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.