italian-studies: Scholarly discussions in any field of Italian studies
NEMLA – Philadelphia, Temple University, March 2006
"Where Have All the Heroes Gone? Political & Ideological Engagement in Italian Literature Today."
The purpose of this panel is to explore the importance of political engagement in Italian literature--focusing in particular in the last 50 years of literary and critical production--in an attempt to answer the following question: Is an engaged literature still possible today?
The issue of political engagement has long preoccupied Italian intellectuals. From the Neorealist criticism of the literature of the Regime and its inability to confront the contemporary realities of oppression and war, to Group 63’s repudiation of an ideologically engaged literature in the traditional sense, political commitment has been in the forefront of Italian intellectual debate coinciding with the birth of the new republic. Likewise the possibility of literature as resistance to the status quo, or conversely its inability has also filled the pages of literary journals, and novels alike vis á vis the protest movements of the 70s.
In recent years the issue of engagement makes a nostalgic return in the Italian intellectual milieu more hostile to postmodern and/or experimental trends seemingly indifferent to the ideological imperative of earlier production. Some critics Like Giulio Ferroni (most poignantly in Dopo la fine) have even gone so far as lamenting the “posthumous” status of literature largely due to the ideological erosion initiated by the avant-garde and cemented by the expansion of mass culture.
Please send a 300 words abstract to Rita Gagliano at [log in to unmask] or fax at 215-204-5555 BY SEPTEMBER 15.
You may also send your abstract by mail at:
Rita Gagliano
Department of French, German, Italian and Slavic
Temple University
Anderson Hall 525
1114 West Berks Street
Philadelphia, PA 19122-6090
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