Literature Of Italy Research Articles

Reclaiming Catherine of Siena: literacy, literature, and the signs of others

Catherine of (1347-80) wrote almost four hundred epistles in her lifetime, effectively insinuating herself into the literary, political, and theological debates of her day. At the same time, as the daughter of a Sienese dyer, Catherine had no formal education, and her accomplishments were considered miracles rather than the work of her own hand. As a result, she has been largely excluded from accounts of the development of European humanism and the language and literature of Italy. Reclaiming Catherine of Siena makes the case for considering Catherine alongside literary giants such as Dante and Petrarch, as it underscores Catherine's commitment to using the vernacular to manifest Christ's message - and her own.Jane Tylus charts here the contested struggles of scholars over the centuries to situate Catherine in the history of Italian culture in early modernity. But she mainly focuses on Catherine's works, calling attention to the interplay between orality and textuality in the letters and demonstrating why it was so important for Catherine to envision herself as a writer. Tylus argues for a reevalution of Catherine as not just a medieval saint, but one of the major figures at the birth of the Italian literary canon.

Shakespeare's Italian Dream: Cinquecento Sources for A Midsummer Night's Dream

In the light of Shakespeare's extensive use of Italian settings and nomenclature, and his adaptations of plot-lines ultimately stemming from Boccaccio (Cymbeline), Giraldi Cinthio (Othello and Measure for Measure), Bandello et al (Romeo and Juliet), it is surprising that the Italianate character of A Midsummer Night's Dream has not been generally noted. Most commentators see the play as drawing from a pool of classical, traditional, and romance sources which include Plutarch, Chaucer, the romance Huon of Bordeaux, Ovid, and Apuleius,1 while Judith M. Kennedy is convinced that Book I of Jorge de Montemayor's Diana (c.1559; Yong's English translation, 1598) furnished Shakespeare with the principal action of the play.2 This last has a certain credibility since it is indisputable that Shakespeare used Montemayor's Felismena/Felix story in Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Book I certainly contains a similar pattern of changing love relationships and rustic setting. However, the strongly Italianate character of Montemayor's Diana and the generic rather than precise nature of the similarities noted by Kennedy do suggest that more exact parallels may be found in the literature of Italy. Hugh M. Richmond appears exceptional in identifying a possible Italian source in Giraldi Cinthio's Hecatommithi II. 8 (see Appendix for summary)3 which, to judge by the description given in the novella's headword, appears to presage the principal love intrigues of A Midsummer Night's Dream:

England in the 1890's: Literary Publishing at the Bodley Head (review)

Book Reviews 221 Venice, Pietro Longhi, and Henry James" new ground is broken by Adeline Tintner in her analysis of James's relation with the eighteenth century, and new information is given about some art objects admired by James (e.g., die Brastolon carved chairs at Mentmore). Bonney Macdonald, in "The Force of Revelation: Receptive Vision in Henry James's Early Italian Travel Essays," analyzes the essays as exhibiting "a theoretical probing of aesthetic experience—an exploration of visual perception and thought" (131). The essay on Alice ("Alice James and Italy") by M. A. Saracino explores the extension of Alice's education through Henry's letters and, finally, her direct experience of Italy in 1872, which caused a "true and proper revelation" (156), allowing Alice to expand her comments to contemporary Italian life and politics. William James's pragmatism and its influence on Italy are examined by G. E. Myers and C. Gorlier, widi particular reference to G. Papim and his group, and to Papim's journal, Leonardo (1903-1907). L. H. Powers discusses in "Henry James and the Literature of Italy" die novelist's essays on Matilde Serao and D'Annunzio. Denis Donoghue, in "William Wetmore Story and his Friends: die Enclosing Fact of Rome," takes us back to the world tiiat was for a while the world of Margaret Fuller. He discusses the genesis of the book, which was undertaken by James only out of a sense of duty and of keeping one's promises, but became fascinating exactiy because of the underlying principle highlighted by Donoghue: "die act of remembrance." Also, this work can be seen "as an elaborate reconsideration and recovery of old experience" (214), as can much of James's later work. Because of this "act of remembrance," tiie Fuller presence in this book seems to be more significant. The book closes with Agostino Lombardo's essay "Italy and the Artist in Henry James," a rich, ample treatment of the subject that one regrets having to summarize in a few lines. Lombardo analyzes the central idea of Italy as "a metaphor of art which all elements—natural, artistic, historical, human—contribute to form" (231), a metaphor that James "attempts on one side to represent... on the page, giving it form, body, reality," while attempting "on the other, deeper side, to unveil its meaning" (232). Lombardo connects this process to the great American forbears of the novelist, Melville and Hawdiorne, and to Shakespeare. Because of this masterful and trying effort to render the substance of art, to probe its significance, Italy cannot be an Arcadia for James. "Identified as it is witii the artistic experience, and even witii the artistic text, the relationship widi it produces all die anxiety, the strenuous effort, the struggle which the artist's job itself produces" (234). The "reality" of Italy in James's novel thus becomes irrelevant: "Its reality lies in another sphere, which is that of the artistic experience, of the drama of the artist," the drama to which James devoted his whole life. Rosella Mamoli Zorzi Universitá degli Studi di Venezia Margaret D. Stetz and Mark Samuels Lasner. England in the 1890's: Literary Publishing at the Bodley Head. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown U P, 1990. x, 94 pp. $18.50 This is the second in what one hopes wUl turn out to be a series of catalogues of books and materials involving late nineteendi-century literature and art in England, a period in which die two authors are immersed. It contains only half as much material as does their previous catalogue, England in the 1880's: Old Guard and Avant Guard (Charlottesville, 1989), previously reviewed in this journal. Although there are fewer Henry James items in this catalogue, their relevance to James's fiction seems to be 222 The Henry James Review greater. The catalogue reviews work published by John Lane of the Bodley Head, which includes the Yellow Book. We know that that periodical, under Henry Harland's editorship, allowed James complete license as to length for die three stories he published there. The section of the catalogue that describes William Rothenstein's lithograph of James (1898) contains an interesting comment on the featured James tale...

GIACOMO CASTELVETRO 1546–1616

AbstractEven the most superficial enquiry into the subject of Italians living in England under Queen Elizabeth brings to one's notice numerous surnames which are household words in the history and literature of Italy. There were then in London merchants of the Portinari and de' Bardi families, there was a Guido Cavalcanti, a Dino Compagni, who later changed his historic Christian name to Bartholomew. There were Alberti, a Machiavelli, members of the house of Bembo, a Castiglione, a Sassetti, a Pallavicino, whose two sons married daughters of Sir Oliver Cromwell thus becoming uncles of the future Protector. There was a Guicciardini, whose daughters and grand-daughters sent Italian blood flowing through the veins of at least four well-known English families—the Ayloffes, the Wentworths, the Mildmays and the Vanes. There was too the subject of this paper, a Castelvetro—Giacomo, nephew of the famous dramatic theorist, Ludovico. Giacomo founded no family, nor did he ever make an important position for himself ...

ACUTE INSUFFICIENCY OF THE SUPRARENALS.

It is interesting that a condition looked on as one of considerable importance by the French clinicians is accorded but the most indifferent consideration by those of other countries. Hemorrhage of the adrenals has been generally recognized as a common pathologic finding in stillborn infants or those dying shortly after birth, and the literature of Italy, Germany and England contains occasional references to hemorrhage or other acute destructive lesions of the adrenals in adults. In none of the countries outside of France, however, has acute insufficiency of the adrenals become a factor in medical diagnosis in advanced life as well as in infants. It might be suggested that this state of affairs is but the result of the conservatism of the American, German, English and Italian clinicians contrasted with the somewhat more unstable, fanciful attitude of their French brethren. That a symptom-complex dependent on acute insufficiency

New Periodical on Education

We have received the first number of the Kinderfehler, a journal for Pedagogic Pathology and Therapeutics, which is published with promises of support from many well-known writers. The acting editor is J. Trüper, Superintendent of the Training Institution at Sophienshöhe, near Jena. The number has 35 pages; the principal articles are “A Group of Children affected by Moral Degeneration,” by F. Kölle, of Zurich; “On the Care of Abnormal Children in the United States,” by W. S. Monroe, Stanford University, California; and “On the Matricide Coombes,” by the Rev. W. D. Morrison. There are interesting reports upon the psychology of children and similar subjects from the literature of Italy, by Paola Lombroso, and from that of France by Lucien Arréat. This promises to be a useful periodical. It will come out in six numbers during the year. It is published at Langensalza, and costs 3 marks.

The Modern Literature of Italy since 1870

The Modern Literature of Italy since 1870

3. Italian Retrospect

The chief feature in the psychological literature of Italy since my last report has been the multiplication of periodicals devoted to it. Thus we have received copies of the following new journals:—“The Annali di Freniatria,” of Turin; “Il Manicomio,” of Nocera Inferiore; “Il Pisani,” of Palermo; and “L'Anomalo,” a “Gazzettino,” published at Naples. On the other hand, I regret to say that no copies have been sent since 1888 of Lombroso's always interesting, if sometimes paradoxical, “Archivio di Psichiatria ed Antropologia Criminale.”To some extent these periodicals may be considered as equivalent to our Asylum Reports; and they doubtless show the great activity and zeal with which our specialty is studied in Italy. But from another point of view they seem to me no unmixed advantage. Each periodical is starved by the scattering of so much ability, which was formerly concentrated in fewer journals; and the space left vacant has been, to a great extent; occupied by matters of local, temporary, or secondary interest. When allowance is made for this, Italian psychological literature will be found quite equal to the high level it has attained in former years.