming the same Italian story into tragedies repre­ sentative of their national dramas. Webster’s play is as highly prized as any non-Shakespearean tragedy of the Jacobean era. Lope’s tragedy is good, though it is not in the first rank of the enormous corpus of his drama. Had it been written by a less prolific man, it would no doubt have attracted more attention.1 Webster’s is a play in which concern for family honor provides a driving force. The Spanish drama is known for its preoccupa­ tion with family honor. How does Lope treat the subject in his play? Webster’s Duchess is remembered for her defiance of her brothers. How does Lope’s Duchess respond to her brothers? Some Anglicists have expressed doubt that the Spanish drama­ tists of the Golden Age wrote plays that are properly considered tragedies. So prominent a scholar as Clifford Leech, for example, concluded an essay of 1950 on the Spanish and English dramas with the following paragraph: But, because of the general maintenance [in Spain] of the three-fold division of dramatic thought—religion, honour, and cloak-and-sword—the tragic spirit hardly existed. That comes when the world oppresses through its very lack of pattern, when the resolution of the individual alone withstands the erratic light­ ning: tragedy or a helter-skelter into the abyss can then equally be the result, according to the degree of the resolution. The JOHN LOFTIS is Bailey Professor of English Emeritus at Stanford University, and is the author of a dozen books, including The Spanish Plays of Neoclassical England (1973). 64 John Loftis 65 Elizabethans and Jacobeans knew both, but Spain’s ark of cove­ nant with its god survived the Armada.2 Tragedy in Spain, just as in England, assumed varied forms that do not lend themselves to accurate generalization. Yet distinctions can be made between the places of tragedy in the dramas of the two nations. In England the best and best-known of the serious plays, by Marlowe, Shakespeare, Webster, and Ford, are tragedies. They frequently include comic interludes, often as in The Duchess of Malfi interludes that intensify the grotesque horror of the primary action. But they end in cata­ strophe. In Spain, on the other hand, the best and best-known serious plays, with important exceptions such as Lope’s El caballero de Olmeda and Calderon’s El principe constante, are not tragedies but tragicomedies. Not infrequently they depict grave moral crimes and violent death (in Calderon’s El alcalde de Zalamea, for example), but they do not end in catastrophe for one or more protagonists; rather in the reestablishment of social and moral harmony. In Spain there may not be more tragicomedies in proportion to the total number of plays than in England,3 but the mixed genre itself is more important. It is worth recalling that the most famous of all Golden Age plays is a tragicomedy, Calderon’s La vida es sueho. Clifford Leech in the passage quoted above refers to the “general maintenance [in Spain] of the three-fold division of dramatic thought—religion, honour, and cloak-and-sword. . . .” Cloak and sword plays, about the love intrigues of unmarried couples, are comedies and are not relevant here. Plays about honor as exemplified by El mayordomo will be a central pre­ occupation of this essay. Leech’s emphasis falls on religion as impediment in Spain to the production of tragedy. I assume he refers, not to the autos sacramentales (a form of religious drama in which the Spanish were unsurpassed), but to the comedia, that is, the secular drama. Calderon’s El principe constante, one of his best plays, provides an example of Christian faith inhibiting a...

The American Schlemiel Abroad: Malamud's Italian Stories and the End of American Innocence

What is an American? The question asked by the French immigrant Hector St. John de Crevecoeur even before the Revolutionary War was at an end has haunted many Americans down to our own time. Our colonial beginnings left us with the task of defining our national identity, and from the same source came the habit of defining it in terms of our deviation from European patterns-social, political, moral, cultural patterns-a habit reinforced by later waves of immigration. All white Americans, after all, have European ancestors. This is why until recently most of our major novelists sooner or later felt they had to come to terms with the Old World and why many of them have explored their relationship to it by writing international stories and novels in which Americans are brought in contact and conflict with Europeans and European ways of life.

Plutarch's Life of Cato Utican as a Major Source of Othello

HE primary source of Othello of course is Giraldi Cinthio's Italian story of the unnamed Moor who plots the murder of his wife Disdemona on the island of Cyprus. From this story Shakespeare took not only the heroine's name, the Moor's blackness, the Ensign's villainy, the settings of Venice and Cyprus, but also many details of the plot of jealousy involving the Ensign (Jago), the Moor (Othello), and the Captain (Cassio), including the purloined handkerchief and the observed conversation between the Captain and the Ensign by which the Moor is duped into thinking the Captain openly brags of his affair with Disdemona. After Cinthio's contributions to the plot are acknowledged, however, we find in Shakespeare's play some variations upon Cinthio, not to speak of some extraneous matter, which may be explained only by examination of a major secondary source of Othello that has been overlooked. This source is Sir Thomas North's I579 translation of Plutarch's Life of Cato Utican. The details in Othello upon which North's translation of Plutarch may shed some light are (i) the source of Jago 's professional jealousy as a soldier toward Cassio which is not present in Cinthio, (2) discrepancies in Cassio's character between Act I and the following acts, and (3) certain hitherto unaccountable Roman elements in the play. (i) We recall that Othello opens with Jago's complaint that he has been passed over by the Moor in favor of Cassio for second-in-command. He says to Roderigo that Othello has told him

Reviews of Books

Abstract Abstract Britain's Role Tomorrow. By Christopher Mayhew, M.P. (Hutchinson.) 30s. War in Modern Society. By Alastair Buchan. (C. A. Watts & Co.) 15s. The Military‐Technical Revolution: Its Impact on Strategy and Foreign Policy. Edited by John Erickson. (Pall Mall Press.) 52s. 6d. Nuclear War and Nuclear Peace. by Y. Harkabi. (Distributed by Oldbourne Press.) 54s. Strategic Terminology: A Trilingual Glossary. By Urs Schwarz and Laszlo Hadik. (Pall Mall Press.) 45s. The Art of Counter‐Revolutionary War: The Strategy of Counterinsurgency. By John J. McCuen. (Faber & Faber.) 42s. Peking and People's Wars. By Brigadier‐General Samuel B. Griffith, II. (Pall Mall Press.) 36s. Soldiering for Peace. By Major‐General Carl von Horn. (Cassell.) 50s. Brassey's Annual: The Armed Forces Year‐Book 1966. Edited by Major‐General J. L. Moulton, C.B., D.S.O., O.B.E., Brigadier C. N. Barclay, C.B.E., D.S.O., and Air Vice‐Marshal W. M. Yool, C.B., C.B.E. (William Clowes & Sons, Ltd.) 84s. The Norwegian Campaign of 1940: A Study of Warfare in Three Dimensions. By Major‐General J. L. Moulton. (Eyre & Spottiswoode.) 55s. Inside S.O.E.: The First Full Story of Special Operations Executive in Western Europe, 1940–45. By E. H. Cook‐ridge. (Arthur Barker.) 50s. History of the Second World War: The Mediterranean and Middle East, Vol. IV. By Major‐General I. S. O. Playfair, C.B., D.S.O., M.C. (H.M. Stationery Office). 90s. Out of the Sand: The Epic Story of General LecIerc and the Fighting Free French. By Henry Maule. (Odhams.) 30s. Alamein 1933–1962: An Italian Story. By Paolo Caccia‐Dominioni. (Allen & Unwin.) 40s. Adventure in Diplomacy: The Emergence of General de Gaulle in North Africa. By Kenneth Pendar. (Cassell.) 42s. The Waffen SS: Hitler's Elite Guard at War 1939–1945. By George H. Stein. (Cornell University Press. London: Oxford University Press.) 52s. Decision at Leyte: The first complete account of the air, sea, and land battles that sealed the fate of the Japanese Empire. By Stanley L. Falk. (Norton & Co. Inc., New York.) $5.95. The Janowska Road. By Leon Wells. (Jonathan Cape.) 30s. Jane's Fighting Ships. Edited and compiled by Raymond S. V. Blackman. (Sampson Low, Marston & Co.) £8 8s. The Supermarine Walrus: The Story of a Unique Aircraft. By Lieut.‐Commander G. W. R. Nicholl, O.B.E., R.N. (G. T. Foulis & Co.) 36s. The Happy Warrior: A Life of General Sir Ian Hamilton, G.C.B., G.C.M.G., D.S.O. By Ian B. M. Hamilton. (Cassell.) 50s. Tommy Atkins: The Story of the English Soldier. By John Laffin. (Cassell.) 36s. The Barren Rocks of Aden. By James Lunt. (Herbert Jenkins.) 30s. The German Army. By Herbert Rosinski. (Pall Mall Press.) 45s. Military Drawings and Paintings in the collection of Her Majesty The Queen. Vol. I: plates only. By A. E. Haswell Miller and N. P. Dawnay. (The Phaidon Press.) 95s. European Transport Aircraft since 1910. By John Stroud. (Putnam.) 105s. British Military Swords from 1800 to the Present Day. By John Wilkinson Latham. (Hutchinson.) 63s. The Gatling Gun. By Paul Wahl and Donald R. Toppel. (Herbert Jenkins.) 63s. Elizabeth's Army. By C. G. Cruickshank. (Clarendon Press: Oxford University Press.) 50s. The Armies of Queen Anne. By Major R. E. Scouller. (Clarendon Press: Oxford University Press.) 70s. Matthew Flinders, 1774–1814. By James D. Mack. (Thomas Nelson.) 45s. Objective: Egypt. By Gregory Blaxland. (Muller.) 37s. 6d. The Rebellious Rani. By Sir John Smyth, V.C., M.C. (Muller.) 35s. The Pirate Coast. By Sir Charles Belgrave. (G. Bell & Sons.) 30s. The Pirates of Trucial Oman. By H. Moyse‐Bartlett. (Macdonald.) 45s. The House of Krupp. By Peter Batty. (Secker & Warburg.) 36s. The Hard and Bitter Peace: World Politics since 1945. By G. F. Hudson. (Pall Mall Press.) 40s. Unscrambling an Empire: A Critique of British Colonial Policy, 1956–1966. By W. P. Kirkman. (Chatto & Windus.) 35s. Rhodesia: The Story of the Crisis. By Desmond Lardner‐Burke. (Oldbourne Press.) 15s.

Italian Short Stories

Italian Short Stories

Book Review: The Front Yard, and Other Italian Stories

Book Review: The Front Yard, and Other Italian Stories