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For about four decades Dino Buzzati contributed Christmas pieces to major Italian newspapers. Some are journalistic articles decrying the loss of faith in the redeeming power of imagination caused by the spread of consumer habits; others are visionary representations recreating the festivity's magic aura. The stories belonging to the second type lie at the intersection between the Dickensian tradition and Italy's own Christmas literature. Buzzati's uniqueness resides in the intertextual borrowing of fantastic features from Dickens as well as in the use of irony and the inversion of generic stereotypes, as opposed to the didactic realism of Italian seasonal narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A central episode in Tomasi di Lampedusa's Il Gattopardo describes how the lovers Tancredi and Angelica explore the neglected parts of the family palace of Donnafugata. This study suggests an intertext for Lampedusa's text in Gabriele D'Annunzio's Forse che sí forse che no, where the protagonists have a similar erotic encounter during a visit to the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua. The likelihood of a deliberate allusion by Lampedusa adds D'Annunzio to the long list of authors on whom he drew in Il Gattopardo, providing further evidence of his distinctive modus incorporandi as he weaves the threads of D'Annunzio's novel into a new tapestry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In I promessi sposi, Manzoni avoids love scenes, fearing that some readers might relive them with excessive intensity. This article focuses on twentieth-century writers and critics who introduced erotic elements in their rewriting or rereading of the novel. Their eroticization of Manzoni was often prompted by satirical intentions or a taste for desecration. Yet writers such as Alberto Moravia and Mario Soldati and critics such as Vittorio Spinazzola and Paolo Valesio have glimpsed in the novel the erotic elements that Manzoni had tried to suppress, and used this perception to express the changed sensitivities of their own time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents scholar Franz Kafka's views on the book "Riflessi," by Aldo Palazzeschi, also known under the title "Allegoria Di Novembre." The novel is lost in its identity as an epistolary novel from the few decades of the twentieth century. So far, critical readings of the novel have failed to highlight what appears to be such an evident formal characteristic and, consequently, they have also left unexplored the potential interpretative implications this 'epistolary' feature may suggest. Palazzeschi's short novel with its two completely different, stylistically and structurally contrasting sections--the first and longer one consisting of thirty letters from the protagonist, Prince Valentino Kore, to his ex-lover, John Mare, and the second representing the comments of a vociferous crowd after the mysterious disappearance of Valentino--disorients its readers and problematizes any rigid categorization. The author suggest that Riflessi, with its two sections and its shifting narrative perspective, may actually represent a unique example and, thus, also a fitting "missing link" in the chronological development of the epistolary form in the Italian literary tradition.

Focuses on the contribution of author Charles Dickens in the Italian literature. History of Dickens' writings; Literary themes; List of books written.

This article considers the notion of subjectivity, image, and identity as they appear in the novels Menzogna e sortilegio and L'isola di Arturo by Elsa Morante. At the start of Morante's first novel, Menzogna e sortilegio. published in 1948, the main protagonist Elisa begins to tell the story of her family, to relate to herself and to readers the myths, stories, and romances that constitute her own past, her own history, and her own story. Elisa produces a romanzo, a novel. It seems that the whole project of Menzogna e sortilegio, far from being a family saga on the grand scale with Morante indulging a passion for narration for its own sake, for the joy of telling a story, and for the pleasure of seeing all the loose ends tidied up, can be been as an essay by the younger writer on the art, purpose, and function of writing itself, and of her own position as a woman writing. Morante's novel published almost ten years later, L'isola di Arturo, is a novel about seeking a self within the self. It is never made explicit why the mature Arturo is recounting his early years. The very title, Arthur's Island, is ambiguous, and holds within it the many-faceted experience which is to be described. In the novel, the rejection of women by Wilhelm and the young Arturo is a rejection of the dimension of time and death, the power of life and death which women are seen to represent.

This article presents information about the book "Novellino." The collection of one hundred short narratives now known as the "Novellino" was compiled towards the end of the thirteenth century by an unknown Italian. The stories are drawn from many different sources, and vary widely in content. They are extremely brief and they are noted for their rapid, concise, and vigorous narrative style. The work has enjoyed a modest popularity thanks to the charm and rich variety of the tales, as well as the antiquarian interest of this first original work of narrative fiction in Italian vernacular prose. Literary critics have tended to be rather condescending towards "Novellino." Nothing is known about the author and his background except what can be deduced from the text. The writer might well have been a Florentine, of the merchant class. This first tale offers an ideal text for close reading. Its protagonists are among the most suggestive figures in medieval literature: the legendary Ethiopian priest-king Prester John, and the Emperor Frederick II, who died in 1250.

This article presents information on the presidential address of the Modern Humanities Research Association. The author opines that the term Secentismo acquired a derogatory meaning right from the beginning. In the last few decades it has largely been dropped from critical usage. The word Marinismo, in its adjectival form, can be found in the writings of Tommaso Stigliani. When considering Benedetto Croce's writings on the Seicento, one cannot help being struck by what seems to be, if not an inner contradiction, at least a hint of dualism, as though his urge to enquire, or even his taste, pulled him in one direction, while his reason pushed him in the opposite one. Right from the beginning of his career as a scholar, even before 1890, when he was still in his twenties, Croce was stimulated by his early studies on Neapolitan history and on Spanish influence in Italy to venture into the ocean of the Seicento. His immediate surroundings are likely to have been another contributory factor. Naples has an abundance of visible architectural reminders of that period in its very heart, and this must have enhanced his interest in an age which, moreover, must have increasingly forced itself on his attention as holding the key to the understanding of the development of modern Italian history, literary and otherwise.

The article explains that author Ugo Foscolo's contributions to the Edinburgh Review, five articles on Italian literature and history published between 1818 and 1827, reflected considerable credit both on the author and on the Review. The two articles on poet, Alighieri Dante, are acknowledged landmarks in the history of Italian criticism, being some of the earliest examples of a new historical scholarship; and they also contributed significantly to the awakening of interest in Dante in this country which was to affect the work of so many English poets during the next twenty years. The understanding of Foscolo's relations with the Edinburgh Review has been hampered by the disappearance of virtually all his letters to the editor, Francis Jeffrey, whose correspondence to Foscolo was published some forty years ago. Now Foscolo's replies have come to light, and the purpose of this article is to make known this hitherto unpublished material. The course of Foscolo's life in England is now fairly well documented. He arrived in London in September 1816 and received a warm welcome in Whig circles.