Publisher description

The Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies is a two-volume reference book containing some 600 entries on all aspects of Italian literary culture. It includes analytical essays on authors and works, from the most important figures of Italian literature to little known authors and works that are influential to the field. The Encyclopedia is distinguished by substantial articles on critics, themes, genres, schools, historical surveys, and other topics related to the overall subject of Italian literary studies. The Encyclopedia also includes writers and subjects of contemporary interest, such as those relating to journalism, film, media, children's literature, food and vernacular literatures. Entries consist of an essay on the topic and a bibliographic portion listing works for further reading, and, in the case of entries on individuals, a brief biographical paragraph and list of works by the person. It will be useful to people without specialized knowledge of Italian literature as well as to scholars.

The Mediterranean has always loomed large in the history and culture of Italy, and since the 1980s this relationship has been represented in ever more varied forms as both national and regional identities have evolved within a globalized context. This interdisciplinary volume puts Italian artists (writers, musicians, and filmmakers) and intellectuals (philosophers, sociologists, and political scientists) in conversation with each other to explore Italy's Mediterranean identity while questioning the boundaries between Self and Other, and between native and foreign bodies. By moving beyond nation-centric models of cultural and ethnic homogeneity based on myths of progress and rationality, these wide-ranging contributions fashion new ways of belonging that transcend the cultural, economic, religious, and social categories that have characterized post Cold War Italy and Europe.

The Italian neoavanguardia, a literary and artistic movement characterized by a strong push towards experimentation, playfulness, and new forms of language usage, was founded at the beginning of the 1960s by a group of poets, critics, artists, and composers. Although the neoavanguardia movement has been primarily defined and examined in a literary context, it is broadly discussed in this collection as also affecting other artistic forms such as the visual arts, music, and architecture. In examining this often controversial movement, Neoavanguardia's contributors include topics such as critical-theoretical debates, the crisis of literature as defined within the movement, and issues of gender in 1960s Italian art and literature. This important collection interrogates the arts as creative codes, their ability to question reality, and their capacity to survive. In so doing, it paves the way for future interdisciplinary investigations of this complex cultural formation.

This is an intellectual biography of the Italian Jewish writer and politician David Levi (1816-1898). Freemasonry, Saint-Simonianism, and the Enlightenment are his vessels for a new, secular, interpretation of Jewish identity and for innovative views on Judaism’s relation with modernity.

Imagined Networks in Pre-Modern Italian Literature: Literary Mothers, Literary Sisters presents the untold stories of the literary mothers and sisters in pre-modern Italian literature and the vibrant intellectual networks they forged. The authors argue that these women writers became adoptive references for other authors, often as an alternative to an established canon of textual authority. The proposed concepts of literary motherhood and sisterhood focus on the agency of the writers in choosing a model, rather than adhering to hierarchical structures. The women showcased in this book defied conventions, and are aware of the generative power of their works and regard themselves as literary guiding lights for future authors. They built prolific communities through exchanges, correspondences, debates, oblique conversations, and sometimes subtle allusions that confer authority to each other. The six essays in this book bring to life the figures of Caterina da Siena, Isabella Andreini, Giulia Bigolina, Margherita Costa, Lucrezia Marinella, Arcangela Tarabotti, and the relationship between Gaspara Stampa and Luisa Bergalli, as well as that between Bianca Milesi Mojon and Maria Edgeworth.

This volume offers a comprehensive account of writing by women in Italy.

This book explores the travels of Cristoforo Buondelmonti and Ciriaco d’Ancona to the Greek lands in the early fifteenth-century eastern Mediterranean. Drawing on post-colonial studies' frameworks, such as travel writing and imaginative geographies, this volume offers an innovative examination of colonial discursive and cultural practices within the Latin dominions in the Greek lands. It sheds light on their contributions to the conceptualisation of both the "Italian metropolitan" space and the "Greek" identity of the colonised. This volume investigates how Cristoforo’s and Ciriaco’s travel narratives utilised conceptual tools and representation systems of early humanism to support Latin political and economic interests in the eastern Mediterranean. It delves into the imaginative geographies of Venetian Crete, the islands of the archipelago, Constantinople, the Byzantine Despotate of the Morea, and portrayals of the Ottomans as constructed by the two travelers, offering insights into the interaction of Latin humanistic and colonial discourses and the agency of travellers in shaping the colonial space. The book will be of value to scholars, undergraduate and postgraduate students across various research fields, including Renaissance and postcolonial studies, travel literature, Latin dominions in the Aegean, Byzantine and Ottoman histories.