Italian Children S Literature And National Identity

This book bridges the fields of Children’s Literature and Italian Studies by examining how turn-of-the-century children’s books forged a unified national identity for the new Italian State. Through contextualized close readings of a wide range of texts, Truglio shows how the 19th-century concept of recapitulation, which held that ontogeny (the individual’s development) repeats phylogeny (the evolution of the species), underlies the strategies of this corpus. Italian fairy tales, novels, poems, and short stories imply that the personal development of the child corresponds to and hence naturalizes the modernizing development of the nation. In the context of Italy’s uneven and ambivalent modernization, these narrative trajectories are enabled by a developmental melancholia. Using a psychoanalytic lens, and in dialogue with recent Anglophone Children’s Literature criticism, this study proposes that national identity was constructed via a process of renouncing and incorporating paternal and maternal figures, rendered as compulsory steps into maturity and modernity. With chapters on the heroic figure of Garibaldi, the Orientalized depiction of the South, and the role of girls in formation narratives, this book discloses how melancholic itineraries produced gendered national subjects. This study engages both well-known Italian texts, such as Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio and De Amicis’ Heart, and books that have fallen into obscurity by authors such as Baccini, Treves, Gianelli, and Nuccio. Its approach and corpus shed light on questions being examined by Italianists, Children’s Literature scholars, and social and cultural historians with an interest in national identity formation.

This book bridges the fields of Children's Literature and Italian Studies by examining how turn-of-the-century children's books forged a unified national identity for the new Italian State. Through contextualized close readings of a wide range of texts, Truglio shows how the 19th-century concept of recapitulation, which held that ontogeny (the individual's development) repeats phylogeny (the evolution of the species), underlies the strategies of this corpus. Italian fairy tales, novels, poems, and short stories imply that the personal development of the child corresponds to and hence naturalizes the modernizing development of the nation. In the context of Italy's uneven and ambivalent modernization, these narrative trajectories are enabled by a developmental melancholia. Using a psychoanalytic lens, and in dialogue with recent Anglophone Children's Literature criticism, this study proposes that national identity was constructed via a process of renouncing and incorporating paternal and maternal figures, rendered as compulsory steps into maturity and modernity. With chapters on the heroic figure of Garibaldi, the Orientalized depiction of the South, and the role of girls in formation narratives, this book discloses how melancholic itineraries produced gendered national subjects. This study engages both well-known Italian texts, such as Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchioand De Amicis' Heart, and books that have fallen into obscurity by authors such as Baccini, Treves, Gianelli, and Nuccio. Its approach and corpus shed light on questions being examined by Italianists, Children's Literature scholars, and social and cultural historians with an interest in national identity formation.

This is a collection of views on children's literature and national identity answering question such as: how do young readers see themselves and "others" in the texts they are encouraged to read or find on their own?; How are their sympathies recruited in tales of war and conflict? Where do their loyalties lie? How do they approach and interpret books in translation? How do writers in other European countries portray UK adults and how universal are fairy tales? Books for children and young adults are embedded in the culture and language of their origins. Although the multicultural nature of the UK is now more positively reflected in children's books , the Englishness of English books is still strong. The questions of national identity and children's literature are considered by European writers from their own perspectives, so highlighting what is often taken for granted about |"others" in relation to "ourselves" and vice versa.

Italy's First African War (1880-1896) pitted a young and ambitious European nation against the ancient Empire of Ethiopia. The Least of Europe's Great Powers rashly assailed Africa's most formidable military power. The outcome was humiliating defeat for Italy and the survival, uniquely for any African nation in the years of the European Scramble for that continent, of Ethiopian independence. Notwithstanding Italy's disastrous first experience in the colonial fray, this book argues that the impact of the war went well beyond the battlefields of the Ethiopian highlands and reached into the minds of the Italian people at home. Through a detailed and exhaustive study of Italian popular culture, this book asks how far the First African War impacted on the Italian nation-building project and how far Italians were themselves changed by undergoing the experience of war and defeat in East Africa. Finaldi argues, for the first time in historiography on the subject, that there was substantial support for and awareness of Italy's military campaign and that 'Empire', as has come to be regarded as fundamental in the histories of other European countries, needs to be brought firmly into the mainstream of Italian national history. This book is an essential contribution to debates on the relationship between European national identity and culture and imperialism in the late 19th century.

In this volume González explores how the effects of a traumatic colonial experience are (re)presented to Latin American children today, almost two centuries after the dismantling of colonialism proper. Central to this study is the argument that the historical constraints of colonialism, neocolonialism, and postcolonialism have generated certain repeating themes and literary strategies in children’s literature throughout the Spanish-speaking Americas. From the outset of Spanish domination, fundamental tensions emerged between the colonizers and native groups that still exist to this day. Rather than a felicitous mixing of these two opposing groups, the mestizo is caught between contrasting worldviews, contending explanations of reality, and different values, beliefs, and epistemologies (that is, different ways of seeing and knowing). Postcolonial subjects experience these contending cultural beliefs and practices as a double bind, a no-win situation, in which they feel pressured by mutually exclusive expectations and imperatives. Latin American mestizos, therefore, are inevitably conflicted. Despite the vastness of the geography in question and the innumerable variations in regional histories, oral traditions, and natural settings, these contradictory demands create a pervasive dynamic that penetrates the very fabric of society, showing up intentionally or not in the stories passed from generation to generation as well as in new stories written or adapted for Spanish-speaking children. The goal of this study, therefore, is to examine a variety of children’s texts from the region to determine how national and hemispheric perceptions of reality, identity, and values are passed to the next generation. This book will appeal to scholars in the fields of Latin American literary and cultural studies, children’s literature, postcolonial studies, and comparative literature.

Europe was in turmoil during the first half of the twentieth century. The political stability that emanated from nineteenth-century political liberalism began to break down, reaching climaxes in the Great War, the Spanish Civil War, and the Second World War. Revolutions in Russia and Spain threatened parliamentary governments, and the Armenian genocide that began in 1915 foreshadowed the systematic destruction of European Jews in the 1930s and 1940s. Dictators seized power and established authoritarian regimes that stymied democratic expression and censored the press. Much of the scholarship on each of the conflicts has tended to focus on the military (male) and the civilian (female) binary. Women and children experienced every conflict during this tumultuous period as civilians, consumers, victims, exiles, and combatants. As histories of women and war suggest, there are exciting new areas of research and scholarship that resist simplistic binaries. Women were not simply civilians or victims. They were actors in the minutiae of wars, revolutions, dictatorships, and genocides. Children were present in these conflicts and not invisible, as many histories suggest. They too were actors and often politicized by propagandist literature and sectarian education through their own experiences and the politics of their families. This collection seeks to complicate the child/ adult distinction and examine the experiences of women and children as lenses to view a more collective face of conflict. While the volume brings to attention conflicts in Europe, the editors acknowledge the global ramifications of the revolutions, wars, and genocides, as well as the multitude of individual experiences. This collection seeks to expand understanding of the personal as the political in European conflicts from 1900-1950. We believe the focus on women and children offers a diverse perspective on five tumultuous decades of European history.

More than any other nation, Italy -- from its imperial past to its subordinate present, from its colonial forays to its splendid isolation -- embodies the myriad and contradictory historical forms of nationhood. This volume covers a range of subjects drawn from Italy and abroad to study Italian national identity. Whether considering opera or Ninja Turtles, the essays reveal how cultural identity is constructed and manipulated -- an issue made urgent by the influx of African, Indochinese, and Eastern European immigrants into Italy today. Topics include exile, nationalism, and imagined communities, Italy's colonial "unconscious", and Mussolini's adventures in North Africa.

Italian children's literature has a diverse and unusual tradition of fantasy. With the exception of Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio, however, it has remained almost entirely unknown outside of Italy. Why is it that Italian children's fantasy has remained such a well-kept secret? How 'international' is the term 'fantasy', and to what extent has its development been influenced by local as well as global factors? Cross-cultural and cross-linguistic research into this neglected area is essential if we are to enrich our understanding of this important literary genre. This book charts the history and evolution of Italian children's fantasy, from its first appearance in the 1870s to the present day. It traces the structural and thematic progression of the genre in Italy and situates this development against the changing backdrop of Italian culture, society and politics. The author argues that ever since the foundation of Italy as a nation-state the Italian people have been actively involved in an ongoing process of identity formation and that the development of children's fantasy texts has been inextricably intertwined with sociopolitical and cultural imperatives.