Italian Americans share rich stories of everyday life.

Today Mussolini is remembered as a hated dictator who, along with Hitler and Stalin, ushered in an era of totalitarian repression unsurpassed in human history. But how was he viewed by ordinary Italians during his lifetime? In Fascist Voices, Christopher Duggan draws on thousands of letters sent to Mussolini, as well as private diaries and other primary documents, to show how Italian citizens lived and experienced the fascist regime under Mussolini from 1922-1943. Throughout the 1930s, Mussolini received about 1,500 letters a day from Italian men and women of all social classes writing words of congratulation, commiseration, thanks, encouragement, or entreaty on a wide variety of occasions: his birthday and saint's day, after he had delivered an important speech, on a major fascist anniversary, when a husband or son had been killed in action. While Duggan looks at some famous diaries-by such figures as the anti-fascist constitutional lawyer Piero Calamandrei; the philosopher Benedetto Croce; and the fascist minister Giuseppe Bottai-the majority of the voices here come from unpublished journals, diaries, and transcripts. Utilizing a rich collection of untapped archival material, Duggan explores "the cult of Il Duce," the religious dimensions of totalitarianism, and the extraordinarily intimate character of the relationship between Mussolini and millions of Italians. Duggan shows that the figure of Mussolini was crucial to emotional and political engagement with the regime; although there was widespread discontent throughout Italy, little of the criticism was directed at Il Duce himself. Duggan argues that much of the regime's appeal lay in its capacity to appropriate the language, values, and iconography of Roman Catholicism, and that this emphasis on blind faith and emotion over reason is what made Mussolini's Italy simultaneously so powerful and so insidious. Offering a unique perspective on the period, Fascist Voices captures the responses of private citizens living under fascism and unravels the remarkable mixture of illusions, hopes, and fears that led so many to support the regime for so long.

"In his salutatory of the first issue of the weekly newspaper L'Eco del Rhode Island, editor Federico Curzio declares that the 'Italian Colony of Providence' had increased to the point where it warranted a media source that focused on and addressed the customs, traits, and interests of the Italian diaspora of Rhode Island. The founders of L'Eco del Rhode Island came together to begin to address the journalistic and literary needs of this growing community. In his study on the immigrant press, Robert E. Park argues, 'In addition to every other reason for the existence of a foreign-language press is its value to the immigrant, in satisfying his mere human desire for expression in his mother tongue.' In the late nineteenth century the Italian diaspora of Rhode Island, having become a substantial immigrant community within the state, yearned for a medium which would reflect their culture, written in their madre lingua. In later years this penchant for the Italian language would manifest itself in radio programs in addition to the Italian language newspapers."

Voices of Italian America presents a top-rate authoritative study and anthology of the italian-language literature written and published in the United States from the heydays of the Great Migration (1880–1920) to the almost definitive demise of the cultural world of the first generation soon before and after World War II. The volume resurrects the neglected and even forgotten territory of a nationwide “Little Italy” where people wrote, talked, read, and consumed the various forms of entertainment mostly in their native Italian language, in a complex interplay with native dialects and surrounding American English. The anthological sections include excerpts from the ethnically tinged thrillers by Tuscan-born first-comer Bernardino Ciambelli, as well as the first short stories by Italian American women, set in the Gilded Age. The fiction of political activists such as Carlo Tresca coexists with the hardboiled autobiography of Italian American cop Mike Fiaschetti, fighting against the Mafia. Voices of Italian America presents new material by English-speaking classics such as Pietro di Donato and John Fante, and a selection of poetry by a great bilingual voice, the champion of the “masses” and Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) poet Arturo Giovannitti, and by a lesserknown, self-taught, satirical versifier, Riccardo Cordiferro/Ironheart. Controversial documents on the difficult interracial relations between Italian Americans and African Americans live side by side with the first poignant chronicles from Ellis Island. This study sheds light on the “fabrication” of a new culture of immigrant origins—pliable, dynamic, constantly shifting and transforming itself—while focusing on stories, genres, rhythms, the “human touch” contributed by literature in its wider sense. Ultimately, through a rich sample of significant texts covering various aspects of the immigrant experience, Voices of Italian America offers the reader a literary history of Italian American culture.

This collection of essays explores the reception of classics and translation from modern languages as two different, yet synergic, ways of engaging with literary canons and established traditions in 20th-century Italy. These two areas complement each other and equally contribute to shape several kinds of identities: authorial, literary, national and cultural. Foregrounding the transnational aspects of key concepts such as poetics, literary voice, canon and tradition, the book is intended for scholars and students of Italian literature and culture, classical reception and translation studies. With its two shifting focuses, on forms of classical tradition and forms of literary translation, the volume brings to the fore new configurations of 20th-century literature, culture and thought.

From one of Italy’s greatest writers, a stunning novel “filled with shimmering, risky, darting observation” (Colm Tóibín) After WWII, a small Italian town struggles to emerge from under the thumb of Fascism. With wit, tenderness, and irony, Elsa, the novel’s narrator, weaves a rich tapestry of provincial Italian life: two generations of neighbors and relatives, their gossip and shattered dreams, their heartbreaks and struggles to find happiness. Elsa wants to imagine a future for herself, free from the expectations and burdens of her town’s history, but the weight of the past will always prove unbearable, insistently posing the question: “Why has everything been ruined?”

This volume studies the literary voices of the Italian diaspora in Britain, including 21 authors and 34 pieces of prose, verse, and drama. This book shows how authors both recount the history of the migrant community in the period 1880-1980 while creatively experimenting with hybrid forms of expression and blending words with visuals. Literary Voices of the Italian Diaspora in Britain discusses topical issues like migration and social integration, cultures and foods in transition, as well as plurilingualism. The book pays special attention to discussions of the horrors of the Second World War – especially on the tragedy of the Arandora Star (2nd July 1940) – to show this literary community’s political commitments. More importantly, it will begin to fill the void left by a critical tradition which has only appreciated the northern American and Australian branches of Italian writing.

This book studies the uses of orality in Italian society, across all classes, from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century, with an emphasis on the interrelationships between oral communication and the written word. The Introduction provides an overview of the topic as a whole and links the chapters together. Part 1 concerns public life in the states of northern, central, and southern Italy. The chapters examine a range of performances that used the spoken word or song: concerted shouts that expressed the feelings of the lower classes and were then recorded in writing; the proclamation of state policy by town criers; songs that gave news of executions; the exercise of power relations in society as recorded in trial records; and diplomatic orations and interactions. Part 2 centres on private entertainments. It considers the practices of the performance of poetry sung in social gatherings and on stage with and without improvisation; the extent to which lyric poets anticipated the singing of their verse and collaborated with composers; performances of comedies given as dinner entertainments for the governing body of republican Florence; and a reading of a prose work in a house in Venice, subsequently made famous through a printed account. Part 3 concerns collective religious practices. Its chapters study sermons in their own right and in relation to written texts, the battle to control spaces for public performance by civic and religious authorities, and singing texts in sacred spaces.

This authoritative, new edition of the world's most loved songs and arias draws on original manuscripts, historical first editions and recent research by prominent musicologists to meet a high standard of accuracy and authenticity. Includes fascinating background information about the arias and their composers as well as a singable rhymed translation, a readable prose translation and a literal translation of each single Italian word.

London, 1820. The British capital is a metropolis that overwhelms dwellers and visitors alike with constant exposure to all kinds of sensory stimulation. Over the next two decades, the city’s tumult will reach new heights: as population expansion places different classes in dangerous proximity and ideas of political and social reform linger in the air, London begins to undergo enormous infrastructure change that will alter it forever. It is the London of this period that editors Roger Parker and Susan Rutherford pinpoint in this book, which chooses one broad musical category—voice—and engages with it through essays on music of the streets, theaters, opera houses, and concert halls; on the raising of voices in religious and sociopolitical contexts; and on the perception of voice in literary works and scientific experiments with acoustics. Emphasizing human subjects, this focus on voice allows the authors to explore the multifaceted issues that shaped London, from the anxiety surrounding the city’s importance in the musical world at large to the changing vocal imaginations that permeated the epoch. Capturing the breadth of sonic stimulations and cultures available—and sometimes unavoidable—to residents at the time, London Voices, 1820–1840 sheds new light on music in Britain and the richness of London culture during this period.