Articles

• Luigi Russo: the union of science and life

  10-19

  Andrea Manganaro

  Views:

  285

  In his work as a historian and literary critic, Luigi Russo considered literature not in the perspective of the limited disciplinary knowledge, but always tended to correlate it with wider aspects of reality, history, to “make history” rather than to “know how to read”, to always connect “science” and “life”, theory and practice, study and ethi-cal-political values, according to the teaching of Francesco De Sanctis, set out in the extraordinary Neapolitan prolusion of the same name of 1872, interpreted by Russo in the monograph 1928 Francesco De Sanctis e la cultura napoletana. The work of Luigi Russo, anti-authoritarian, anti-demagogic, anti-dictatorial, can still be a point of reference for those who care about the values of culture and the polis together.

  PDF (Italian)

  213

• Success and Translation of Italian Literature in Hungary

  20-35

  Péter Sárközy

  Views:

  281

  Literary criticism, both in Hungary and in Italy, has paid great attention to the fortune and irradiation of Italian literature in Hungary, just think of the thirteen volumes, the result of the scientific collaboration of the Giorgi Cini Foundation of Venice and of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The article aims to offer a broad overview of the success of the Italian literature in Hungary, especially through translations. The article reviews the various historical periods and literary movements that characterized the literary contacts between the two countries. Until the second half of the eighteenth century, the irradiation of Italian literature was first of all manifested in the use of literary models and poetic formulas in the works of the major authors of Hungarian literature. The 19th century saw instead the season of translation of the great classics of the first Italian literature (Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio) translated again in the twentieth century, thanks also to the commitment of the Magyar Italianists. Finally, the article focuses on the present situation, describing the translations of contemporary authors

  PDF (Italian)

  360

• Staying or leaving? On the non-stereotypical representations of Naples

  36-53

  Antonio Sciacovelli

  Views:

  380

  The literary image of Naples, “Capital of the South”, that sees periodic alternations of crisis and splendour in the arts, is certainly dichotomous: on the one hand the locus amoenus in which inventiveness flourishes and different cultural traditions intersect and live together, on the other the symbolic place of immense social disparities, an outbreak of epidemics and the cradle of a lax and reactionary mentality. The image used by Benedetto Croce to define the city, “a paradise inhabited by devils” dates back to the Middle Ages, and is denied from time to time by the authors who intend to build a positive myth of Napoletanità, but already in the early 20th century, and then especially in the period from 1943 (to the present day), there are increasingly critical accents towards this image, which result - more than in hatred or in contempt for the city and its inhabitants - in a tendency to move away from Naples, to abandon a contradictory reality that does not solve its problems, but like a virgin forest grows back destroying every element of progress. The writers examined in the article are: Carlo Bernari, Anna Maria Ortese, Raffaele La Capria, Fabrizia Ramondino, Ermanno Rea, Giuseppe Montesano, Elena Ferrante.

  PDF (Italian)

  295

• In favor of the "great mutilated". Pro-Hungarian Italian publications and the Transylvanian question in the interwar period

  54-63

  Andrea Carteny

  Views:

  224

  The essay describes how was approached the Transylvanian question during the interwars period in Italy, by a part of the Italian intelligentsia particularly pro Hungarian.
  Authors and books reflect in somehow the pro Hungary position emerged during the Twenties in Italy, supported by the revisionism of Fascist government and improved during the Thirties. Several books and essays proposed to change the borders between Hungary and Romania, until the Italian-German negotiation and the Vienna Diktat of 1940

  PDF (Italian)

  222

• Pepe-Lamartine A literary controversy and a duel for the Risorgimento

  64-79

  Gabriele Paolini

  Views:

  280

  The essay reconstructs the reactions in Florence provoked by the publication of Alphonse de Lamartine’s Le dernier chant du pelerinage d’Harold (1825), inspired by Lord Byron’s unfinished work. The portrait of absolute decadence of contemporary Italy, with the definition of its inhabitants as “polvere d’uomini”, outraged the intellectuals, who would have liked to respond in Vieusseux’s Anthology, the most important periodical of the time. Pietro Giordani also intended to reply to Lamartine by publishing an essay about Operette Morali of the young (and still unknown) Giacomo Leopardi, portrayed as a great and living Italian. Censorship prevented this and other responses, but not a harsh reference contained in a booklet by the Neapolitan exile Gabriele Pepe. His pride wounded, Lamartine (at the time in charge of the French embassy in Florence) challenged Pepe to a duel.
  Pepe’s victory sparked a great enthusiasm in Florence and throughout Italy. The theme of offended honor (the symbolic kind, of the Italian homeland and of its Sons) and avenged with a Proof of Value became a constant and was imitated many other times, in reality and in literature, feeding the imagination of several generations.

  PDF (Italian)

  217

• Populism: A Controversial Historiographical Category

  80-94

  Marco Pignotti

  Views:

  337

  The note stems from the need to carry out a survey on recent international literature dedicated to populism, starting above all from the considerations contained in The Populist Temptation by Eichengreen, and in From Fascism to Populism in History by Finchelstein, as well as the results from the Oxford Handbook of Populism, edited by Rovira Kaltwasser, Taggart, Ochoa Espejo and Ostiguy. The contrasting reflections recorded around a phenomenon so debated allow to delineate the elements, that justify the introduction of a historiographical category in its own right and to project some definitions on the entire history of the Italian political system. The intention of this overview is to construct a catalog of the various interpretations of populism that have emerged in recent years. It is noteworthy that in the years following World War II until the present day, publications on populism have been produced in a discontinuous fashion, thus rendering the subject even more elusive and unclassifiable.

  PDF (Italian)

  322

• On the reduplication of the direct object and the indirect object clitics in Italian and Romanian

  95-107

  Elena Pirvu

  Views:

  316

  The article consists in a contrastive presentation of the functions of clitic pronouns in the Accusative and Dative in Italian and in Romanian. It basically deals with clitic doubling, i.e. the double occurrence of the direct object complement and the indirect object complement. The clitic doubling of the direct object complement and the indirect object complement is an important issue with teachers of Italian to Romanian students and with teachers of Romanian to Italian students. All occurrences should get equal attention: those when clitic doubling is obligatory, when it is optional or when it is blocked

  PDF (Italian)

  195

• Dictionaries, synonymies and usage labels

  108-122

  Maurizio Trifone

  Views:

  309

  The extraordinary richness of the Italian language is not always adequately enhanced by dictionaries. In the era of the digitization of the dictionary, while outdated some definitional procedures continue to survive. Present or past participles that also have adjective functions (e.g. nascente) are sometimes defined with the formula “In the meanings of the verb”. The nouns indicating quality, condition or status (e.g. ordinariness) are often defined with the formula “being + basic adjective (ordinary)”. These definitions, whose informative value is practically zero, certainly do not help to the reader. The structure of a dictionary of synonyms is completely different, which must try to guide the reader in the maze of possible lexical alternatives with the aim of helping him to find the most suitable terms to express the different nuances of the same concept. The search for semantic equivalences thus becomes a discovery of the relevant differences that exist between one word and another. Of essential importance in this regard is the function of the usage labels: the distinction between basic words, words of high use, words of high availability and common words, very useful in many areas, is not of great help for a writer interested in information stylistic. The classification by frequency bands does not warn us e.g. that volto is of higher register than faccia, autovettura is of more formal register than macchina, cinematografo in the sense of ‘cinema hall’ is antiquated compared to cinema

  PDF (Italian)

  275

• Friulians in the Hungarian industry: a focus on the city of Debrecen

  124-145

  Barbara Blaskó

  Views:

  230

  Emigration played a significant role in the history of the north Italian Friuli for centuries. Since the Middle Age, Friulian emigration was characterized mainly by the movement of itinerant vendors (the so-called cramârs) to the German territories. However, the most noteworthy Friulian migration movement dates back to the fifty years preceding the First World War, when the growing labor market caused by the European industrial development required workers in enormous quantities. During these decades, the AustroHungarian Empire became the main destination of the movement, but the primacy of Austria was surpassed by Hungary in the years between 1892 and 1894. The mass migration in the area (occurring until the outbreak of the First World War) caused lasting changes in the Hungarian industry. The historical sources demonstrate that the presence of the Friulians was significant especially in some sectors, such as construction industry and meat processing. The Friulian companies active in the meat industry during this period had a profound effect on the diffusion and success of a new product: the salami. It should be emphasized that alongside Budapest and Szeged, home of the famous Pick salami, Debrecen also had a pivotal role in this process with its two factories of the Boschetti and Vidoni family and their migrant workers.

  PDF (Italian)

  244

• Italy's role in carrying out the Danube Confederation project of 1862

  146-161

  Dániel Varga

  Views:

  273

  In the autumn of 1861, a French-Italian-Greek plan was prepared to make Balkan peoples rebel. The leaders of the Hungarian emigration, expecting an upcoming war, consulted on establishing an offensive and defensive alliance between Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, and Romania. Their aim was, as opposed to in 1848-49, to make the peoples of the Danube region fight against Vienna instead of Pest, thus helping Torino acquire Venice. Ignác Helfy published the essential elements of the emigration discussions in the Alleanza newspaper, edited by himself, titled “Il programma ungherese”, which became a success in the Italian press. The Tribuno newspaper, led by Marco Antonio Canini, besides disputing Alleanza, asked the paper to reveal everything they knew. Shortly thereafter, Canini visited György Klapka and they prepared the plan of the Danubian Confederation - which Victor Emmanuel II approved as well. Canini, preparing for his diplomatic tour in the Balkan region, visited Lajos Kossuth, who thought establishing a defence alliance would be more realistic in that political situation - but Canini convinced him that a confederation had to be created between the nations involved. Kossuth’s comments on Klapka and Canini’s plan were put on paper. However, Helfy indiscreetly published them in his paper, making it impossible for Canini to conduct successful diplomatic negotiations between the countries. Finally, Victor Emmanuel II, who originally wanted one of his relatives to be the ruler of the Greek Kingdom and the leader of the Confederation, withdrew from the plans for the rebellion, due to lack of French support.

  PDF (Italian)

  251