Meet Allegro, an ordinary boy who can't stand practicing the piano. Those black dots on the page drive him crazy--until the music itself whisks him away on a breathtaking journey through 11 beloved classical pieces.

In this study of John Milton’s “L’Allegro”, “Il Penseroso”, and “Lycidas”, the perspective of an interpreting sign serves as the basis for analysis of the poems’ allusions to the Orpheus myth. The idea of an interpretant proposed by Charles Sanders Peirce and the semiotic relations theorized by Jorgen Dines Johansen work as a lens that enables the reader to see the extent to which Milton recreated the Orpheus myth and used its recreating powers in his poems. Since the three poems have different and opposing voices, the Orpheus myth is the trigger behind the change of voices, as well as the modeling frame that underlies the transitions from an innocent to an enlightened viewpoint. Furthermore, readers in general and critics of all persuasions will have the chance to appreciate the presence of the Orpheus myth in Milton’s work as the fragmented configuration of consciousness in the process of defining two orders of existence: the human and the divine.

Mount Allegro is an extraordinary memoir, a celebration of Sicilian life, an engaging sociological portrait, a moving reminiscence of a fledgling writer’s escape from the restrictive culture in which he grew up. Jerre Mangione’s autobiographical chronicle of his youth in a Sicilian community in Rochester is one of the truly enduring books about the immigrant experience in this country. Family squabbles, soul-nourishing food, and the casting of evil eyes are only some of the ingredients of this richly textured book, although they must all take second place to its unforgettable characters. As Eugene Paul Nassar writes in the book’s Foreword, “Mount Allegro . . . gave a literary visibility and identity, amiable and appealing, to a poorly understood ethnic group in America, and did so at a very high level of artistry.”