DOCSLIB.ORG

Emigration in Luigi Capuana's Gli «Americani» Di Ràbbato

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Emigration in Luigi Capuana's Gli «Americani» Di Ràbbato Focus: Sicilia e migrazioni La Merica for children: Emigration in Luigi Capuana’s Gli «americani» di Ràbbato Chiara Mazzucchelli University of Central Florida Tortu nun ci nni fazzu a chisti amici Chi partinu pi la merica mischini Chi cca si fa una vita infilici Di scarsizzi e miserii senza fini. Domenico Azzaretto, «La partenza dell’operaio per l’America» During the first three decades of the twentieth century, leaving became a significant part of the life of Sicilians. For reasons that are both geographical and historical, which ultimately caused the economic collapse of the island, at the beginning of last century Sicily experienced a massive displacement of its people to the United States, a movement that resembles that of Ireland during the second half of the nineteenth century and Puerto Rico since World War II. In his 1963 study L’emigrazione in Sicilia, historian Francesco Renda reports that in 1900, about 29,000 migrants left Sicily, 21,000 of whom headed to the United States. Only six years later, in 1906, the number of Sicilians leaving the island had grown to more than 127,000, with 70 percent of them directed to the New World (p. 48). Born in 1839 in Mineo, in the province of Catania, Luigi Capuana witnessed first-hand the effects of the Sicilian diaspora on the families and communities left behind, so much so that he made emigration the topic of his 1912 children’s book Gli «americani» di Ràbbato. In this short novel written toward the end of his literary career and life, Capuana combined two of his lifelong preoccupations: the necessity of constructing a national 60 Altreitalie gennaio-giugno 2019 identity in post-Unification Italy and the crucial role played by education in this process. In this paper, I look at how Capuana reflects on these themes and intertwines them with the issue of the increasing migratory movement from Sicily to the United States in Gli «americani» di Ràbbato, with the purpose of teaching children a lesson on the importance of one’s roots while, at the same time, encouraging young readers to broaden their life experiences. Capuana and Children’s Literature in the Post-Unification Years Together with fellow Sicilian writers Giovanni Verga and Federico De Roberto, Capuana is credited for being an early exponent of Verismo, a movement that blossomed in late nineteenth century Italian literary and artistic circles, which aimed to re-create «objective» and «authentic» representations of the life of the working classes. In fact, Capuana’s 1879 novel Giacinta – which the author dedicated to Emile Zola, arguably the leading figure of French Naturalism – is generally considered the manifesto of Verismo. In reality, Capuana was a very eclectic author whose sundry interests are reflected in the many genres in which he engaged, rather successfully, throughout the years; he was at once poet, playwright, journalist, essayist, and prolific writer of children’s literature.1 In an 1894 interview with Ugo Ojetti, Capuana described how his engagement with youth fiction began when his nephews asked him for a fairy tale: Le mie prime fiabe furono scritte così. Ero a Mineo, in Sicilia, nella casa paterna, e i miei nipotini (che adesso sono grandi e grossi) una sera mi chiesero una favola. La mattina dopo ne avevo scritta una [«La reginotta»]; e così via, una per giorno per dodici giorni. Le riunii in un volume del Treves, rièdito poi dal Paggi-Bemporad di Firenze. (Capuana, 2010, p. 7) The volume to which he referred is the 1882 C’era una volta, the first of many collections the author wrote in which fairies and magicians grant the wishes of and cast their spells on kings and servants alike.2 But it is with his children’s short novels that Capuana makes a breakthrough in the genre, namely, Scurpiddu (1898), Gambalesta (1902), Cardello (1907), and, finally, Gli «americani» di Ràbbato.3 With these works, Capuana joined in the efforts of other Italian writers who, in the post-Unification years, resorted to young adult literature to instill in the new generation basic ethical principles such as kindness and honesty and, especially, to inspire in them the spirit of good citizenship in the newly born country.4 The now-classic Le avventure di Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi (1883) and Cuore by Edmondo De Amicis (1886) paved the way for the adventures of Capuana’s Sicilian little rascals.5 61 Altreitalie gennaio-giugno 2019 The so-called questione della lingua was also at the core of all these works that targeted school-age children and preteens. In his 1963 Storia linguistica dell’Italia unita, Tullio De Mauro calculated that in 1861, only 2.5 percent of the Italian population was italophone, in the sense of being able to read and write in what was considered «standard» Italian without a significant effort (p. 37). Therefore, the linguistic homogenization of the country was seen as a necessary requisite to «make Italians» once Italy was made, to paraphrase the now-cliché dictum popularly attributed to Massimo D’Azeglio. To this end, immediately after his nomination to the Ministry of Public Education in 1867, Emilio Broglio formed a committee to take care of the much-debated questione della lingua. Presided over by Alessandro Manzoni, the committee produced the famous document «Dell’unità della lingua e dei mezzi di diffonderla,» in which it was suggested that contemporary spoken Florentine should be adopted as the national Italian language. The Sicilian Capuana had embraced that solution even before the Milanese Manzoni and his committee had formally concluded their work. In an 1864 poem tellingly titled La lingua italiana published in the monthly journal La Gioventù, Capuana reviewed the history of Italian language from the poetry of the scuola siciliana to his days through Dante, and he embraced the adoption of fiorentino parlato in the peninsula and its islands as the koine for the newborn state in the following octave: Ed ecco; pellegrini innamorati A te venian dal siculo paese, E in un amplesso ci stringiam coi nati Del diletto toscan suolo cortese; E più cari gli abbracci e più beati Ci fa il pensiero dell’antiche offese, E i comuni perigli e la vittoria E la rinata al sole itala gloria! (pp. 380-81) All in all, the works of Collodi, De Amicis, and Capuana played a key role in the process of linguistic unification of the newly formed Kingdom of Italy. The question of linguistic homogeneity was, obviously, one of the aspects of the much bigger issue of the construction of a unified national identity, for which Capuana strongly advocated. The roots of the writer’s patriotic spirit can be traced back to his participation in his hometown’s insurrection to win independence from Bourbon rule in 1859.6 Capuana infused many of his literary works for children with his personal experiences and childhood memories. For instance, Rosaria Sardo defines Gambalesta «romanzo ‘garibaldino’» (p. 366) because of its patriotic theme and points out: 62 Altreitalie gennaio-giugno 2019 Alla grande avventura dell’Italia unita Cuddu parteciperà in modo fortuito e inconsapevole, col suo entusiasmo, con la sua incoscienza, con la sua gioia di vivere. Capuana stesso aveva vissuto a vent’anni questa grande avventura e mirabilmente riesce a renderla viva attraverso gli occhi e le emozioni di Gambalesta, il piccolo abitante di Ràbbato, Mineo. (p. 368) «Viva la Talia,» Gambalesta exclaims at one point, although he is not com- pletely sure what that means. But the Risorgimento and its aftermath have a significant impact on the life of the child, and children’s literature becomes an ideal means for readers to gain an overall understanding of historical events and for the author to build the foundations of patriotic education. Sicily and Emigration in the Early Twentieth Century The post-Unification bliss was short-lived and soon Sicilians started to leave the island in great numbers. It is easy to understand how the island’s finite geography translates into limited resources and, in most extreme scenarios, of access to decent standards of living, therefore encouraging emigration.7 Since the Unification, all of the aforementioned phenomena, exacerbated by the newborn state’s failure to adequately address the different realities of the Italian mosaic, caused the whole Italian South to experience periods of intense emigration flows to the other side of the ocean, mainly to Brazil, Argentina, and the United States. Historian Matteo Pretelli further notes: Alla svolta del secolo i flussi migratori dalla penisola si modificarono. Sebbene nei precedenti vent’anni già 800 mila italiani fossero giunti negli Stati Uniti, adesso la repubblica statunitense divenne la loro meta privilegiata […]. La composizione del flusso fu prevalentemente meridionale, con una larga componente di siciliani spinti alla partenza da crisi vinicole e agrarie che portarono all’esplosione nel 1892-94 del movimento dei Fasci siciliani. (p. 87) The movement soon spread throughout the island and evolved into a real diaspora.8 Sicilian authors who witnessed these periods of intense emigration flows were quick to use their literary platforms as ways to present and discuss what emigration meant for those who left as well as those who stayed behind. Giovanni Verga’s 1881 I Malavoglia, Domenico Azzaretto’s 1906 dialect poem La partenza dell’operaio per l’America, and some of Maria Messina’s and Luigi Pirandello’s short stories are infused with themes and motifs inspired by emigration. However, in his 2011 study of emigration in Italian literature Vite ritrovate, Gianni Paoletti rightfully observes that: 63 Altreitalie gennaio-giugno 2019 Fatto salvo per Capuana, tuttavia, nessuno dei narratori isolani che hanno toccata l’emigrazione ha scritto un’opera interamente dedicata al tema, lasciando, piuttosto, che esso emergesse come canovaccio novellistico, come accenno o come occasione per qualche breve racconto.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Doubles and Doubling in Tarchetti, Capuana, and De Marchi By
    Uncanny Resemblances: Doubles and Doubling in Tarchetti, Capuana, and De Marchi by Christina A. Petraglia A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Italian) At the University of Wisconsin-Madison 2012 Date of oral examination: December 12, 2012 Oral examination committee: Professor Stefania Buccini, Italian Professor Ernesto Livorni (advisor), Italian Professor Grazia Menechella, Italian Professor Mario Ortiz-Robles, English Professor Patrick Rumble, Italian i Table of Contents Introduction – The (Super)natural Double in the Fantastic Fin de Siècle…………………….1 Chapter 1 – Fantastic Phantoms and Gothic Guys: Super-natural Doubles in Iginio Ugo Tarchetti’s Racconti fantastici e Fosca………………………………………………………35 Chapter 2 – Oneiric Others and Pathological (Dis)pleasures: Luigi Capuana’s Clinical Doubles in “Un caso di sonnambulismo,” “Il sogno di un musicista,” and Profumo……………………………………………………………………………………..117 Chapter 3 – “There’s someone in my head and it’s not me:” The Double Inside-out in Emilio De Marchi’s Early Novels…………………..……………………………………………...222 Conclusion – Three’s a Fantastic Crowd……………………...……………………………322 1 The (Super)natural Double in the Fantastic Fin de Siècle: The disintegration of the subject is most often underlined as a predominant trope in Italian literature of the Twentieth Century; the so-called “crisi del Novecento” surfaces in anthologies and literary histories in reference to writers such as Pascoli, D’Annunzio, Pirandello, and Svevo.1 The divided or multifarious identity stretches across the Twentieth Century from Luigi Pirandello’s unforgettable Mattia Pascal / Adriano Meis, to Ignazio Silone’s Pietro Spina / Paolo Spada, to Italo Calvino’s il visconte dimezzato; however, its precursor may be found decades before in such diverse representations of subject fissure and fusion as embodied in Iginio Ugo Tarchetti’s Giorgio, Luigi Capuana’s detective Van-Spengel, and Emilio De Marchi’s Marcello Marcelli.
    [Show full text]
  • Tradition and Experimentation in Capuana and Capuana Studies
    TRADITION AND EXPERIMENTATION IN CAPUANA AND CAPUANA STUDIES Annamaria Pagliaro Monash University Brian Zuccala University of the Witwatersrand The concept of artistic and literary experimentation is a crucial ele- ment for Capuana and consequently for Capuana studies. As we shall argue, it may in fact be considered the critically productive point of junc- ture between Capuana’s oeuvre and recent scholarly work on it, as well as the ideal point of departure for framing the diverse range of excursions into Capuana’s body of work by the contributors to this critical collection. Capuana himself, like all the main Italian writers who contributed to naturalist literary production, such as Verga, Serao and De Roberto, in the 1870s and 1880s did conceive his artistic and theoretical endeavours as a pioneering attempt to radically change the Italian literary landscape, to update and render it competitive within a European – mostly French – literary scene, which had been in the previous thirty years at the forefront of literary innovation (see Capuana 1972a). For just over a decade Capuana pursued what has been critically regarded, in a rather reductive way we would like to argue, as an orthodox naturalist practice à la Zola, in which he wrote, along with the 1877 collection Profili di donne, his first naturalist novel Giacinta (in at least three main editions: 1879, 1886, 1889), dedicated to Zola himself, and a number of short stories about psychopathological cases (mostly female), such as Storia fosca (1880), Precocità (1884), Tortura (1889). Equally limiting is another critically established position, according to which in the 1880s a shift began, and Capuana’s by-then fading adher- ence to the naturalist doctrine of Verismo was reflected in both his later critical work (Per l’arte, 1885, Libri e teatro, 1892, Gli ‘ismi’ contempora- nei, 1898, and Cronache letterarie, 1899) and in his creative production.
    [Show full text]
  • Subalternità Siciliana Nella Scrittura Di Luigi Capuana E Giovanni Verga
    STUDI E SAGGI – 171 – STUDI DI ITALIANISTICA MODERNA E CONTEMPORANEA NEL MONDO ANGLOFONO STUDIES IN MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ITALIANISTICA IN THE ANGLOPHONE WORLD Comitato scientifico / Editorial Board Joseph Francese, Direttore / Editor-in-chief (Michigan State University) Zygmunt G. Barański (University of Cambridge) Laura Benedetti (Georgetown University) Joseph A. Buttigieg (University of Notre Dame) Michael Caesar (University of Birmingham) Fabio Camilletti (University of Warwick) Derek Duncan (University of Bristol) Stephen Gundle (University of Warwick) Charles Klopp (The Ohio State University) Marcia Landy (University of Pittsburgh) Silvestra Mariniello (Université de Montréal) Annamaria Pagliaro (Monash University) Lucia Re (University of California at Los Angeles) Silvia Ross (University College Cork) Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg (Brown University) Titoli pubblicati / Published Titles Francese J., Leonardo Sciascia e la funzione sociale degli intellettuali Rosengarten F., Through Partisan Eyes. My Friendships, Literary Education, and Political Encounters in Italy (1956-2013). With Sidelights on My Experiences in the United States, France, and the Soviet Union Ferrara M.E., Il realismo teatrale nella narrativa del Novecento: Vittorini, Pasolini, Calvino Francese J., Vincenzo Consolo: gli anni de «l’Unità» (1992-2012), ovvero la poetica della colpa-espiazione Bilenchi R., The Conservatory of Santa Teresa Ross S. and Honess C. (edited by), Identity and Conflict in Tuscany Colucci D., L’Eleganza è frigida e L’Empire des signes. Un sogno fatto in Giappone Cauchi-Santoro R., Beyond the Suffering of Being: Desire in Giacomo Leopardi andSamuel Beckett Anita Virga Subalternità siciliana nella scrittura di Luigi Capuana e Giovanni Verga FIRENZE UNIVERSITY PRESS 2017 Subalternità siciliana nella scrittura di Luigi Capuana e Giovanni Verga / Anita Virga.
    [Show full text]
  • Una Lettera Inedita Di Luigi Capuana, Uomo Politico, Al Barone Francesco Spadaro Di Passanitello
    (Pubblicato su “Ricerche” a. XI n. 1 Gennaio-Giugno 2007 pp. 33-47)) Una lettera inedita di Luigi Capuana, uomo politico, al barone Francesco Spadaro di Passanitello di Alvise Spadaro Sembrerebbe che l’unico rapporto tra il celebre scrittore ed il maggiorente del suo paese natale si debba ridurre a quanto dichiarato nella relazione che Luigi Capuana, sindaco di Mineo, fece pubblicare nel 1875.1 Ma anche a quanto non esplicitamente dichiarato. Infatti il capitolo Le liti di questa relazione trova la sua conclusione con un vero e proprio rimprovero nei confronti del suo predecessore:2 “Col Sig. Barone Francesco Spadaro il Municipio non ha mancato di usare le stesse cortesie che con gli altri: ha scritto, ha riscritto pregandolo di liquidare alla buona; ma il Sig. Barone, scordando che anche tra nemici (amministrativi, si intende) il galateo non guasta, serbò un ostinato silenzio fino al dì che il Municipio si risolvette, dopo due anni, ad intentargli la lite…”.3 Questo è quanto dichiarato. Quanto non esplicitamente dichiarato si evince dalle grandi lodi che nello stesso testo, Capuana riserva invece ad Antonio Bellone4 (1785-1860), suocero di Francesco Spadaro (1823-1901) e altro suo predecessore nella sindacatura: “…Sarebbe vera ingratitudine non richiamare qui alla memoria il nome del Sig. Antonio Maria Bellone Sindaco di quel tempo. Con un’attività infaticabile che gli stessi contemporanei dissero «non mai veduta per l’innanzi in alcuno dei passati agenti comunali» egli promosse ed in parte condusse vittoriosamente a fine tutte le importantissime pratiche dei diritti promiscui del Comune. Mente acuta, cuore ardente di affetto cittadino, nutriva il più generoso disinteresse alla più ferma volontà nel patrocinare l’assestamento del patrimonio comunale allora mille volte più ingarbugliato di oggi.
    [Show full text]
  • The Liberal Imagination of Giovanni Verga: Verismo As Moral Realism
    This is a repository copy of The liberal imagination of Giovanni Verga: verismo as moral realism. White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/123637/ Version: Accepted Version Article: Baldini, A orcid.org/0000-0001-7783-9283 (2018) The liberal imagination of Giovanni Verga: verismo as moral realism. The Italianist, 37 (3). pp. 348-368. ISSN 0261-4340 https://doi.org/10.1080/02614340.2017.1409313 © The Departments of Italian Studies at the Universities of Cambridge, Leeds and Reading. This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in The Italianist on 16 March 2018, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/02614340.2017.1409313 Reuse Items deposited in White Rose Research Online are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved unless indicated otherwise. They may be downloaded and/or printed for private study, or other acts as permitted by national copyright laws. The publisher or other rights holders may allow further reproduction and re-use of the full text version. This is indicated by the licence information on the White Rose Research Online record for the item. Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing [email protected] including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. [email protected] https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ The liberal imagination of Giovanni Verga: Verismo as moral realism Abstract In this article, I argue that Verga’s Verismo should be seen against the backdrop of the writings of the meridionalisti, as well as of his own early works.
    [Show full text]
  • THE PICTURESQUE in GIOVANNI VERGA's SICILIAN COLLECTIONS Jessica Turner Newth Greenfi
    THE PICTURESQUE IN GIOVANNI VERGA’S SICILIAN COLLECTIONS Jessica Turner Newth Greenfield A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures (Italian). Chapel Hill 2011 Approved by: Dr. Federico Luisetti Dr. Dino Cervigni Dr. Ennio Rao Dr. Amy Chambless Dr. Lucia Binotti ©2011 Jessica Turner Newth Greenfield ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT JESSICA TURNER NEWTH GREENFIELD: The Picturesque in Giovanni Verga’s Sicilian Collections (Under the direction of Federico Luisetti) Giovanni Verga’s Sicilian short story collections are known for their realistic portrayal of the Sicilian peasant farmers and their daily struggles with poverty, hunger and injustice. This study examines the way in which the author employs the pictruresque in his Sicilian novelle and argues that there is an evolution in this treatment from picturesque to non-picturesque. Initially, this study will examine the elements and techniques that Verga uses to represent the picturesque and how that treatment changes and is utilized or actively destroyed as his writing progresses. For the purposes of this dissertation, a definition of the picturesque will be established and always associated with descriptions of nature. In this study, the picturesque will correspond to those descriptions of nature that prove pleasing for a painting. By looking at seven particular novelle in Vita dei campi and Novelle rusticane, I will show that Verga’s earlier stories are littered with picturesque elements. As the author’s mature writing style, verismo, develops, Verga moves through a transtitional phase and ultimately arrives at a non-picturesque portrayal of Sicily in his short stories.
    [Show full text]
  • «È Dunque Vano Il Tuo Nome, Patria?» Luigi Capuana, Uno Scrittore “Politico”
    UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI CATANIA FACOLTÀ DI LETTERE E FILOSOFIA DIPARTIMENTO DI SCIENZE DELLA CULTURA, DELL‟UOMO E DEL TERRITORIO DOTTORATO DI RICERCA IN STORIA (STORIA DELLA CULTURA, DELLA SOCIETÀ E DEL TERRITORIO IN ETÀ MODERNA) XXIV CICLO ______________________________________________________________________________ SALVINA ROSARIA AGRIPPINA MONACO «È DUNQUE VANO IL TUO NOME, PATRIA?» LUIGI CAPUANA, UNO SCRITTORE “POLITICO” ______ TESI DI DOTTORATO DI RICERCA ______ Coordinatore: Chiar.mo Prof. Enrico Iachello Tutor: Chiar.mo Prof. Antonio Di Grado TRIENNIO ACCADEMICO 2008 - 2011 INDICE INTRODUZIONE «E FUI LIETISSIMO DI SENTIRMI SICILIANO…» ………….………….…p. 4 CAPITOLO PRIMO DALL‟ISOLA SOTTO INCHIESTA ALL‟ISOLA DEL SOLE I.1. La Destra alla guida dell‟Italia unita…………………………………………p. 13 I.2. La rivolta di Palermo………………………………………………………..p. 17 I.3. L‟inchiesta Pisanelli-Fabrizi e il «governatorato» del generale Medici……..…p. 20 I.4. L‟ultimo decennio della Destra: la Sinistra si prepara ad assumere la guida del Paese………………………………………………………………...……………..p. 25 I.5. Le elezioni del 1874 ……………..………………………………………….p. 31 I.6. Villari e Le lettere meridionali……………………………………...…………..p. 34 I.7. I provvedimenti «straordinari» di Pubblica Sicurezza del 1875………...…….p. 39 I.8. L‟inchiesta parlamentare Borsani-Bonfadini ………………………………..p. 43 I.9. L‟inchiesta privata di Franchetti e Sonnino……………………………….....p. 52 I.10. Luigi Capuana e la difesa dell‟Isola del sole…………………………………..p. 65 CAPITOLO SECONDO TRA MERIDIONALISMO E VERISMO: CAPUANA E IL BASSO POPOLO SICILIANO II.1. Da Villari alla «Rassegna Settimanale»: l‟urgenza della questione meridionale………………………………………………………………………...p. 73 II.2. Uno studio del mondo contadino: l‟Inchiesta Jacini………………………..p. 78 II.3. Le lacrime delle cose: tra naturalismo e verismo ………………………………p.
    [Show full text]
  • Experiments of Distributional Semantics in Stylometry
    Experiments of Distributional Semantics in Stylometry. Giulia Benotto, Emiliano Giovannetti, Simone Marchi Institute for Computational Linguistics “A. Zampolli” - Pisa, Italy 5 July, 2016 - Göttingen Dialog in Digital Humanities First things first: Introduction and A little bit of background knowledge 5 July, 2016 - Göttingen Dialog in Digital Humanities Theoretic Background- Stylometry ● Stylometry: the statistical analysis of literary style ● It offers a means of capturing the elusive character of an author’s style by quantifying some of its features ● The basic stylometric assumption is that each writer has certain stylistic idiosyncrasies (a “human stylome” [Van Halteren et al., 2005]) that define their style. ● Analysis based on stylometry are used for Authorship Attribution (AA) tasks: by measuring some textual features, we can distinguish between texts written by different authors. 5 July, 2016 - Göttingen Dialog in Digital Humanities Theoretic Background- Authorship Attribution ● Simple lexical features: sentence length counts and word length counts, that can be applied to any language and corpus with no additional requirements ● Character measures: a text can be viewed as a mere sequence of characters, so that measures such as alphabetic, digit, uppercase and lowercase characters count can be defined ● Syntactic information: authors tend to use similar syntactic patterns unconsciously, so syntactic information is considered a reliable authorial fingerprint ● Application independent features: they can be extracted from any textual data. 5 July, 2016 - Göttingen Dialog in Digital Humanities Theoretic Background- Authorship Attribution ● Full syntactic parsing, semantic analysis, or pragmatic analysis cannot yet be handled adequately by current NLP technologies for unrestricted text: few attempts have been made to exploit high-level features for stylometric purposes ● The most important method of exploiting semantic information is based on the theory of Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) [Halliday, 1994].
    [Show full text]
  • Sicilian Intellectual and Cultural Resistance to Piedmont's Appropriation (1860-1920) Giordana Poggioli-Kaftan University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
    University of Wisconsin Milwaukee UWM Digital Commons Theses and Dissertations December 2016 Sicilian Intellectual and Cultural Resistance to Piedmont's Appropriation (1860-1920) Giordana Poggioli-Kaftan University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.uwm.edu/etd Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, and the History Commons Recommended Citation Poggioli-Kaftan, Giordana, "Sicilian Intellectual and Cultural Resistance to Piedmont's Appropriation (1860-1920)" (2016). Theses and Dissertations. 1401. https://dc.uwm.edu/etd/1401 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by UWM Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of UWM Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. SICILIAN INTELLECTUAL AND CULTURAL RESISTANCE TO PIEDMONT’S APPROPRIATION (1860-1920) by Giordana Poggioli-Kaftan A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Modern Studies at The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee December 2016 ABSTRACT SICILIAN INTELLECTUAL AND CULTURAL RESISTANCE TO PIEDMONT’S APPROPRIATION (1860-1920) by Giordana Poggioli-Kaftan The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2016 Under the Supervision of Professor Gregory Jay Through my analysis of literary works, I endeavor to bring to the fore a cultural and intellectual counter-hegemonic discourse that came to be articulated by three Sicilian writers in the years following Italy’s unification. Their intent was that of debunking a national discourse that constructed Italian Southerners as “Otherness.” My study focuses on six primary texts, five short stories, and one novel, written at the turn of the twentieth century.
    [Show full text]
  • Royal Holloway, University of London
    ROYAL HOLLOWAY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON 2016 Imago Urbis: Federico De Roberto’s Catania Sebastiano Arena Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy A B S T R A C T The aim of this dissertation is to analyse the relationship between the city, literature and geography in order to study the birth of Catania as a modern city as seen through Federico De Roberto’s newspaper articles, his novel I Viceré and his guidebook to Catania. The analysis of the three literary genres can help to understand the relationship between the writer and his idea and depiction of the city. To this end, it will be useful to analyse, firstly, the connections between urban space and society, and the descriptions of the city through its literary transposition; secondly, the relationship between the leading characters of a novel and the urban space they inhabit; and lastly, the relationship between literature, history and geography. I will firstly concentrate on De Roberto’s 1880s articles about his city to demonstrate the image of Catania that De Roberto was promoting in order to understand his attitude as a journalist towards its cityscapes and his ideological viewpoint. Then, I will examine De Roberto’s novel, I Viceré (1894), as an iconographic source and as a meta- language, by which I mean that I will consider the novel both as a reflection on and of Catania and as a work of literature in which the reader can interpret the narrative to discover the connections between urban space and society. Then, I will study De Roberto’s guidebook to Catania to compare the urban space as represented in I Viceré with that he wanted to promote to a tourist audience.
    [Show full text]
  • Sicily (Sicilia)
    Sicily (Sicilia) General Sicily (Italian: Sicilia) is an autonomous region of Italy, in Southern Italy along with surrounding minor islands, officially referred to as Regione Siciliana. Sicily is located in the central Mediterranean Sea, south of the Italian Peninsula, from which it is separated by the narrow Strait of Messina. Its most prominent landmark is Mount Etna, the tallest active volcano in Europe, and one of the most active in the world, currently 3,329 m (10,922 ft.) high. The island has a typical Mediterranean climate. Administrative Divisions Administratively, Sicily is divided into 9 administrative provinces, each with a capital city of the same name as the province. The areas and populations of these provinces are: Province of Agrigento ......................................... 3,042 km2 ....... pop. 453,594 Province of Caltanissetta .................................... 2,128 km2 ....... pop. 271,168 Province of Catania ............................................ 3,552 km2 .... pop. 1,090,620 Province of Enna ................................................ 2,562 km2 ....... pop. 172,159 Province of Messina ........................................... 3,247 km2 ....... pop. 652,742 Province of Palermo ........................................... 4,992 km2 .... pop. 1,249,744 Province of Ragusa ............................................ 1,614 km2 ....... pop. 318,980 Province of Siracusa ........................................... 2,109 km2 ....... pop. 403,559 Province of Trapani ............................................. 2,460 km2 ....... pop. 436,240 The City of Palermo is the Capital City of the region Small surrounding islands are also part of various Sicilian provinces: Aeolian Islands (Messina), The isle of Ustica (Palermo), Aegadian Islands (Trapani), The isle of Pantelleria (Trapani) and Pelagian Islands (Agrigento). Geography Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. It has a roughly triangular shape, earning it the name Trinacria.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Capuana Naturalista Malgré Lui: 'Classics' and 'New Turns'
    A Self-Reflexive Verista Metareference and Autofiction in Luigi Capuana’s Narrative Brian Zuccala 1 Capuana naturalista malgré lui: ‘Classics’ and ‘New Turns’ in Capuana Studies Summary 1.1 ‘Genre Studies’ in Early Criticism and ‘Classic’ Monographs. – 1.2 History and Philology. – 1.3 Ideology. – 1.4 Gender and Intermedial ‘Turns’. – 1.5 Occultism. – 1.6 Structure of This Study. Before delving into a close reading of a selection of Capuana’s texts, it is appropriate to show why such a far-reaching self-reflexive ap- proach is more than just exegetically useful. By reflecting on those recent ‘turns’ in Capuana’s criticism that have aimed to break away from a long-standing Verismo/Naturalism-centred line of enquiry, it must be shown how such an approach is critically needed at this stage of capuanistica. In other words, it is important to focus on why and how the issue of (self-)reflexivity increasingly appears to position it- self at the point of intersection of many still-open and cogent ques- tions in Capuana studies and to offer itself as a potential answer to a significant proportion of those questions. 1.1 ‘Genre Studies’ in Early Criticism and ‘Classic’ Monographs With the exception of individual magazine reviews of specific works and an insightful 1896 overview by Luigi Pirandello, Capuana criti- cism begins with the well-known, widely investigated and enormously influential essay by Benedetto Croce, “Luigi Capuana – Neera” (1905). Italianistica. Nuova serie 2 DOI 10.30687/978-88-6969-398-4/002 21 Zuccala 1 • Capuana naturalista malgré lui: ‘Classics’ and ‘New Turns’ in Capuana Studies Croce’s essay addresses Capuana’s theoretical activity and creative writing separately, and argues that Capuana’s primary literary mer- it was that of theorising Verismo and promoting the verista work of fellow writer, Giovanni Verga, rather than being a result of his own creative writing.1 Yet, even in the formulation of Capuana’s artistic theories there are, for Croce, some rather significant contradictions.
    [Show full text]