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The late and turbulent transition from a largely rural and peasant society to a modern urban state involved the crisis of rooted popular traditions and the emergence of mass cultural forms. As a result, Italy, once the centre of a cultural world, has increasingly found itself on the periphery of an American media empire and serious questions of cultural identity have been raised. The Italian case is further significant on account of the theoretical and political problems it has posed. As well as dealing with these and related topics, the book examines current tendencies, such as the rapid multiplication of sub-cultures and the crisis of 'mass' forms. Each chapter is written by a specialist in the field. Although the essays normally deal with specific problems, they also highlight both the historical context and more general considerations within their sphere of interest.
Italian cinemas after the war were filled by audiences who had come to watch domestically-produced films of passion and pathos. These highly emotional and consciously theatrical melodramas posed moral questions with stylish flair, redefining popular ways of feeling about romance, family, gender, class, Catholicism, Italy, and feeling itself. The Operatic and the Everyday in Postwar Italian Film Melodrama argues for the centrality of melodrama to Italian culture. It uncovers a wealth of films rarely discussed before including family melodramas, the crime stories of neorealismo popolare and opera films, and provides interpretive frameworks that position them in wider debates on aesthetics and society. The book also considers the well-established topics of realism and arthouse auteurism, and re-thinks film history by investigating the presence of melodrama in neorealism and post-war modernism. It places film within its broader cultural context to trace the connections of canonical melodramatists like Visconti and Matarazzo to traditions of opera, the musical theatre of the sceneggiata, visual arts, and magazines. In so doing it seeks to capture the artistry and emotional experiences found within a truly popular form.
Headline: A study of how Italian films re-envisage male identity in response to sexual liberationBlurb: Italian cinema has traditionally used the trope of an inadequate man in crisis to reflect on the country's many social and political upheavals. Masculinity and Italian Cinema examines how this preoccupation with male identity becomes especially acute in the 1970s when a set of more diverse and inclusive images of men emerge in response to the rise of feminism and gay liberation. Through an analysis of the way Italian films explore anxieties about male sexuality and femininity, the book shows how such anxieties also intersect with particular preoccupations about national identity and political engagement. This is an essential study-tool to understand the multiple constructions of masculinity in Italian cinema, helping students and researchers to understand the work of some of Italy's most provocative filmmakers.Key Features* Re-examines key Italian films, including Bernardo Bertolucci's The Conformist, Ettore Scola's A Special Day, Pier Paolo Pasolini's Theorem and Lina Wertmuller's The Seduction of Mimi, in the light of gender and queer theory.* Covers the major thematic concerns, genres and stylistic traits of 1970s Italian political cinema* Analyses the broader cultural context of 1970s Italy, including sections on Italian feminism, Gay liberation and the post-'68 social movements.Key Words: Gender; Queer; Body; Gay; Feminism; Pier Paolo Pasolini; Bernardo Bertolucci; Lina Wertmuller; Nanni Moretti; Federico Fellini; Ettore Scola; Marco Ferreri.
The Short Oxford History of Italy series, in seven volumes, will offer a complete History of Italy from the early middle ages to the present and, in each period, will present the most recent historical perspectives on Italian history. This means setting Italian history in the broader context of European history as a whole. It also means questioning accepted interpretations of Italian history in each of these periods and, in particular, the idea that Italy's history has been significantly different from that of the rest of Europe. Each volume will emphasise how developments in Italy in each period are best understood as variants on broader European patterns of political, economic social and cultural change. Italy since 1945 sets in context the tremendous changes that Italy has undergone in the last 55 years. In place of the land of pizza, sunshine, and soccer, McCarthy describes a developing nation: an economy that has found its own road to success via the piccole imprese with an increasingly strong stockmarket and more sophisticated banking; a dynamic, traditional, family centred society; and a political system struggling to modernize after forty years of Christian Democrat rule and Communist opposition. McCarthy also looks at the role of the Church, including Pius XII's wartime activities and the 'foreign pope', John-Paul II before finally turning to sport in Italy - the only country to have 3 daily newspapers devoted to the subject. Athoritative, accessible, and absorbing, the book examines modern Italy through the eyes of 10 leading commentators and explores the Italian experience in the wider context of both the nation's past and its wider contemporary European position.
The first comprehensive study in English of Umberto Eco's theories and fictions.
What is Italy? In 1814 Austrian Chancellor M. de Metternich dismissed it as a mere geographical expression, because political control of the peninsula had long been divided among self-governing cities, possessions of foreign dynasties, and the Vatican. Prior to that, Italy had formed the home base of the Roman Empire. It was not until 1861 that a united Italy emerged. This concise, and clearly written account explores Italian history and culture from the Etruscans to the present day. Starting with an introduction providing data on Italy's geography, people, and current government, the book examines the political and cultural history of the country in eleven chapters. Readers will discover the Romans, Lombards, popes, Guelphs, Ghibbellines, the Medici, the Risorgimento, sculptors, composers, Fascists, Christian Democrats, and many other people and events of Italy's rich history. Included are a biographical section with portraits of noteworthy Italians, an extensive bibliographical essay, a glossary of terms, and an index, making this book the most complete and up-to-date general history of the nation available.
This collection of essays provides a comprehensive account of the culture of modern Italy. Contributions focus on a wide range of political, historical and cultural questions. The volume provides information and analysis on such topics as regionalism, the growth of a national language, social and political cultures, the role of intellectuals, the Church, the left, feminism, the separatist movements, organised crime, literature, art, design, fashion, the mass media, and music. While offering a thorough history of Italian cultural movements, political trends and literary texts over the last century and a half, the volume also examines the cultural and political situation in Italy today and suggests possible future directions in which the country might move. Each essay contains suggestions for further reading on the topics covered. The Cambridge Companion to Modern Italian Culture is an invaluable source of materials for courses on all aspects of modern Italy.
With its monsters, vampires and cowboys, Italian popular culture in the postwar period has generally been dismissed as a form of evasion or escapism. Here, four international scholars re-examine and reinterpret the era to show that popular Italian cinema was not only in tune with contemporary political and social trends, it also presaged the turmoil and rebellion of the 1960s and 1970s. Their analysis of peplum (or 'sword and sandal') films, horror films, spaghetti westerns and comedy Italian-style shows how genre cinema reflected the changes wrought by modernization, urbanization, consumerist culture and the sexual revolution. With striking insights into the links between popular culture and politics, this book will be indispensable for specialists in film and media studies, Italian and cultural studies, as well as social history.
This book sheds new light on the role of the military in Italian society and culture during war and peacetime by bringing together a whole host of contributors across the interdisciplinary spectrum of Italian Studies. Divided into five thematic units, this volume examines the continuous and multifaceted impact of the military on modern and contemporary Italy. The Italian context offers a particularly fertile ground for studying the cultural impact of the military because the institution was used not only for defensive/offensive purposes, but also to unify the country and to spread ideas of socio-cultural and technological development across its diverse population.
Beginning from the unlikely vantage point of Venice in the aftermath of fascism and World War II, this book explores operatic production in the city's nascent postwar culture as a lens onto the relationship between opera and politics in the twentieth century. Both opera and Venice in the middle of the century are often talked about in strikingly similar terms: as museums locked in the past and blind to the future. These clichés are here overturned: perceptions of crisis were in fact remarkably productive for opera, and despite being physically locked in the past, Venice was undergoing a flourishing of avant-garde activity. Focusing on a local musical culture, Harriet Boyd-Bennett recasts some of the major composers, works, stylistic categories and narratives of twentieth-century music. The study provides fresh understandings of works by composers as diverse as Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Verdi, Britten and Nono.