Orality And Literacy In Modern Italian Culture

"In our highly literate culture, orality is all-pervasive. Different kinds of media and performance - theatre, film, television, story-telling, structured play - make us ask what is the relation between improvisation and premeditation, between transcription and textualization, between rehearsal, recollection and re-narration. The challenge of writing down what is spoken is partly technical, but also political and philosophical. How do young writers represent the spoken language of their contemporaries? What are the rules governing the transcription of oral evidence in fiction and non-fiction? Is the relationship between oral and written always a hierarchical one? Does the textualization of the oral destroy, more than it commemorates or preserves, the oral itself? Twelve wide-ranging essays, the majority on contemporary Italian theatre and literature, explore these questions in the most up-to-date account of orality and literacy in modern Italian culture yet produced. With the contributions: Michael Caesar, Marina Spunta- Introduction Michael Caesar- Voice, Vision and Orality: Notes on Reading Adriana Cavarero Arturo Tosi- Histrionic Transgressions: The Dario Fo-Commedia dell'Arte Relationship Revisited Gerardo Guccini- Le poetiche del 'teatro narrazione' fra 'scrittura oralizzante' e oralita-che-si-fa-testo Richard Andrews- Composing, Reciting, Inscribing and Transcribing Playtexts in the Community Theatre of Monticchiello David Forgacs- An Oral Renarration of a Photoromance, 1960 Alessandra Broccolini- Identita locali e giochi popolari in Italia tra oralita e scrittura Marina Spunta- The Facets of Italian Orality: An Overview of the Recent Debate Kate Litherland- Literature and Youth in the 1990s: Orality and the Written in Tiziano Scarpa's Cos'e questo fracasso? and Caliceti and Mozzi's Quello che ho da dirvi Elena Porciani- Note su oralita e narrazione inattendibile Marco Codebo- Voice and Events in Manlio Calegari's Comunisti e partigiani: Genova 1942-1945 Hanna Serkowska- Oralita o stile? La trasmissione orale e le modalita narrative ne La Storia di Elsa Morante Catherine O'Rawe- Orality, Microhistory and Memory: Gesualdo Bufalino and Claudio Magris between Narrative and History"

Investigating the interrelationships between orality and writing in elite and popular textual culture in early modern Italy, this volume shows how the spoken or sung word on the one hand, and manuscript or print on the other hand, could have interdependent or complementary roles to play in the creation and circulation of texts. The first part of the book centres on performances, ranging from realizations of written texts to improvisations or semi-improvisations that might draw on written sources and might later be committed to paper. Case studies examine the poems sung in the piazza that narrated contemporary warfare, commedia dell'arte scenarios, and the performative representation of the diverse spoken languages of Italy. The second group of essays studies the influence of speech on the written word and reveals that, as fourteenth-century Tuscan became accepted as a literary standard, contemporary non-standard spoken languages were seen to possess an immediacy that made them an effective resource within certain kinds of written communication. The third part considers the roles of orality in the worlds of the learned and of learning. The book as a whole demonstrates that the borderline between orality and writing was highly permeable and that the culture of the period, with its continued reliance on orality alongside writing, was often hybrid in nature.

Investigating the interrelationships between orality and writing in elite and popular textual culture in early modern Italy, this volume shows how the spoken or sung word on the one hand, and manuscript or print on the other hand, could have interdependent or complementary roles to play in the creation and circulation of texts. The first part of the book centres on performances, ranging from realizations of written texts to improvisations or semi-improvisations that might draw on written sources and might later be committed to paper. Case studies examine the poems sung in the piazza that narrated contemporary warfare, commedia dell'arte scenarios, and the performative representation of the diverse spoken languages of Italy. The second group of essays studies the influence of speech on the written word and reveals that, as fourteenth-century Tuscan became accepted as a literary standard, contemporary non-standard spoken languages were seen to possess an immediacy that made them an effective resource within certain kinds of written communication. The third part considers the roles of orality in the worlds of the learned and of learning. The book as a whole demonstrates that the borderline between orality and writing was highly permeable and that the culture of the period, with its continued reliance on orality alongside writing, was often hybrid in nature.

Musical culture in Jewish communities in early modern Italy was much more diverse than researchers originally thought. An interdisciplinary reassessment, Music and Jewish Culture in Early Modern Italy evaluates the social, cultural, political, economic, and religious circumstances that shaped this community, especially in light of the need to recognize individual experiences within minority populations. Contributors draw from rich materials, topics, and approaches as they explore the inherently diverse understandings of music in daily life, the many ways that Jewish communities conceived of music, and the reception of and responses to Jewish musical culture. Highlighting the multifaceted experience of music within Jewish communities, Music and Jewish Culture in Early Modern Italy sheds new light on the place of music in complex, previously misunderstood environments.

"Emerging in Italy in the mid-sixteenth century, pastoral drama is one of the most characteristic genres of its time. Sampson traces its uneven development into the following century by exploring masterpieces by Tasso and Guarini, and many lesser known works, some by women writers. She examines the treatment of key themes of love, the Golden Age, and Nature and Art against the background of the textual and stage production of the plays. An investigation of critical writings associated with the genre further reveals its significance to the contemporary literary scene, by stimulating 'modernizing' attitudes towards the canon, as well as new enquiries into the function and possibilities of art."

An introduction to Eco's contributions to a wide range of academic disciplines, as well as to his literary works.

Enlightening Encounters traces the impact of photography on Italian literature from the medium’s invention in 1839 to the present day. Investigating the ways in which Italian literature has responded to photographic practice and aesthetics, the contributors use a wide range of theoretical perspectives to examine a variety of canonical and non-canonical authors and a broad selection of literary genres, including fiction, autobiography, photo-texts, and migration literature. The first collection in English to focus on photography’s reciprocal relationship to Italian literature, Enlightening Encounters represents an important resource for a number of fields, including Italian studies, literary studies, visual studies, and cultural studies.

"The history of the literary relations between Italy and England has its most celebrated early modern representative in Ugo Foscolo (1778-1827). Foscolo's translation of Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy is often regarded as the benchmark of his English experience, but there is more - around and beyond his relationship with Sterne - that can be uncovered. With over 3,000 letters spanning three decades, Foscolo's correspondence represents a unique perspective from which to monitor his literary, philosophical, and political views. The 'Epistolario' is also a space in which Foscolo engages with literary, philosophical, and moral questions, and a place where he exercises an often private form of literary criticism. These are letters which ultimately produce one of the most complete yet most composite self-portraits in the history of modern Italian autobiography. In the first comprehensive and historicized reading of Foscolo's correspondence, Sandra Parmegiani reveals the rich and complex relations between the Italian writer and the literature, philosophy, and culture of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England."