Biographies and Autobiographies in Modern Italy

Peter Hainsworth; Martin McLaughlin

Biographies and Autobiographies in Modern Italy
A Festschrift for John Woodhouse

Edited by Martin McLaughlin and Peter Hainsworth

Cover of Biographies and Autobiographies in Modern Italy

Eugenio Montale (1896-1981), Italian poet

1 other title

Primo Levi (1919-87), Italian writer

1 other title

Italo Svevo (1861-1928), Italian novelist

4 other titles

Legenda (General Series)

Legenda

23 February 2007 • 230pp

ISBN: 978-1-905981-07-6 (hardback) • RRP £80, $110, €95

ItalianLife-Writing

Critical interest in biography and autobiography has never been higher. However, while life-writing flourishes in the UK, in Italy it is a less prominent genre. The twelve essays collected here are therefore breaking new ground by addressing issues in biographical and autobiographical writing in Italy from the later nineteenth century to the present, with a particular emphasis on the interplay between individual lives and life-writing and the wider social and political history of Italy. The majority of essays focus on well-known writers (D'Annunzio, Svevo, Bontempelli, Montale, Levi, Calvino, Eco and Fallaci), and their varying anxieties about autobiographical writing in their work. This picture is rounded out by a series of studies of similar themes in lesser known figures: the critic Enrico Nencioni, the Welsh-Italian painter Llewellyn Lloyd and Italian writers and journalists covering the Spanish Civil War.

The volume is dedicated to John Woodhouse, on his seventieth birthday, and concludes with a bibliography of his writings.

Peter Hainsworth was Professor of Italian at the University of Oxford until 2003. Martin McLaughlin is FIAT-Serena Professor of Italian Studies at the University of Oxford.

Reviews:

‘Hainsworth and McLaughlin open the volume with a succinct, clear and meaty disquisition on the nature of biography and autobiography. Their Introduction furnishes, in lively prose, an overview of the state of such writing in Italy... A fascinating glimpse into the life histories, and the shaping of life histories, by an eclectic group of Italians. Its chapters provide useful information on the less-known and engrossing new insights into familiar canonical figures.’ — Risa Sodi, Biography 32.3, Summer 2009, pp. 562-65
‘These pieces all share John Woodhouse's sentiment that the life lived and written by an author are "mutually illuminating" and that writing loses much when "seen solely within the terms of a textual universe".’ — unsigned, Forum for Modern Language Studies 46.1, January 2010, 107-08

Contents:

1-7	Introduction Peter Hainsworth, Martin McLaughlin	Cite
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8-22	The Public and the Private in Modern Italian Literature: The Case of Montale Peter Hainsworth	Cite
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23-37	The Battle of the Biographers: Primo Levi and ‘Life-Writing’ Robert S. C. Gordon	Cite
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38-54	Enrico Nencioni: An Italian Victorian Giuliana Pieri	Cite
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55-78	Pescara and the Abruzzo in the Imagination of Gabriele D’Annunzio Gianni Oliva	Cite
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79-96	British Material for the Biography of a Tuscan: Llewelyn Lloyd (1879–1949) T. Gwynfor Griffith	Cite
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97-113	Italo Svevo: Journalism and the Life of a Writer Antonella Braida	Cite
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114-132	Intellectual (Auto-)Biography in Bontempelli Jon Usher	Cite
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133-147	Italian War-Correspondents and The Spanish Civil War: Propaganda and Autobiography Charles Burdett	Cite
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148-167	Concessions to Autobiography in Calvino Martin McLaughlin	Cite
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168-187	Umberto Eco: Autobiography into Romance Jane E. Everson	Cite
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188-204	The Dummy Interlocutor and Oriana Fallaci’s Self-Projection in La rabbia e l’orgoglio John Gatt-Rutter	Cite
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Bibliography entry:

McLaughlin, Martin, and Peter Hainsworth (eds), Biographies and Autobiographies in Modern Italy (Cambridge: Legenda, 2007)

First footnote reference: ³⁵ Biographies and Autobiographies in Modern Italy, ed. by Martin McLaughlin and Peter Hainsworth (Cambridge: Legenda, 2007), p. 21.

Subsequent footnote reference: ³⁷ McLaughlin and Hainsworth, p. 47.

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Bibliography entry:

McLaughlin, Martin, and Peter Hainsworth (eds). 2007. Biographies and Autobiographies in Modern Italy (Cambridge: Legenda)

Example citation: ‘A quotation occurring on page 21 of this work’ (McLaughlin and Hainsworth 2007: 21).

Example footnote reference: ³⁵ McLaughlin and Hainsworth 2007: 21.

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This Legenda title was first published by Modern Humanities Research Association and Maney Publishing but rights to it are now held by Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge.

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Permanent link to this title:

www.mhra.org.uk/publications/Biographies-Autobiographies-in-Modern-Italy

Biographies and Autobiographies in Modern ItalyA Festschrift for John Woodhouse

Edited by Martin McLaughlin and Peter Hainsworth

Biographies and Autobiographies in Modern Italy
A Festschrift for John Woodhouse