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Guido Bonsaver, Alessandro Carlucci and Matthew Reza, eds., Italy and the usa: Cultural Change Through Language and Narrative

Cambridge (ma), Legenda 44, Series Italian Perspective, Modern Humanities Research Association, 2019
Renato Ventura
p. 130-131
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Guido Bonsaver, Alessandro Carlucci and Matthew Reza, eds., Italy and the usa: Cultural Change Through Language and Narrative, Cambridge (ma), Legenda 44, Series Italian Perspective, Modern Humanities Research Association, 2019, pp. 282, $ 99.

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1One of the limits of many edited volumes is the lack of focus, a limit compounded by the problem in defining the field of research itself, in this case the «impact of cultural contact and human mobility on two countries which reciprocally influenced each other» (p. 5). The editors of the volume deal with this issue head-on in their introduction, «Mapping Cultural Change: Italy and the usa During the ‘Long American Century’». The tension between oversimplification and adherence to the complexity of their «multi-disciplinary» model which includes the «theoretical and pragmatic premises» (p. 1) of each chapter contribution, is framed through the unifying question of «[H]ow and to what extent cultural contact can affect long-term historical change» (p. 5).

2The first part of the book, «Historical Contexts and Channels of Contact» is composed of five chapters. The opening chapter, «Italian Storytelling Memories: Personal Recollections of Fairy and Folk Tales in the usa», by Matthew Reza, examines «how the oral tradition of telling stories – namely fairy and folk tales – that came across to the new world can be traced and their survival or disappearance over the course of the twentieth century» (p. 17). The second chapter, «The English Language and Anglo-American Culture in Twentieth-Century Italy», by Virginia Pulcini, analyzes the contacts between Italy, usa and Great Britain, contacts which were « both direct and indirect», as well as the physical movement of individuals and communities across countries» (p. 31) and the impact of material and cultural exchanges. The third chapter, «English in Italian Education: Between Europeanization and Americanization», by Giancarlo Schirru, assesses the relationship between the «development of the English language within the Italian school system» (p. 47). The fourth chapter, «Modern Throwbacks: Screening Italians in the usa – The First Fifty Years», by Giorgio Bertellini, shows the half-century interplay between us film culture and Italy as a type of call and response exchange from the early twentieth century to the 1950s. The final chapter in part i, «Narrating New Italianness in the usa in the Early Twenty-First Century», by Teresa Fiore, uses a generational lens to contrast the experience of Italians who left their country in recent decades to those immigrants from a century ago.

3The second part of the volume, «From the Late Nineteenth Century to the Second World War» is composed of three chapters focused on that chronological period. Luca Cottini’s contribution, Chapter 6, «Buffalo Bill and the Italian Myth of the American West», makes connections between Hollywood western films by exploring the impact they had on Italian culture; Chapter 7, «Turin between French and US Culture: The Film and Car Industries in 1904–1914», by Guido Bonsaver, marks the shift elite Italians made from identifying France as the symbol of cultural trend setting to the US. The last chapter of the second part, «us Culture and Fascist Italy: The Case of Omnibus (1937–1939)», by Manuela Di Franco, explores the strong influence the United States had throughout the fascist regime, which continued right up to wwii, through a study of the Italian magazine, Omnibus.

4Part iii, « From the Second World War to the Twenty-first Century», continues the chronological focus. Charles L. Leavitt iv’s chapter, «The Forbidden City: Tombolo Between American Occupation and Italian Imagination», argues that the us military encampment near Livorno during wwii, represented one of the many «contact zones [which] exacerbated Italian prejudice» (p. 151). Chapter 10, «The Other America: Contact and Exchange in the Italian Folk Revival», by Rachel E. Love, takes the volume through the 1960s and reflects on the ways the folk music scenes in the US and Italy informed one another. The last chapter in the book, «PC or not PC? Some Reflections upon Political Correctness and its Influence on the Italian Language», by Federico Faloppa approaches our current moment and unpacks the ideas behind political correctness that get translated into the Italian language.

5The fourth part of the volume, «Long-Term Influences and Effects», reflects mainly on reciprocal influences between the Italian and American culture and language. Chapter 12, «‘Little Italy’ on the Move: The Birth and Transatlantic Relocation of a Cultural Myth», by Mattia Lento, follows the indirect processes of Italian cultural influence and exchange in the US and Switzerland. Laura Pinnavaia’s chapter, «Italianisms in US English: Past and Present», catalogues the borrowed words found in the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster’s. Massimo Fanfani and Alessandro Carlucci, in their respective chapters, «A Century of Americanisms» and «Contact, Change, and Translation: A Theoretical and Empirical Assessment of Non-Lexical Anglicisms» flip the approach to look at the appearance of Italian language words in English.

6Italy and the usa: Cultural Change Through Language and Narrative has bundled together a wide range of topics in Italian diasporic studies. Through the use of culture and periodization the editors have achieved an impressive unity in a volume which will be of interest to scholars from an array of disciplines.

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Renato Ventura, « Guido Bonsaver, Alessandro Carlucci and Matthew Reza, eds., Italy and the usa: Cultural Change Through Language and Narrative  »Altreitalie, 64 | 2022, 130-131.

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Renato Ventura, « Guido Bonsaver, Alessandro Carlucci and Matthew Reza, eds., Italy and the usa: Cultural Change Through Language and Narrative  »Altreitalie [En ligne], 64 | Gennaio-giugno 2022, mis en ligne le 01 janvier 2023, consulté le 06 février 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/altreitalie/324 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/altreitalie.324

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Renato Ventura

University of Dayton

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