Download or read book Between Salt Water and Holy Water written by Tommaso Astarita and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2005 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of southern Italy is entirely distinct from that of northern Italy (the two regions were distinct cultural and political entities until 1868), but it has never been given its own historical due. The myriad influences that shaped modern civilisation in the Mediterranean come together in southern Italy and Sicily - the region once known as the 'Kingdom of the Two Sicilies'. What the rest of the world recognises as Italian culture - from opera to pizza - was born in the South. Yet negative images of its poverty, violence, superstition and nearness to Africa fuelled stereotypes of what was and was not acceptably 'European'. From the Normans and Angevins through Spanish and Bourbon rule to the unification of Italy, historian Tommaso Astarita explores the intellectual, religious, economic and political history of this fascinating region and delivers an accessibly written book that is not just colourful and scholarly but also wholly engrossing.
Download or read book Between Salt Water and Holy Water A History of Southern Italy written by Tommaso Astarita and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2006-07-17 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Lucid, evocative, and richly detailed." —Jay Parini The history of southern Italy is entirely distinct from that of northern Italy, yet it has never been given its own due. In this authoritative and wholly engrossing history, distinguished scholar Tommaso Astarita "does a masterful job of correcting this error" (Mark Knoblauch, Booklist). From the Normans and Angevins, through Spanish and Bourbon rule, to the unification of Italy in 1860, Astarita rescues Sicily and the worlds south of Rome from the dustier folds of history and restores them to sparkling life. We are introduced to the colorful religious observances, the vibrant historical figures, the diverse population, the ancient ruins, beautiful landscapes, sweet music, and magnificent art—all of which inspired visitors to claim that one had to "see Naples, and then die."
Download or read book Italy written by Harry Hearder and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2001-12-13 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Italy: A Short History is a concise but comprehensive account of Italian history from the Ice Age to the present day. It is intended for both students of Italian history and culture and the general reader, whether tourist, business-person or traveller, with an interest in Italian affairs. Harry Hearder places the main political developments in Italian history in their economic and social context, and shows how these related to the great moments of artistic and cultural endeavour. Amongst key events, he analyses the growth and decline of the Roman Empire, the remarkable cultural achievements of the Renaissance, Italian unification and the contradictions of the fascist dictatorship of Mussolini. Jonathan Morris brings the work up to the present day with an authoritative but colourful history of the corruption scandals that brought down the post-war Italian political system in the 1990s and the new political forces that have emerged in its place.
Download or read book Impressions of Southern Italy written by Sharon Ouditt and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-07 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Naples was conventionally the southernmost stop of the Grand Tour beyond which, it was assumed, lay violent disorder: earthquakes, malaria, bandits, inhospitable inns, few roads and appalling food. On the other hand, Southern Italy lay at the heart of Magna Graecia, whose legends were hard-wired into the cultural imaginations of the educated. This book studies the British travellers who visited Italy's Southern territories. Spanning the late eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, the author considers what these travellers discovered, not in the form of a survey, but as a series of unfolding impressions disclosing multiple Southern Italies. Of the numerous travellers analysed within this volume, the central figures are Henry Swinburne, Craufurd Tait Ramage and Norman Douglas, whose Old Calabria (1915) remains in print. Their appeal is that they take the region seriously: Southern Italy wasn't simply a testing ground for their superior sensibilities, it was a vibrant curiosity, unknown but within reach. Was the South simply behind on the road to European integration; or was it beyond a fault line, representing a viable alternative to Northern neuroses? The travelogues analysed in this book address a wide variety of themes which continue to shape discussions about European identity today.
Download or read book Napoli New York Hollywood written by Giuliana Muscio and published by Fordham University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-30 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Napoli/New York/Hollywood is an absorbing investigation of the significant impact that Italian immigrant actors, musicians, and directors—and the southern Italian stage traditions they embodied—have had on the history of Hollywood cinema and American media, from 1895 to the present day. In a unique exploration of the transnational communication between American and Italian film industries, media or performing arts as practiced in Naples, New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, this groundbreaking book looks at the historical context and institutional film history from the illuminating perspective of the performers themselves—the workers who lend their bodies and their performance culture to screen representations. In doing so, the author brings to light the cultural work of families and generations of artists that have contributed not only to American film culture, but also to the cultural construction and evolution of “Italian-ness” over the past century. Napoli/New York/Hollywood offers a major contribution to our understanding of the role of southern Italian culture in American cinema, from the silent era to contemporary film. Using a provocative interdisciplinary approach, the author associates southern Italian culture with modernity and the immigrants’ preservation of cultural traditions with innovations in the mode of production and in the use of media technologies (theatrical venues, music records, radio, ethnic films). Each chapter synthesizes a wealth of previously under-studied material and displays the author’s exceptional ability to cover transnational cinematic issues within an historical context. For example, her analysis of the period from the end of World War I until the beginning of sound in film production in the end of the 1920s, delivers a meaningful revision of the relationship between Fascism and American cinema, and Italian emigration. Napoli/New York/Hollywood examines the careers of those Italian performers who were Italian not only because of their origins but because their theatrical culture was Italian, a culture that embraced high and low, tragedy and comedy, music, dance and even acrobatics, naturalism, and improvisation. Their previously unexplored story—that of the Italian diaspora’s influence on American cinema—is here meticulously reconstructed through rich primary sources, deep archival research, extensive film analysis, and an enlightening series of interviews with heirs to these traditions, including Francis Coppola and his sister Talia Shire, John Turturro, Nancy Savoca, James Gandolfini, David Chase, Joe Dante, and Annabella Sciorra.
Download or read book Mundunur A Mountain Village Under the Spell of South Italy written by Michele Antonio Di Marco and published by Via Media Publishing. This book was released on 2020-03-01 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Montenero Val Cocchiara is usually referred to simply as Montenero, or Mundunur in the local dialect. Montenero is a typical mountain village on the border of the Abruzzo and Molise regions, but it is more than that. Its history was tinted by contacts with numerous powerful groups over many centuries. The village and its people prove to be unique, but they also are highly embued with elements common to all in South Italy. Of course it is the hope of the author that anyone with roots in South Italy will benefit from reading this book. However, his much greater aspiration is that others will equally enjoy the story of Montenero as a metaphor of their own ancestral village or town, regardless of country or even see the village as a microcosm of the world where the forces of history and culture forge the character of people.
Download or read book In Search of Elena Ferrante written by Karen Bojar and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2018-07-10 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elena Ferrante--named one of the 100 most influential people in 2016 by Time magazine--is best known for her Neapolitan novels, which explore such themes as the complexity of female friendship; the joys and constraints of motherhood; the impact of changing gender roles; the pervasiveness of male violence; the struggle for upward mobility; and the impact of the feminist movement. Ferrante's three novellas encompass similar themes, focusing on moments of extreme tension in women's lives. This study analyzes the integration of political themes and feminist theory in Ferrante's works, including men's entrapment in a sexist script written for them from time immemorial. Her decision to write under a pseudonym is examined, along with speculation that Rome-based translator Anita Raja and her husband Domenico Starnone are coauthors of Ferrante's books.
Download or read book The Empire of Stereotypes written by R. Casillo and published by Springer. This book was released on 2006-05-13 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book places Germaine de Stael's influential novel, Corrine, or Italy (1807) in relation to preceding and subsequent stereotypes of Italy as seen in the works of Northern European and American travel writers since the Renaissance.
Download or read book Sacred Waters written by Celeste Ray and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-02-18 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describing sacred waters and their associated traditions in over thirty countries and across multiple time periods, this book identifies patterns in panhuman hydrolatry. Supplying life’s most basic daily need, freshwater sources were likely the earliest sacred sites, and the first protected and contested resource. Guarded by taboos, rites and supermundane forces, freshwater sources have also been considered thresholds to otherworlds. Often associated also with venerated stones, trees and healing flora, sacred water sources are sites of biocultural diversity. Addressing themes that will shape future water research, this volume examines cultural perceptions of water’s sacrality that can be employed to foster resilient human–environmental relationships in the growing water crises of the twenty-first century. The work combines perspectives from anthropology, archaeology, classics, folklore, geography, geology, history, literature and religious studies.
Download or read book The New World in Early Modern Italy 1492 1750 written by Elizabeth Horodowich and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-16 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume considers Italy's history and examines how Italians became fascinated with the New World in the early modern period.
Download or read book A Short Treatise on the Wealth and Poverty of Nations 1613 written by Antonio Serra and published by Anthem Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although no less an authority than Joseph A. Schumpeter proclaimed that Antonio Serra was the world's first economist, he remains something of a dark horse of economic historiography. 'A 'Short Treatise' on the Wealth and Poverty of Nations' presents, for the first time, an English translation of Serra's 'Breve Trattato' (1613), one of the most famous tracts in the history of political economy. The treatise is accompanied by Sophus A. Reinert's illuminating introduction which explores its historical context, reception, and relevance for current concerns.
Download or read book A History of Italy written by Claudia Baldoli and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2009-11-19 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Until the beginning of the 18th century, to be 'Italian' meant to identify with a number of collective memories, rather than a national memory. Yet there are elements of continuity that have shaped Italian identity over the past 1,500 years. Religion, food, art and architecture, a literary language, as well as a particular relationship between cities and countryside, between family and civil society have all contributed to present day Italian culture and politics. Baldoli explores the history of Italy as a country, rather than as a nation, in order to trace its fascinating cultural and political development. Offering a way into each period of Italian history, the book brings Italy's past to life with extracts from poetry, novels and music. Drawing on the latest research published in English and Italian, this is the ideal introduction for all those interested in Italy's cultural and social past and its significance for the country's present.
Download or read book The Four Horsemen written by Richard Stites and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-09 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a series of revolts starting in 1820, four military officers rode forth on horseback from obscure European towns to bring political freedom and a constitution to Spain, Naples, and Russia; and national independence to the Greeks. The men who launched these exploits from Andalusia to the snowy fields of Ukraine--Colonel Rafael del Riego, General Guglielmo Pepe, General Alexandros Ypsilanti, and Colonel Sergei Muraviev-Apostol--all hoped to overturn the old order. Over the next six years, their revolutions ended in failure. The men who led them became martyrs. In The Four Horsemen, the late, eminent historian Richard Stites offers a compelling narrative history of these four revolutions. Stites sets the stories side by side, allowing him to compare events and movements and so illuminate such topics as the transfer of ideas and peoples across frontiers, the formation of an international community of revolutionaries, and the appropriation of Christian symbols and language for secular purposes. He shows how expressive behavior and artifacts of all kinds--art, popular festivities, propaganda, and religion--worked their way to various degrees into all the revolutionary movements and regimes. And he documents as well the corruption, abandonment of liberal values, and outright betrayal of the revolution that emerged in Spain and Naples; the clash of ambitions and ideas that wracked the unity of the Decembrists' cause; and civil war that erupted in the midst of the Greek struggle for independence. Richard Stites was one of the most imaginative and broad-ranging historians working in the United States. This book is his last work, a classic example of his dazzling knowledge and idiosyncratic yet accessible writing style. The culmination of an esteemed career, The Four Horsemen promises to enthrall anyone interested in nineteenth-century Europe and the history of revolutions.
Download or read book Into the Heart of the Mafia written by David Lane and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2010-06-08 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this investigation into the criminal underworld of the cities and villages of the Italian South, David Lane provides an unrivaled exposé of the operations of the Mafia today From Naples, home of Mafia-controlled mozzarella and toxic waste, through the no less rotten Calabria, to Sicily, cradle of Cosa Nostra, the hold of the Mafia on Southern Italy is as strong as ever. Following a multi-decade career as a journalist in Italy, David Lane uses his extensive contacts into the world of organized crime to demonstrate how globalization has transformed the Mafia into more than simply a global phenomenon. In painful detail, Into the Heart of the Mafia describes the unceasing mafia pressure endured by priests and politicians, businessmen, trade unionists, and ordinary citizens, and the risks undertaken by the policemen, judges, and politicians who fight to weaken the Mafia's influence. A travelogue with the most deadly of implications, Into the Heart of the Mafia stands as a guide like no other into the darkest side of Italy.
Download or read book Travels and Translations written by Alison Yarrington and published by Rodopi. This book was released on 2013-11-01 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the fascinating interactions and exchanges between British and Italian cultures from the early modern period to the present. It looks at how these exchanges were mediated through personal encounters, travel writings, and translations, involving a variety of protagonists: explorers, writers, poets, preachers, diplomats and tourists. In particular, this book examines the understanding of Italy as a destination and set of locations, each with their own distinctive geographical character, during a period which saw the creation of the modern Italian state. It also charts the shifts in travelling activity during this period, from early explorers and cartographers, via those taking part in the Grand Tour in the 18th and 19th centuries, to more modern poet-travellers and blogging tourists. Drawing upon literary studies, history, art history, cultural studies, translation studies, sociology and socio-linguistics, this volume takes a cross-disciplinary approach to its rich constellation of ‘cultural transactions’.
Download or read book The Renaissance and the Wider World written by Joanne M. Ferraro and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-12-28 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Award-winning historian Joanne M. Ferraro's The Renaissance and the Wider World skillfully surveys the economic, political, social, and cultural history of Europe for the period between 1250 and 1600. The book examines how the Renaissance manifested itself through developments in the high culture of art, architecture, philosophy, science, technology, and education, as well as material culture in the form of worldly goods and consumption patterns. Ferraro expertly shows how Renaissance high culture began in 13th-century Italy, with important ancient and medieval legacies and cultural infusions from China, North Africa, and Islam and, from the 16th century, the Ottomans and the Americas; she also examines some of the ways in which this Renaissance then impacted the rest of Europe, the Americas, and the Ottoman Empire during the 15th and 16th centuries. Vital and innovative themes that permeate the text's discussions of science, art, architecture, philosophy, and technology are that: * Global encounters helped shape the material, intellectual and artistic cultures of the age * Both women and men contributed significantly to the advances made * The daily lives of ordinary men and women are fundamental to understanding this remarkable period Highly illustrated and with valuable pedagogical features, such as timelines and a glossary, The Renaissance and the Wider World is the essential guide to a European era of profound global importance.
Download or read book Mezzogiorno written by David Kerekes and published by SCB Distributors. This book was released on 2012-09-27 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No map distinguishes Montefalcione as different from any other isolated mountain village in southern Italy. It has ancient customs and its own saints and feast days -- yet Montefalcione, in Campania, is the setting for this meditation on the Italian Diaspora, reconstructing three generations of village life through myth, superstition, and the anecdotal history of the author’s own family. The drama unfolds amidst a landscape of peasant riots, vicious landlords, religious festival, feuds, the collapse of the Fascist party, and the tarantella - a world lost to the changing face of the 21st Century.
