Scrittori Del Duemila

Scrittori del Duemila

Voicing the Word

Drawing on the recent renewal of interest in the debate on orality and literacy this book investigates the varying perceptions and representations of orality in contemporary Italian fiction, providing a fresh perspective on this rich and fast-developing debate and on the study of the Italian literary language. The book brings together a number of complementary approaches to orality from the fields of linguistics, literary and media studies and offers a detailed analysis of a broad variety of authors and texts that appeared over the last three decades - ranging from internationally acclaimed writers such as Celati, Duranti and Tabucchi, through De Luca and Baricco, to the latest generation of writers, such as Campo, Ballestra and Nove. By exploring the complementary facets of Italian orality, and its diachronical developments since the seventies, this study questions the traditionally dichotomic approach to the study of orality and literacy and posits a more flexible, cross-modal approach that accounts for the increasing hybridisation of text forms and media and for the greater interaction between the spoken and the written as well as their representations.

The Many Voices of Contemporary Piedmontese Writers

What do Cesare Pavese, Beppe Fenoglio and Primo Levi have in common? Apart from their obvious Piedmontese origins, they and other writers coming from this Italian region share a certain tendency towards multilingualism, which is a characteristic that has not been comprehensively investigated over the years. This study presents a linguistic analysis of a group of modern and contemporary narratives written by Piedmontese authors. The novels and short stories here examined are notable for the intriguing way in which they move between a variety of idioms – Standard Italian, regional vernaculars, English and pastiches (with rare excursions into French). With the support of linguistic and philosophical theories on the relation between identity, alterity and language, the book demonstrates how the use of non-standard parlances is fundamental in both reinforcing the sense of belonging to specific social groups and highlighting the presence of dissimilar identities and ‘other’ cultures. A sociolinguistic study and an analysis of the political and historical context of the region are also provided in order to illustrate how the combination of different varieties in literature reflects the region’s peripheral position, as well as the political and social changes that have occurred in Piedmont since the nineteenth century. This book fills a notable gap, and casts new light on Piedmontese literature.