Topic of the course

1
Topic of the course

• Which preconceived ideas and expectations do
  English people carry about Italy?
• How were they formed?
• Direct knowledge of the country
• Literary and artistic influence
• What role did literature play in the
  dissemination of ideas about Italy?
• Which images of Italy are reflected in English
  literature?

2
A topos of the British imaginary

• Italy remained a constant component of the
  English background even in the centuries of
  Italys political eclipse
• Some special places and cities have a mythical,
  ideal reality
• National characteristics of Italians have become
  stereotypes
• Literature and the arts are as important as
  experience in the formation of these ideas

3
Role of literature in the formation of Italian
myth

• Literary Italy is a construction, a creation of
  the writers, rather than a realistic portrait or
  description
• The English public sees Italy through the filter
  of this half created reality. These perceptions
  of Italy are often more vivid than the actual
  experience of being in the country

4
Quotation

• Manfred Pfister Introduction to The Fatal Gift of
  Beauty (anthology of excerpts from travellers to
  Ital), the Italy perceived by the British
  travellers (and even more so by writers of
  fiction) is half-created by them. Or, to put it
  in a less romantic and more fashionable terms it
  is a construction, an Italy made in England
  (p. 3).

5
What are we going to study in this course?

• Some set texts which illustrate the most common
  ideas about Italy
• The theory of literary genres. See how different
  genres (fictional and non fictional, poetry and
  prose) contribute to the dissemination of ideas.
• History and the history of literature to
  understand how different contexts determine the
  text.
• The theme of Otherness and Imagology (i.e. the
  study of images), a branch of comparative
  literature

6
Otherness and the study of the images of the Other

• The study of the Other has become recently a very
  popular branch of knowledge (in anthropology,
  psychology, comparative literature)
• It attempts to see how a hegemonic culture or
  gender group views different or subaltern ones as
  inferior or exotic or just plain alien.
• Identifies traces of a hegemonic attitude even in
  apparently innocent images of another culture
• A groundbreaking study in the field was Edward
  Saids Orientalism

7
Examples of Otherness internal to a society

• Others as linguistic groups
• Others as physically different
• Handicapped people
• Racially different people
• Others as gender groups
• Women
• Gay and lesbian
• Others as social groups
• Foreigners
• People of other religions
• People distinguished by census or class

8
Examples of Otherness external to a society

• Especially natives of countries discovered by
  Europeans
• Other nations
• Other religions

9
How have Others been dealt with?

• Persecution, deportation e.g. genocides, the
  Shoah, pogroms,
• Enslavement, colonization
• Emargination, e.g. ghettoes, apartheid, exclusion
  from education, jobs
• Victimization, e.g. witch hunts, public
  punishments

10
Othering through language

• Assigning certain characteristics, functions, and
  qualities to certain people Stereotyping.
  Exoticism
• Attaching labels
• Polarities
• Name calling
• Ridiculing linguistic expression of Others
• Ignoring artistic expression of Others
• Imposing literary, artistic canons

11
Dealing with the Challenge of Otherness

• Politically Decolonization, Liberation movements
  Multiculturalism
• Culturally through Deconstruction (a Liberation
  movement of the mind)
• Postcolonial literature, ethnic studies,
• Cultural studies,
• Feminist studies
• Imagological studies

12
The perception of Italy is often based on sets of
comparisons with England

• Latin
• Roman Catholic (popist)
• Effeminate
• Passion
• Sensuous pleasure
• Exuberance
• Anarchy
• Disorganization
• Antiquity
• Hot

• Germanic
• Protestant
• Masculine
• Reason
• Discipline
• Self-control
• Political order
• Efficiency
• Modernity
• Cold

13
Why were these preconceptions formed?

• To define oneself by defining the Other (see
  quotation n. 2)
• To define ones sense of cultural identity
• For political and ideological reasons

14
Quotation N. 2Italy is Englands other self

• The British have for centuries been
  susceptible to the charms of Italy, of the bel
  paese. Unlike France or Germany, Italy does not
  challenge the British at any of the pursuits they
  are best at parliamentary democracy, fighting
  wars and writing plays. Instead, it excels in
  spheres in which the Brits invest little pride
  cooking, painting, music and living life with a
  general sense of style. It is a complementary
  match of masculine and feminine characters. All
  too often, though, it is a mismatch of
  understanding."