italian-studies: Scholarly discussions in any field of Italian studies

Dear All,

Please consider submitting an abstract for the 'Beckett and Italy' conference in Rome. The final deadline for submission is today.

BECKETT & ITALY
“old chestnuts”, new occasions
“Sapienza” Università di Roma, 25-26 May 2020


CALL FOR PAPERS
Can’t conceive by what stretch of ingenuity my work could be placed under the sign of italianità… There are a number of Italian elements [in my work]…
(SB to AJ Leventhal, 21 April 1958)

Confirmed Keynote Speakers: Annamaria Cascetta (Università Cattolica di Milano), John McCourt (Università di Macerata), Manfred Pfister (Freie Universität Berlin), Dirk Van Hulle (University of Oxford), Chiara Montini (Item CNRS, Paris)

Beckett and Italy. As a student at Trinity College Dublin, Beckett studied Italian and Italian Literature, and cultivated them privately with Bianca Esposito, the signorina Adriana Ottolenghi of ‘Dante and the Lobster’. They discussed the writers on his syllabus: Machiavelli, Petrarca, Manzoni, Boccaccio and Tasso, to name a few. His most striking encounter was Dante – he read the Commedia many times throughout his life – and he also discovered a particular affinity with Leopardi. As a student, he wrote essays on Carducci and D’Annunzio. He attempted translations of Dante into English in letters and notebooks, and wrote a curious dialogue in German based on Ariosto’s Orlando furioso. In 1930, he published translations into English of Montale’s poem ‘Delta’ and texts by Franchi and Comisso. For a good part of his formative years, Beckett really was, as Walter Draffin in Dream of Fair to Middling Women, an “Italianate Irishman”. His interest extended well beyond literature. For example, he read the philosophical investigations of Bruno, Campanella, Thomas Aquinas and Vico. Moreover, he was interested in Italian music and opera, was fascinated by Italian art, and followed with curiosity the experiments of Neorealist cinema. Yet, Beckett’s relationship with Italian culture is far from unambiguous. For example, despite his knowledge of the language, Beckett’s involvement with the Italian translation of his work was negligible. Comments like the one quoted above, where, while denying the “italianità” of his work, he draws attention to “a number of Italian elements” in it, are a testament to both the ambiguity and the vitality of this relationship. This conference aims to re-assess the influence that Italian culture, literature, poetry, theatre, arts and cinema had on Beckett’s works, even beyond what he was willing to recognise. 

Italy and Beckett. Beckett was at first greeted in Italy as a playwright who belonged to the Theatre of the Absurd, while his prose was mostly ignored or considered as minor. Eventually, Beckett found his place in literature, art, and popular culture; it is significant, in this light, that Calvino turned to his work in the last years of his life, and planned to centre on him the final lecture of his Six Memos for the Next Millennium. Writers and artists felt – as they do today – the need to respond to the Beckett phenomenon, even if only to condemn his ‘literature without style’. Theatre directors welcomed his experiments and continue to propose innovative mise en scène of his work. Critics have analysed him comparatively with writers like Pirandello, Levi and Gadda. More recently, much attention has been paid to the ties between Beckett’s writing and the philosophy of Agamben. In more general terms, there is room to investigate the way Beckett can help the exploration of the new avenues opened by the so-called ‘Italian Theory’, and, conversely, how the conceptual tools offered by this trend of thought can shed a different light on Beckett’s work. The recent publication of the Italian translation of Beckett’s letters, seems to align with this continued Italian interest in Beckett. On the other hand, the fact that it is still difficult to find his work in bookshops, confirms the ambiguity of Beckett’s position in Italian culture. This conference aims to reconsider the impact of Beckett’s work on Italian culture. 

We encourage submissions focussed on, but not limited to, the following areas:

·	Beckett and Italian Culture 
·	Beckett and Italian Philosophy
·	Beckett and Translation
·	Beckett, Italian Publishing Houses and the Marketplace
·	Beckett as a Critic | Beckett and Italian Criticism
·	Beckett and Italian Popular Culture | Cultural Appropriations of Beckett in Italian Popular Culture
·	Beckett and/in Italian Theatre | Italian Theatre in/and Beckett
·	Beckett and/in Italian Poetry | Italian Poetry in/and Beckett

We also particularly encourage submissions on the following topics: 
·	Beckett and Italian Politics | Political Interpretations of Beckett’s Work in Italy
·	Beckett and/in Twentieth Century Italian Culture | Twentieth Century Italian Culture in /and Beckett
·	Beckett and the Debate on Mental Illness in Italy
·	Beckett and/in Italian Cinema; Italian Cinema in/and Beckett
·	Beckett and the Arts | Contemporary Italian Artists’ Response to Beckett
·	Beckett and Classical Culture

Please send anonymized abstracts in English of 300-500 words, with a separate short bio of no more than 150 words to [log in to unmask] by 20 January 2020. Proposals in Italian will be accepted on condition that an English version of the paper is circulated one week prior to the Conference. 


The Beckett and Italy Team

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