Monsters in the Italian literary imagination / edited by Keala Jewell.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Jewell, Keala Jane.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Italian literature--History and criticism.

Italian literature.

Monsters in literature.

Physical Description:

325 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Detroit, Mich. : Wayne State University Press, [2001]

Summary:

A culture defines monsters against what is essentially thought of as human. Creatures such as the harpy, the siren, the witch, and the half-human all threaten to destroy our sense of power and intelligence and usurp our human consciousness. In this way, monster myths actually work to define a culture's definition of what is human. In Monsters in the Italian Literary Imagination, a broad range of scholars examine the monster in Italian culture and its evolution from the medieval period to the twentieth century.

Editor Keala Jewell explores how Italian culture juxtaposes the powers of the monster against the human. The essays in this volume engage a wide variety of philological, feminist, and psychoanalytical approaches and examine monstrous figures from the medieval to post-modern periods. They each share a critical interest in how monsters reflect a culture's dominant ideologies.

Monsters in the Italian Literary Imagination will interest scholars and students of literary theory and criticism, gender studies, cultural studies, art, and Italian studies.

Contents:

Introduction: Monsters and Discourse on the Human / Keala Jewell 9

Part 1 Modern Horrors

1. Creatures of Difference: Myths of Monstrosity in Savinio's La nostra anima / Keala Jewell 27

2. "Mon maitre, mon monstre": Primo Levi and Monstrous Science / Nancy Harrowitz 51

3. Monstrous Murder: Serial Killers and Detectives in Contemporary Italian Fiction / Ellen Nerenberg 65

4. The Mother of All Horror: Witches, Gender, and the Films of Dario Argento / Jacqueline Reich 89

Part 2 Monsters and Conception

5. Dante's "dolce serena" and the Monstrosity of the Female Body / Naomi Yavneh 109

6. "A la tetta de la madre s'apprende": The Monstrous Nurse in Dante's Grammar of Selfhood / Gary P. Cestaro 137

7. Incredible Sex: Witches, Demons, and Giants in the Early Modern Imagination / Walter Stephens 153

Part 3 Monsters and Poetics

8. Monstrous Movements and Metaphors in Dante's Divine Comedy / Virginia Jewiss 179

9. Monstrous Language, Monstrous Bodies: Bartolotti's Macharonea Medicinalis / Antonella Ansani 191

10. Girolamo Parabosco's L'Hermafrodito: An Irregular Commedia Regolare / Suzanne Magnanini 203

11. Ogres and Fools: On the Cultural Margins of the Seicento / Nancy L. Canepa 222

12. Reforming the Monster: Manzoni and the Grotesque / Robert S. Dombroski 247

Part 4 The Monster as Discourse

13. The Monster as a Refugee / Ginevra Bompiani 265

14. Per Speculum Melancholiae: The Awakening of Reason Engenders Monsters / Massimo Riva 279

15. Monstrous Knowledge / Barbara Spackman 297.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0814328385

OCLC:

44926842