The Idea of Beauty in Italian Literature and Language
Title | The Idea of Beauty in Italian Literature and Language PDF eBook |
Author | |
Publisher | BRILL |
Pages | 391 |
Release | 2019-01-04 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 9004388958 |
This book assesses the pivotal role played by the concept of beauty in Italian literature and language in the construction of the Italian national identity.
The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories
Title | The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories PDF eBook |
Author | Jhumpa Lahiri |
Publisher | Penguin UK |
Pages | 528 |
Release | 2019-03-07 |
Genre | Fiction |
ISBN | 0141985623 |
'Rich. . . eclectic. . . a feast' Telegraph This landmark collection brings together forty writers that reflect over a hundred years of Italy's vibrant and diverse short story tradition, from the birth of the modern nation to the end of the twentieth century. Poets, journalists, visual artists, musicians, editors, critics, teachers, scientists, politicians, translators: the writers that inhabit these pages represent a dynamic cross section of Italian society, their powerful voices resonating through regional landscapes, private passions and dramatic political events. This wide-ranging selection curated by Jhumpa Lahiri includes well known authors such as Italo Calvino, Elsa Morante and Luigi Pirandello alongside many captivating new discoveries. More than a third of the stories featured in this volume have been translated into English for the first time, several of them by Lahiri herself.
The Renaissance
Title | The Renaissance PDF eBook |
Author | Walter Pater |
Publisher | |
Pages | 276 |
Release | 1910 |
Genre | Art, Renaissance |
ISBN |
Encounters with the Real in Contemporary Italian Literature and Cinema
Title | Encounters with the Real in Contemporary Italian Literature and Cinema PDF eBook |
Author | Loredana Di Martino |
Publisher | Cambridge Scholars Publishing |
Pages | 395 |
Release | 2017-01-06 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 1443862282 |
This volume explores the Italian contribution to the current global phenomenon of a “return to reality” by examining the country’s rich cultural production in literature and cinema. The focus is particularly on works from the period spanning the Nineties to the present day which offer alternatives to notions of reality as manufactured by the collusion between the neo-liberal state and the media. The book also discusses Italy’s relationship with its own cultural past by investigating how Italian authors deal with the return of the specter of Neorealism as it haunts the modern artistic imagination in this new epoch of crisis. Furthermore, the volume engages in dialogue with previous works of criticism on contemporary Italian realism, while going beyond them in devoting equal attention to cinema and literature. The resulting interactions will aid the reader in understanding how the critical arts respond to the triumph of hyperrealism in the current era of the virtual spectacle as they seek new ways to promote cognitive transformations and foster ethical interventions.
First Italian Reader
Title | First Italian Reader PDF eBook |
Author | Stanley Appelbaum |
Publisher | Courier Corporation |
Pages | 242 |
Release | 2012-08-29 |
Genre | Foreign Language Study |
ISBN | 048612035X |
Beginning students of Italian language and literature will welcome these selections of poetry, fiction, history, and philosophy by 14th- to 20th-century authors, including Dante, Boccaccio, Pirandello, and 52 others.
Sprezzatura
Title | Sprezzatura PDF eBook |
Author | Paolo D'Angelo |
Publisher | Columbia University Press |
Pages | 151 |
Release | 2018-03-06 |
Genre | Art |
ISBN | 0231540345 |
The essence of art is to conceal art. A dancer or musician does not only need to perform with ability. There should also be a lack of visible effort that gives an impression of naturalness. To disguise technique and feign ease is to heighten beauty. To express this notion, Italian has a word with no exact equivalent in other languages, sprezzatura: a kind of unaffectedness or nonchalance. In this book, the first to consider sprezzatura in its own right, philosopher of art Paolo D’Angelo reconstructs the history of concealing art, from ancient rhetoric to our own times. The word sprezzatura was coined in 1528 by Baldassarre Castiglione in The Book of the Courtier to mean a kind of grace with a special essence: the ability to conceal art. But the idea reaches back to Aristotle and Cicero and forward to avant-garde works such as Duchamp’s ready-mades, all of which share the suspicion of the overt display of skill. The precept that art must be hidden turns up in a number of fields, from cosmetics to interior design, politics to poetry, the English garden to shabby chic. Through exploring different articulations of this idea, D’Angelo shows the paradox of aesthetics: art hides that it is art, but in doing so it reveals itself to be art and becomes an assertion about art. When art is concealed, it appears as spontaneous as nature—yet, paradoxically, also reveals its indebtedness to technique. An erudite and surprising tour through aesthetics, philosophy, and art history, Sprezzatura presents a strikingly original argument with deceptive ease.
The Spiritual Language of Art: Medieval Christian Themes in Writings on Art of the Italian Renaissance
Title | The Spiritual Language of Art: Medieval Christian Themes in Writings on Art of the Italian Renaissance PDF eBook |
Author | Steven F.H. Stowell |
Publisher | BRILL |
Pages | 418 |
Release | 2014-11-13 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 9004283927 |
Analyzing the literature on art from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, The Spiritual Language of Art explores the complex relationship between visual art and spiritual experiences during the Italian Renaissance. Though scholarly research on these writings has predominantly focused on the influence of classical literature, this study reveals that Renaissance authors consistently discussed art using terms, concepts and metaphors derived from spiritual literature. By examining these texts in the light of medieval sources, greater insight is gained on the spiritual nature of the artist’s process and the reception of art. Offering a close re-readings of many important writers (Alberti, Leonardo, Vasari, etc.), this study deepens our understanding of attitudes toward art and spirituality in the Italian Renaissance.