China On Video is the first in-depth study that examines smaller-screen realities and the important role they play not only in the fast-changing Chinese mediascape, but also more broadly in the practice of experimental and non-mainstream cinema. At the crossroads of several disciplines—film, media, new media, media anthropology, visual arts, contemporary China area studies, and cultural studies--this book reveals the existence of a creative, humorous, but also socially and politically critical "China on video", which locates itself outside of the intellectual discourse surrounding both auteur cinema and digital art. By describing smaller-screen movies, moviemaking and viewing as light realities, Voci points to their "insignificant" weight in terms of production costs, distribution size, profit gains, intellectual or artistic ambitions, but also their deep meaning in defining an alternative way of seeing and understanding the world. The author proposes that lightness is a concept that can usefully be deployed to describe the moving image, beyond the specificity of recent new media developments and which can, in fact, help us rethink previous cinematic practices in broad terms both spatially and temporally.
China On Video is the first in-depth study that examines smaller-screen realities and the important role they play not only in the fast-changing Chinese mediascape, but also more broadly in the practice of experimental and non-mainstream cinema. At the crossroads of several disciplines—film, media, new media, media anthropology, visual arts, contemporary China area studies, and cultural studies--this book reveals the existence of a creative, humorous, but also socially and politically critical "China on video", which locates itself outside of the intellectual discourse surrounding both auteur cinema and digital art. By describing smaller-screen movies, moviemaking and viewing as light realities, Voci points to their "insignificant" weight in terms of production costs, distribution size, profit gains, intellectual or artistic ambitions, but also their deep meaning in defining an alternative way of seeing and understanding the world. The author proposes that lightness is a concept that can usefully be deployed to describe the moving image, beyond the specificity of recent new media developments and which can, in fact, help us rethink previous cinematic practices in broad terms both spatially and temporally.
Italia: Civilta e Cultura offers a comprehensive description of historical and cultural development on the Italian peninsula. This project was developed to provide students and professors with a flexible and easy-to-read reference book about Italian civilization and cultural studies, also appropriate for cinema and Italian literature classes. This text is intended for students pursuing a minor or a major in Italian studies and serves as an important learning tool with its all-inclusive vision of Italy. Each chapter includes thematic itineraries to promote active class discussion and textual comprehension check-questions to guide students through the reading and understanding of the subject matter.
Anti-courtly discourse furnished a platform for discussing some of the most pressing questions of early modern Italian society. The court was the space that witnessed a new form of negotiation of identity and prestige, the definition of masculinity and of gender-specific roles, the birth of modern politics and of an ethics based on merit and on individual self-interest. The Court and Its Critics analyses anti-courtly critiques using a wide variety of sources including manuals of courtliness, dialogues, satires, and plays, from the mid-fifteenth to the early seventeenth century. The book is structured around four key figures that embody different features of anti-courtly sentiments. The figure of the courtier shows that sentiments against the court were present even among those who apparently benefitted from such a system of power. The court lady allows an investigation of the intertwining of anti-courtliness and anti-feminism. The satirist and the shepherd of pastoral dramas are investigated as attempts to fashion two different forms of a new self for the court intellectual.
[…] Spostandosi sugli assi cartesiani dello spazio (Io sono nelle tasche / della mia città) e del tempo (Era così la mia casa un tempo, / di voci e bucati stesi), si ha come l’impressione che Picasso o Lynch si siano divertiti a girare il film della vita dell’autrice, smontando e rimontando i pezzi in maniera tale da smarrirci nel labirinto dei ricordi e dei sentimenti. Sentimenti che poi – con l’amore in prima fila – sono l’altro grande protagonista della silloge. L’amore, sembra sussurrarci la poetessa, resta inafferrabile, indecifrabile, a venti e a settant’anni, una calamita cui non ci si può sottrarre, ma anche un puzzle cui un fauno dispettoso ha sottratto di nascosto un pezzo, e quindi mai completabile (Sei già così lontano, amore, / sei di un altro tempo, / ma mi scivoli accanto ogni giorno / con mani di nebbia). Ma soprattutto irrinunciabile, confessa nei versi più struggenti della raccolta: È stato poco correre insieme / quasi una vita. / La felicità affama. […] Dalla prefazione di Giuseppe Palladino Paola Pancaldi Pugolotti è nata a Parma, dove ha trascorso l’infanzia e l’adolescenza. Da molti anni vive a Milano. È autrice di poesie, racconti, romanzi e libri di fiabe. Ama molto la fotografia e la musica. Le sue poesie raccontano le emozioni, i ricordi, il dolore, l’amore. Ha vinto molti premi e pubblicato le seguenti raccolte poetiche: Il luogo e il tempo, Le ultime scale, Le bocche invisibili, Quarto tempo; il romanzo Il posto dei limoni e il libro di racconti Le trasgressioni di Miranda.
A fascinating feminist reading of an often scorned medium: the storytelling, cross-platform success, and female fandom of the photoromance. Born in Italy and successfully exported to the rest of the world, photoromances had a readership of millions in the postwar years. By the early 1960s, more than ten million Italians read a photoromance each week. Despite its popularity, the photoromance--a form of graphic storytelling that uses photographs instead of drawings--was widely scorned as a medium, and its largely female audience derided as naive, pathetic, and uneducated. In this provocative book, Paola Bonifazio offers another perspective, making a case for the relevance of the photoromance for both feminism and media culture. She argues that the photoromance pioneered storytelling across platforms, elevated characters and artists into brands, and nurtured a devoted fan base. Moreover, Bonifazio shows that female readers--condescended to by intellectuals, journalists, and politicians of both the left and the right--powered the Italian photoromance industry's success.
The Roma (commonly known as "Gypsies") have largely been depicted in writings and in popular culture as an illiterate group. However, as Romani Writing shows, the Roma have a deep understanding of literacy and its implications, and use writing for a range of different purposes. While some Romani writers adopt an "oral" use of the written medium, which aims at opposing and deconstructing anti-Gypsy stereotypes, other Romani authors use writing for purposes of identity-building. Writing is for Romani activists and intellectuals a key factor in establishing a shared identity and introducing a common language that transcends linguistic and geographical boundaries between different Romani groups. Romani authors, acting in-between different cultures and communication systems, regard writing as an act of cultural mediation through which they are able to rewrite Gypsy images and negotiate their identity while retaining their ethnic specificity. Indeed, Romani Writing demonstrates how Romani authors have started to create self-images in which the Roma are no longer portrayed as "objects", but become "subjects" of written representation.
Language is now understood as a key component of cultural identity, but discourses on linguistic nationalism are only a few centuries old. In Irresistible Signs, Paola Gambarota investigates the connection between Italian language and national identity over four hundred years, from late-Renaissance linguistic theories to nineteenth-century nationalist myths. Challenging the consensus that linguistic nationalism originated with nineteenth century German philosophers, Irresistible Signs advances a more nuanced theory of how culture and language become inextricably linked through literary and rhetorical elements. Gambarota combines Anglo-American theories of the nation with the most advanced Italian scholarship on language ideology and delves into ideas from Giambattista Vico, Giacomo Leopardi, and Melchiorre Cesarotti. Irresistible Signs also explores how images of national communities are represented within vernaculars, affirming their influence in shaping contemporary models of monolingual nationhood.
This book provides the first comprehensive overview of the structure, dynamics, sociology and interrelations that characterised the community of Italian anarchist exiles in London.
Examines the place that Lucrezia Marinella holds within the dominant literary tradition of seventeenth-century Italy as a writer, as well as a woman who lived within a predominantly patriarchal culture.
Futurist Women broadens current debates on Futurism and literary studies by demonstrating the expanding global impact of women Futurist artists and writers in the period succeeding the First World War. This study initially focuses on the local: the making of the self in the work by the women who were affiliated with the journal L'Italia futurista during World War I in Florence. But then it broadens its field of inquiry to the global. It compares the achievements of these women with those of key precursors and followers. It also conceives these women's work as an ongoing dialogue with contemporary political and scientific trends in Europe and North America, especially first wave feminism, eugenics, naturism and esotericism. Finally, it examines the vital importance and repercussions of these women's ideas in current debates on gender and the posthuman condition. This ground-breaking study will prove invaluable for all scholars and upper-level students of modern European literature, Futurism, and gender studies.
A stark departure from traditional philology, What is Authorial Philology? is the first comprehensive treatment of authorial philology as a discipline in its own right. It provides readers with an excellent introduction to the theory and practice of editing ‘authorial texts’ alongside an exploration of authorial philology in its cultural and conceptual architecture. The originality and distinction of this work lies in its clear systematization of a discipline whose autonomous status has only recently been recognised (at least in Italy), though its roots may extend back as far as Giorgio Pasquali. This pioneering volume offers both a methodical set of instructions on how to read critical editions, and a wide range of practical examples, expanding upon the conceptual and methodological apparatus laid out in the first two chapters. By presenting a thorough account of the historical and theoretical framework through which authorial philology developed, Paola Italia and Giulia Raboni successfully reconceptualize the authorial text as an ever-changing organism, subject to alteration and modification. What is Authorial Philology? will be of great didactic value to students and researchers alike, providing readers with a fuller understanding of the rationale behind different editing practices, and addressing both traditional and newer methods such as the use of the digital medium and its implications. Spanning the whole Italian tradition from Petrarch to Carlo Emilio Gadda, this ground-breaking volume provokes us to consider important questions concerning a text’s dynamism, the extent to which an author is ‘agentive’, and, most crucially, about the very nature of what we read.
Tre sono i personaggi che animano questa fiaba: Paola, che adora la musica, Joachim, che trascorre le proprie giornate suonando la chitarra, e il piccolo Rohith, che abita in un immenso palazzo, dove vivono i bambini in attesa di trovare una famiglia. Tutti e tre i personaggi avvertono dentro i loro cuori una mancanza dolorosa che non sanno spiegare e, per placare questa loro nostalgia, cantano. Un giorno, per caso, le loro voci si intrecciano e, per un momento, danno vita a un canto straordinario. Da allora i tre personaggi non smetteranno mai di cercarsi…
Ti diranno che ciò che osservi non è reale, tu non badare e guarda oltre. Ti diranno che i sogni sono solo fiamme che alla fine si spengono, tu non crederci e mantieni vivo il loro ardere. Cercheranno di persuadere il tuo pensiero, ma fà che quel pensiero sia più forte di loro. Ti sbatteranno in faccia realtà che scuoteranno il petto, non sederti mai alle loro pretese, avanza sempre con le tue.
The keywords gathered here form a valuable testament: they reflect the memorable moments of the scientific and cultural encounters of a group of PhD students from several European universities, all of whom have completed the Erasmus Mundus Master Program in “European Literary Cultures”. This program of excellence was created in 2008 by the Universities of Bologna, Upper Alsace, Strasbourg and Thessaloniki. In a first scientific exchange in July 2013, several doctoral students proposed what they consider their “Research Horizons”. This volume is dedicated to several domains in several languages, from the Middle Ages to the present day, involving literature, linguistics and cinema. We invite the reader to discover here within the research of tomorrow at the crossroads of new methodologies, critical discussion and transnational dialogue.
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