Interpreting and Judging Petrarch’s Canzoniere in Early Modern Italy
Edited by Maiko Favaro
Italian Perspectives 49•10 December 2021
- ‘Angesichts des wenig bekannten Textkorpus stellt Favaros Sammelband eine wichtige Bereicherung der Petrarca-Forschung der letzten Jahre dar. Auf der einen Seite wirft das Buch die Frage auf, inwieweit der Begriff des Petrarkismus für die aktuelle Diskussion noch fruchtbar sein kann. Auf der anderen Seite erweist sich Petrarca als eine Funktion, die die Literaturwissenschaft dazu anregt, das Textkorpus zu erweitern, um im Dialog mit anderen Disziplinen auch sonst vernachlässigte Diskurse zu berücksichtigen. Wie Interpreting and judging Petrarch’s Canzoniere in early modern Italy zeigt, ist die Petrarca-Funktion nicht nur in der Lage, wesentliche Teile der italienischen Literaturgeschichte zusammenzufassen, sondern auch neue Perspektiven auf die italienische Kulturgeschichte zu eröffnen.’ — Nicolas Longinotti, Germanische-Romanische Monatsschrift 74.1, 2024, 115-17
- ‘Favaro’s volume is a good place to start to understand the critical phenomena associated with the reception, study, and influence of the Renaissance’s refashioned Canzoniere.’ — H. Wayne Storey, Renaissance and Reformation 46.2, Spring 2024, 216-19 (full text online)
The Italian Academies 1525-1700: Networks of Culture, Innovation and Dissent
Edited by Jane E. Everson, Denis V. Reidy and Lisa Sampson
Italian Perspectives 31•1 September 2016
- ‘With new archival research, new areas of study, and an innovative approach, Italian Academies challenges preconceived ideas about academies and successfully demonstrates the fundamental role played by these associations in disseminating ideas, culture, innovation, and dissent in the early modern period.’ — Patrizia Bettella, Quaderni d'Italianistica 39.1, 2017, 265-68
Italo Calvino and the Landscape of Childhood
Claudia Nocentini
Italian Perspectives 6•30 November 2000
Italy and the USA: Cultural Change Through Language and Narrative
Edited by Guido Bonsaver, Alessandro Carlucci and Matthew Reza
Italian Perspectives 44•30 December 2019
- ‘A very holistic assessment of cultural change, even going beyond the disciplinary points of reference of language and narrative to the larger fields of politics and economics.’ — Anna Chichi, Modern Language Review 117.2, 2022, 303-04 (full text online)
Laughter from Realism to Modernism: Misfits and Humorists in Pirandello, Svevo, Palazzeschi, and Gadda
Alberto Godioli
Italian Perspectives 34•9 October 2015
Leopardi's Nymphs: Grace, Melancholy, and the Uncanny
Fabio A. Camilletti
Italian Perspectives 28•4 December 2013
- ‘La nuova e apparentemente inusuale costellazione concettuale che fa da impalcatura al libro si dimostra capace di portare alla luce, proprio nel suo essere lievemente sfasata rispetto alle categorie normalmente associate a Leopardi, risvolti inattesi tra le pieghe di un pensiero e di una poesia su cui pure si è venuta depositando una bibliografia sterminata. Per gli snodi teorici e problematici che evidenzia, per i confronti che intavola, il libro si rivela una lettura decisamente appassionante, dove anche le divagazioni più ardite non mancano di trovare spazio e giustificazione all’interno della tesi più generale che le inquadra.’ — Alessandra Aloisi, Oblio IV.16, January 2015, 111-13
- ‘Camilletti not only convincingly answers the question of why Leopardi’s work still speaks to us so powerfully, but also demonstrates the need to reconfigure our understanding of the literary past and tradition in order to follow Walter Benjamin’s advice and 'brush history against the grain'.’ — Damiano Benvegnù, Annali d'Italianistica 32, 2014, 638-40
- ‘Il saggio di Camilletti è il frutto maturo del profondo rinnovamento che gli studi leopardiani hanno vissuto negli ultimi anni, con l’apertura a diversi e inediti orizzonti interpretativi. Molto ci sarebbe da dire sulla ricchezza di letture e di analisi testuali, sempre puntuali, che spaziano dai testi poetici alla prosa filosofica, dagli scritti privati a quelli eruditi. Il lavoro di Camilletti non è di quelli che si possano circoscrivere a un territorio, piccolo o grande che sia; esso delinea invece un percorso dalle molte ramificazioni che mette in gioco, attraversando l’intera opera leopardiana, profonde tensioni e densi nuclei problematici.’ — Franco d'Intino, La Rassegna della Letteratura Italiana 118.2, December 2014, 668-70
- ‘Leopardi studies have undergone a profound renewal in recent years, opening up the prospect of different, unprecedented, interpretative horizons. Fabio A. Camilletti’s monograph makes a substantial contribution to this renewal.’ — Franco d'Intimo, Modern Language Review 110.3, July 2015, 881-82 (full text online)
The Letters of Giacomo Leopardi 1817-1837
Edited by Prue Shaw
Italian Perspectives 1•30 September 1998
Narrative Strategies for Participation in Dante's Divine Comedy
Katherine Powlesland
Italian Perspectives 53•13 September 2022
Nelle Carceri di G. B. Piranesi
Silvia Gavuzzo-Stewart
Italian Perspectives 2•31 October 1999
Orality and Literacy in Modern Italian Culture
Edited by Michael Caesar and Marina Spunta
Italian Perspectives 14•24 May 2006
- ‘Other strands link the twelve essays: one centres on the idea that 'voice' is something vulnerable and short-lived, while another focuses on the 'hierarchy' implicit in the relationship between orality and literacy. Both are demonstrated, for instance, when 'folk', 'women's' and 'youth' cultures are 'textualised' and thus potentially destroyed, rather than preserved, in writing, leading to the hypothesis that 'orality' is, essentially, irreproducible as 'literacy'.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 46.2, 2010, 247-48
Origin and Identity: Essays on Svevo and Trieste
Elizabeth Schächter
Italian Perspectives 5•1 November 2000
Pasolini after Dante: The 'Divine Mimesis' and the Politics of Representation
Emanuela Patti
Italian Perspectives 35•1 September 2016
Pastoral Drama in Early Modern Italy: The Making of a New Genre
Lisa Sampson
Italian Perspectives 15•5 September 2006
- ‘Handsomely produced (a tribute to its publishers and copy-editor), meticulously researched, agreeably written,with copious notes, a generous bibliography, and English translationsof all the original quotations, it is packed full with fascinating and thought-provoking information.’ — Eric Haywood, Modern Language Review 103.4, October 2008, 1138 (full text online)
- ‘Vanno complimentati, infine, anche gli editori di Legenda (la fruttuosa collaborazione tra Maney Publishing e la Modern Humanities Research Association) che hanno curato questa pubblicazione impeccabile, e che hanno dato ampio spazio — scelta felice — ai citati originali in italiano (provveduti sempre di una traduzione inglese della stessa studiosa). In aggiunta alle note concise poste alla fine di ogni capitolo, la bibliografia e l’indice generale che concludono il libro costituiranno un utile strumento di consultazione ai molti studenti e ricercatori che troveranno una ricchissima fonte d’informazioni preziose (dalla descrizione meticolosa delle innumerevoli opere individuali, al contesto sociale, culturale e politico sempre ottimamente documentato) in questa monografia, la quale combina una chiarezza di argomentazione con un’analisi sfaccettata di un fenomeno significativo — se non proprio determinante — nel campo culturale della prima epoca moderna.’ — Rolien Scheffer, Italian Studies 64.2, Autumn 2009
Petrarch Commentary and Exegesis in Renaissance Italy and Beyond: Materiality, Paratexts and Interpretative Strategies
Edited by Guyda Armstrong, Simon A. Gilson and Federica Pich
Italian Perspectives 56•22 January 2023
Playing with Gender: The Comedies of Goldoni
Maggie Günsberg
Italian Perspectives 7•31 January 2002
The Printed Media in Fin-de-siècle Italy: Publishers, Writers, and Readers
Edited by Ann Hallamore Caesar, Gabriella Romani, and Jennifer Burns
Italian Perspectives 21•6 July 2011
- ‘The portrayal of the fin-de-siècle offered by this volume is more articulate and dynamic than the one traditionally depicted... The compelling issues tackled in this volume, together with its thought-provoking approaches, cast a new light on some significant traits of fin-de-siècle Italy.’ — Morena Corradi, Journal of Modern Italian Studies 17.5, 2012, 650-652
- ‘This collection cogently illustrates how the emerging study of material culture can illuminate fundamental discussions on the development of a national identity... Rather than focusing narrowly on authors and their literary production, these essays paint a vivid picture of the broader world in which these writers lived. In doing so, they show the development of national and cultural identification becoming inextricably linked to the rise of print media and the cultural industry as a whole.’ — Laura A. Salsini, Italica 2013, 304-05
- ‘This excellent collection of essays (thirteen in all, five written in Italian, eight in English) focuses on the context in which printed media (books, magazines, news- papers, journals) were shaped and appeared at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. The text as material object is privileged, while the approach is interdisciplinary. The end result is a different, and more complete, appreciation of the various texts considered here than would be afforded by an analysis confined to content or style.’ — Ursula A. Fanning, Modern Language Review 109.3, July 2014, 824-26 (full text online)
Psychoanalysis, Ideology and Commitment in Italy 1945-1975: Edoardo Sanguineti, Ottiero Ottieri, Andrea Zanzotto
Alessandra Diazzi
Italian Perspectives 51•13 September 2022
- ‘Through her three case studies Diazzi has successfully demonstrated how psychoanalysis penetrated literature and culture in post-war Italy. As she confirms: “The assimilation of psychoanalysis into literature actively contributed to this rewriting of the discipline”.’ — 606-08, Annali d'Italianistica 2023, 41, Katja Liimatta
Remembering Aldo Moro: The Cultural Legacy of the 1978 Kidnapping and Murder
Edited by Ruth Glynn and Giancarlo Lombardi
Italian Perspectives 23•30 January 2012
Renaissance Vegetarianism: The Philosophical Afterlives of Porphyry’s On Abstinence
Cecilia Muratori
Italian Perspectives 46•28 September 2020
- ‘The meticulously researched study of the generation and Renaissance receptions of Porphyry's On Abstinence in Cecilia Muratori's Renaissance Vegetarianism is well worth attention from Romanticists, alongside the Early Modern scholars, Classicists, and Animal Studies scholars that will comprise its main audience... Literal and figurative translations of ethical, philosophical, and dietary ideas upon vegetarianism and veganism connect ancient and Early Modern thought in Muratori's admirable study, with glimpses of Thomas Taylor and Shelley suggesting the future of Porphyry's reception in the Romantic period.’ — Amanda Blake Davis, The Coleridge Bulletin 57, Summer 2021, 141-46
- ‘Muratori’s work provides us not only with an overview of philosophical thinking on vegetarianism from ancient authors to their reception by Renaissance but also with interesting keys to understand the issues that worried intellectuals of those times. Her analysis gives the main clues of the reception of Porphyry’s work and shows how crucial it was for the evolution of vegetarian thinking that is still strongly present in our days. The rigor of the research and the excellent way the contents are presented with a simple but accurate drafting make this work accessible and fascinating for scholars as well for curious readers.’ — Monica Durán Mañas, Mediterranea 7, 2022 (full text online)
- ‘The most celebrated work on animals to emerge from ancient philosophy, Porphyry’s On Abstinence from Killing Animals, argues at length against the Stoics that animals have reason or “inner logos,” in part on the basis of their behavior but also on the basis of the claim that some animals can understand and produce language, or “outer logos.” And this was one of those texts that really was recovered and read avidly in the Renaissance. Just how avidly, and with what consequences, is shown by Cecilia Muratori’s Renaissance Vegetarianism, a wide-ranging, fascinating, and frequently entertaining survey of ideas about animals in this period.’ — Peter Adamson, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie Published online, 2023 (full text online)
- ‘To add to the many merits of Muratori’s accomplishment, the book includes a bibliography that is comprehensive as well as carefully selected. The index of names and subjects is thorough and extremely helpful. The many philosophical discussions never read stiltedly and are always recounted in a thought-provoking and engaging style. Above all, this tour de force on the history of vegetarianism makes the reader reflect on a central question that remains unanswered to this day: can a being that is sentient and rational be legitimately consumed and turned into food?’ — E. Giada Capasso, Modern Language Review 118.3, July 2023, 403-05 (full text online)
Rome Eternal: The City As Fatherland
Guy Lanoue
Italian Perspectives 32•8 June 2015
Rome, 16 October 1943: History, Memory, Literature
Mara Josi 
Italian Perspectives 60•8 August 2023
Rome: Modernity, Postmodernity and Beyond
Edited by Lesley Caldwell and Fabio Camilletti
Italian Perspectives 39•30 September 2018
- ‘As the seat of the Roman Empire, the Catholic Church, Mussolini’s Fascism, and Silvio Berlusconi’s neoliberalism, and as a site of immigration and social diversity, Rome is characterized by complexity... A valuable contribution to the scholarship of one of Europe’s most historically significant and cathected cities and will no doubt be of value to scholars of the Eternal City within both urban and Italian studies.’ — Damien Pollard, Modern Language Review 115.1, 2020, 190-91 (full text online)
Saracens and their World in Boiardo and Ariosto
Maria Pavlova
Italian Perspectives 47•28 September 2020
- ‘This carefully-researched monograph achieves its aim of offering “a comprehensive insight” into the vast system of pagan characters within the romance epics of Boiardo and Ariosto... Scholars and graduate students invested in the Este and the Italian chivalric poem will be the most likely to follow the fine-grained analyses of the incredible genealogy and fictional heroes. The broader strokes will interest specialists in adjacent languages and fields. Pavlova’s results should be made available also to undergraduates, albeit in more accessible forms, when we teach these spacious poems from Renaissance Ferrara.’ — Jennifer Kathleen Mackenzie, Annali d'Italianistica 39, 2021, 514-516
- ‘Scholars have usually highlighted an opposition between Boiardo’s admired representation of the Saracen world and its negative portrayal in Ariosto’s poem, and have interpreted these different approaches in the light of the historical, political, and religious transformations that took place in Italy between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Pavlova aims to challenge this reading by reconsidering the close relationship between Italy and the Islamic world through an original postcolonial perspective, and by reading the two poems in the context of the literary tradition to which they belong.’ — Francesco Lucioli, Modern Language Review 118.2, 2023, 260-61 (full text online)
The Somali Within: Language, Race and Belonging in ‘Minor’ Italian Literature
Simone Brioni
Italian Perspectives 33•11 September 2015
- ‘A very welcome and significant contribution to the growing field of Italian postcolonial studies... offering a convincing in-depth textual analysis of a specifically postcolonial literature (though many of his insights could usefully also be stretched out to apply to the wider ‘migration’ field), as well as contributing an important linguistic study, which draws Translation Studies into productive proximity with a potential transcultural turn in Italian Studies in general.’ — Emma Bond, Modern Language Review 116.2, April 2017, 524-25 (full text online)
- ‘inserisce pienamente all'interno degli studi postcoloniali che negli ultimi vent'anni hanno iniziato a interessare la critica letteraria italiana. Attraverso l'analisi di un corpus eterogeneo di testi, Brioni esamina il ruolo che nel grande quadro della letteratura nazionale italiana ha la letteratura italo-somala, cioè scritta in italiano da autori e autrici italiani che provengono dalla Somalia, o le cui origini familiari sono somale.’ — Serena Alessi, Incontri 31.2, 2016, 152-54
- ‘A new and original analysis... From how the Somali writers describe race and colour it is, in fact, possible to start a reflection that, from the colonial adventures and through the racial laws of 1938 and the apparent neglect of the colonies after World War II, reaches contemporary Italy and the current problems with racism.’ — Daniele Comberiati, Crossings: Journal of Migration & Culture 2016, 247-49
- ‘The postcolonial and transnational perspective of this work... calls for fresh and stimulating elaborations, making it a com- pelling reading also for readers who are not well acquainted with the body of literature here analysed.’ — Lorenzo Mari, Interventions 2 September 2016 (full text online)
- ‘Una delle questioni più rilevanti risulta essere sicuramente quello del colore della pelle: particolare importanza viene data da Brioni ai personaggi meticci presenti nei diversi romanzi presi in esame e che diventano sempre più numerosi nel corso delle successive pubblicazioni. Questi testimoniano la presenza di una problematica culturale che era rimasta relegata nella penombra della memoria storica del colonialismo italiano.’ — Michele Pandolfo, Between VI.11, May 2016
- ‘The Somali Within is an innovative volume that discusses the Somali-Italian encounter, from the colonial period to the subsequent historical events intertwining the histories of Somalia and Italy well into their postcolonial present... Brioni’s volume is indeed a much needed and complex contribution to the study of Italian Somali literature which engages masterfully with these texts while redefining multiple theoretical problems.’ — Elena Benelli, Italian Studies Online, 3 October 2018 (full text online)
- ‘Simone Brioni’s The Somali Within signals perhaps a new direction in the field of Italian migration literature in Italy... A valuable resource to scholars of Italian, minor, post-colonial, and migration literatures as well as those interested in how Italy’s colonial past can help explain contemporary views in Italy of language, race, and identity.’ — Francesca Minonne, Quaderni d'Italianistica 38.2, 2018, 277-79
- ‘Rich in its theoretical approaches, Brioni’s study will be of immense interest to scholars of contemporary Italian culture, Italian postcolonialism and, indeed, to anyone interested in the ongoing debates surrounding ‘minor literature.’’ — Renata Redford, Italica 93.4, Winter 2016, 849-51
Spatial Plots: Virtuality and the Embodied Mind in Baricco, Camilleri and Calvino
Marzia Beltrami
Italian Perspectives 45•26 July 2021