A Linguistic History of Italian offers a clear and concise explanation of why modern Italian grammar has become the way it is. It focuses on the effects of historical changes on the modern structure of Italian, revealing patterns and structures which are not always apparent to those who are only familiar with modern Italian. Although the book concentrates on the internal history of the language, the emergence of Italian is considered against the wider background of the history of italian dialects, and other external factors such as cultural and social influences are also examined.

This book seeks to redefine, recontextualize, and reassess Italian neorealism - an artistic movement characterized by stories set among the poor and working class - through innovative close readings and comparative analysis.

Leaving Little Italy explores the various forces that have shaped and continue to mold Italian American culture. Early chapters offer a historical survey of major developments in Italian American culture, from the early mass immigration period to the present day, situating these developments within the larger framework of American culture as a whole. Subsequent chapters examine particular works of Italian American literature and film from a variety of perspectives, including literary history, gender, social class, autobiography, and race. Paying particular attention to how the individual artist's personality has intersected with community in the shaping of Italian American culture, the book reveals how and why Italian America was invented and why Little Italys must ultimately disappear.

The "function" and "notion" of literacy may be considered the keystone, a "filigree" principle underlying the educational, social, and cultural organiza tion of the societies of the twentieth century. It is therefore interesting to try to pinpoint the notion and its implications at the tum of the century by focusing the attention of scholars from various disciplines-sociolinguistics, psychology, psycholinguistics, and pedagogy-on the subject. This is the purpose of this volume, which originated from an inter disciplinary meeting on trends in and problems of research on early literacy through mother tongues and/or second languages, held in Venice under the auspices of the University of Venice, and in particular of the Seminario di Linguistica e di Didattica della Lingue and the Centro Linguistico Interfacolta, and the Municipality of Venice, together with UNESCO and AILA. A first far-reaching question touches on the role assigned to or fulfilled by mass "literacy" in modem society. The concept of literacy considered as a social achievement, an essential component in the process of education to be institutionally prompted and controlled, fluctuates between two opposite poles. A polemic-destructive view considers the notion and the educational "prac tices" connected with it as a potent instrument of social control, a tool for social reproduction and consensus. On the other side, a plurifunctional con structive view considers the acquisition and maintenance of different languages via educational institutions as a concrete possibility for the defense and main tenance of cultural pluralism and identity, be it social, ethnic, or religious.

Proposing an original and important re-conceptualization of Italian Renaissance drama, Kristin Phillips-Court here explores how the intertextuality of major works of Italian dramatic literature is not only poetic but also figurative. She argues that not only did the painterly gaze, so prevalent in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century devotional art, portraiture, and visual allegory, inform humanistic theories, practices and themes, it also led prominent Italian intellectuals to write visually evocative works of dramatic literature whose topical plots and structures provide only a fraction of their cultural significance. Through a combination of interpretive literary criticism, art historical analysis and cultural and intellectual historiography, Phillips-Court offers detailed readings of individual plays juxtaposed with specific developments and achievements in the realm of painting. Revealing more than historical connections between artists and poets such as Tasso and Giorgione, Mantegna and Trissino, Michelangelo and Caro, or Bruno and Caravaggio, the author locates the history of Renaissance art and drama securely within the history of ideas. She provides us with a story about the emergence and eventual disintegration of Italian Renaissance drama as a rigorously philosophical and empirical form. Considering rhetorical, philosophical, ethical, religious, political-ideological, and aesthetic dimensions of each of the plays she treats, Kristin Phillips-Court draws our attention to the intermedial conversation between the theater and painting in a culture famously dominated by art. Her integrated analysis of visual and dramatic works brings to light how the lines and verses of the text reveal an ongoing dialogue with visual art that was far richer and more intellectually engaged than we might reconstruct from stage diagrams and painted backdrops.

Set in Chicago during the 1940s and 1950s, Paper Fish is populated by hardworking Italian-American immigrants whose heroism lies in their quiet, sometimes tragic humanity. At the center of the novel is young Carmolina, who is torn between the bonds of the past and the pull of the future --a need for home and a yearning for independence. Carmolina's own story is interwoven with the stories of her family: the memories and legends of her Grandmother Doria; the courtship tales of her father, a gentle policeman and her mother, a lonely waitress; and the painful story of Doriana, her beautiful but silent sister.

The use of Italian culture in the Jacobean theatre was never an isolated gesture. In considering the ideological repercussions of references to Italy in prominent works by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, Michael J. Redmond argues that early modern intertextuality was a dynamic process of allusion, quotation, and revision. Beyond any individual narrative source, Redmond foregrounds the fundamental role of Italian textual precedents in the staging of domestic anxieties about state crisis, nationalism, and court intrigue. By focusing on the self-conscious, overt rehearsal of existing texts and genres, the book offers a new approach to the intertextual strategies of early modern English political drama. The pervasive circulation of Cinquecento political theorists like Machiavelli, Castiglione, and Guicciardini combined with recurrent English representations of Italy to ensure that the negotiation with previous writing formed an integral part of the dramatic agendas of period plays.