Contact Information
Annali d’Italianistica
UNC-Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3170
Fax: (919) 962-5457
Upcoming Volumes
AdI 2012, Volume 30: Italian Cinema in the New Millennium
In 2000, in his essay on Italian cinema from Nanni Moretti to today, Paolo D’Agostini lamented that the distinguishing characteristics of Italian cinema were still undefined (“Il cinema italiano da Moretti a oggi.” Storia del cinema mondiale. Vols. 5 in 7 tomes. Ed. Gian Piero Brunetta. Torino: Einaudi, 1999- 2001. Vol. 3.1, pp. 1078-1112). Ten years after D’Agostini’s essay and Brunetta’s seven-volume study on cinema, I believe it is worthwhile pondering these and further related issues.
In order to carry out such investigation, I would like to solicit submissions of original research on films of the third millennium, focusing on new directors and trends in Italian cinema. Essays may focus on, but may not be limited to, any of the following issues: new directions in criticism; financial and political dynamics in film production; analysis of individual films; development of new authorial visions; intersections between film and other art forms (photography, music, literature, etc.); the representation of family and gender; the issue and experience of otherness; the search for cultural and spiritual identity.
Essays should be written in the language in which contributors feel most comfortable (Italian or English); they should be limited to no more than twenty double-spaced pages in the MLA style, and should be sent electronically (Word attachment only) by Oct. 31, 2011 or before, to Antonio Vitti: <ancvitti@indiana.edu>.
AdI 2013
Volume 31 of Annali d'italianistica, to be published in 2013, will celebrate the 7th centenary of Boccaccio's birth and intends to develop a reading of the entire Decameron from a unified perspective, taking into account all the elements of each day, some of which, such as the ten beginnings and conclusions of each day, are often neglected. Drawing from the many scholars who have suggested and also proposed a view of the Decameron as a parody of the prevailing culture of the Middle Ages, the volume is tentatively entitled: Boccaccio's Decameron: Rewriting the Christian Middle Ages.
Oftentimes read as a work of amusement, to be contrasted with Dante's sublime Divine Comedy or Petrarch's introspective and personal Canzoniere, the Decameron is construed — the Annali volume intends to argue — as a sophisticated discourse aimed at parodying the predominant medieval culture and proposing a more humane, tolerant, and ethical society that condemns hypocrisy, looks indulgently at sins of the flesh, and, most importantly, sets up several models of interactions among people that are based on equal and respectful exchange, as well as liberal and munificent giving. The volume intends to develop a reading of the entire Decameron as a parody, up to, and inclusive of, Day Nine. The tales narrated in the first nine days, by and large, portray a world in which people are often controlled by fortune, lust, self-interested ingenuity, hypocrisy, or their own wickedness, which oftentimes overcome other people's intelligence, simplicity, or good will; in brief, adopting a famous Machiavellian statement, a world by and large in which anyone who intends to be virtuous is bound to perish. A simplified definition of parody, which may help explain how it functions in the Decameron, includes most of the genre's fundamental elements. According to this reading, the Decameron seeks to subvert prevailing medieval ideologies, primarily of the church, while proposing new ways of thought and conduct; in brief, a new way of looking at life and the world that can itself also be subjected to critique, as the Decameron's conclusion exemplifies through the Narrator's interaction with the ladies in love, but also, at the same time, a world view more focused on humans, who are by nature fallible and thus need compassion, as the Narrator proclaims at the beginning and end of the masterpiece.
Vis-à-vis the first nine days, which can be referred to as pars destruens, and in which the predominant medieval culture is being questioned, undermined, and parodied, the tales of the tenth day seek to represent, according to this reading, the Decameron's pars construens. Here Boccaccio seeks to reconstruct a new community of people, which, albeit unable to eliminate the aporias afflicting the world of the first ninety stories, can nevertheless be transformed by acts of liberality, generosity, and even total self-sacrifice. Thus, in so far as also the last ten tales rewrite the traditional origin and purpose of these virtuous acts — no longer performed for God's love, as Christianity demands — also Day Ten may be viewed within the Decameron's parodic context.