This book is about the presence of utopian and dystopian elements in the Italian literary landscape. It focuses on four authors that are representatives of the various positions in the Italian cultural debate: Pasolini, Calvino, Sanguineti, and Volponi. What did concepts like utopia and dystopia mean for these authors? Is it possible to separate utopia from dystopia? What is the role of science fiction in this debate? This book answers these questions, proposing an original interpretation of utopia and of the social role of literature. The book also takes into consideration four of the most influential literary journals in Italy: Officina, il menabò, il verri, and Nuovi Argomenti, that played a central role in the cultural and political debate on utopia in Italy.

This book offers a comprehensive guide to global literary engagement with the Cold War. Eschewing the common focus on national cultures, the collection defines Cold War literature as an international current focused on the military and ideological conflicts of the age and characterised by styles and approaches that transcended national borders. Drawing on specialists from across the world, the volume analyses the period’s fiction, poetry, drama and autobiographical writings in three sections: dominant concerns (socialism, decolonisation, nuclearism, propaganda, censorship, espionage), common genres (postmodernism, socialism realism, dystopianism, migrant poetry, science fiction, testimonial writing) and regional cultures (Asia, Africa, Oceania, Europe and the Americas). In doing so, the volume forms a landmark contribution to Cold War literary studies which will appeal to all those working on literature of the 1945-1989 period, including specialists in comparative literature, postcolonial literature, contemporary literature and regional literature.

This book examines how Italian Americans have been represented in cinema, from the depiction of Italian migration in New Orleans in the 1890s (Vendetta) to the transition from first- to second-generation immigrants (Ask the Dust), and from the establishment of the stereotype of the Italian American gangster (Little Caesar, Scarface) to its re-definition (Mean Streets), along with a peculiar depiction of Italian American masculinity (Marty, Raging Bull). For many years, Italian migration studies in the United States have commented on the way cinema contributed to the creation of an identifiable Italian American identity. More recently, scholars have recognized the existence of a more nuanced plurality of Italian American identities that reflects social and historical elements, class backgrounds, and the relationship with other ethnic minorities. The second part of the book challenges the most common stereotypes of Italian Americanness: food (Big Night) and Mafia, deconstructing the criminal tropes that have contributed to shaping the perception of Italian-American mafiosi in The Funeral, Goodfellas, Donnie Brasco, and the first two chapters of the Godfather trilogy. At the crossroads of the fields of Italian Culture, Italian American Culture, Film Studies, and Migration Studies, Italian Americans in Film is written not only for undergraduate and graduate students but also for scholars who teach courses on Italian American Cinema and Visual Culture.

In recent years, the field of literary studies at the international level has become more involved in the analysis of the so-called industrial literature, a literary genre that focuses on the literary representation of factory work and workers’ alienation. This book engages in the ongoing debate by offering a narratological analysis of Italian industrial novels in particular, while taking into consideration their paratexts and interrogating the possibility of the presence of a testimonial intent in the text. The study reconstructs the connections between visions of factory utopias and Italian industrial literature, starting with an overview of said visions of utopia and how they came into being in Europe following the industrial revolution. It then proceeds by exploring the relationship between the twentieth-century Italian entrepreneur Adriano Olivetti and Italian industrial authors, and the influence that Olivetti’s visions of factory utopia had on these writers and how they perceived themselves as witnesses of factory life and workers’ alienation. In analyzing these texts, and particularly the novels by Paolo Volponi and Ottiero Ottieri, the book focuses on the previously overlooked representation of the self in industrial literature and on how this self expresses the need for testimony.

This book explores Italian science fiction from 1861, the year of Italy’s unification, to the present day, focusing on how this genre helped shape notions of Otherness and Normalness. In particular, Italian Science Fiction draws upon critical race studies, postcolonial theory, and feminist studies to explore how migration, colonialism, multiculturalism, and racism have been represented in genre film and literature. Topics include the role of science fiction in constructing a national identity; the representation and self-representation of “alien” immigrants in Italy; the creation of internal “Others,” such as southerners and Roma; the intersections of gender and race discrimination; and Italian science fiction’s transnational dialogue with foreign science fiction. This book reveals that though it is arguably a minor genre in Italy, science fiction offers an innovative interpretive angle for rethinking Italian history and imagining future change in Italian society.

The Years of Alienation in Italy offers an interdisciplinary overview of the socio-political, psychological, philosophical, and cultural meanings that the notion of alienation took on in Italy between the 1960s and the 1970s. It addresses alienation as a social condition of estrangement caused by the capitalist system, a pathological state of the mind and an ontological condition of subjectivity. Contributors to the edited volume explore the pervasive influence this multifarious concept had on literature, cinema, architecture, and photography in Italy. The collection also theoretically reassesses the notion of alienation from a novel perspective, employing Italy as a paradigmatic case study in its pioneering role in the revolution of mental health care and factory work during these two decades.