Gino Moliterno. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture
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In Central dialects, important differences exist between dialects from Tuscany and
Corsica, and those from nearby regions (such as Marche, Umbria and Lazio). A major
feature of Tuscan dialects is the so-called gorgia whereby intervocalic [k], [t] and [p] are
converted into fricatives: for example, la casa, ‘the house’, becomes [la ‘hasa]. The other
Central dialects share many features with Southern dialects. Within this group, Roman
speech deserves a mention for its particular history. While up until the Middle Ages it
was strongly influenced by Southern dialects, after the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
such factors as the presence of popes from Tuscany and a strong influx of migrants from
all over Italy spread the use of Florentine and of Italian as a lingua franca. Hence at the
time of the unification of Italy, the population of Rome was the most Italianspeaking
outside Tuscany.
Southern dialects are further divided between a northern and a southern group with a
line splitting Calabria into two parts. In the southern group are included the dialects from
southern Calabria and the area of Salento (Apulia), together with the Sicilian dialects.
Some of the specific features of this southern group are (1) a system of five (rather than
seven) stressed vowels, as [i] and [e] have converged into [i], and [u] and [o] into [u]
(e.g., neve, ‘snow’, is [‘nivi], and sole, ‘sun’, is [‘suli]); and (2) retroflex pronunciation of
[d], [r], and of [t] and [d] in consonant groups -tr-, -dr- and -str-. Also, in contrast to the
other Southern dialects, parts of this southern group have kept the consonant groups -nd-
and -mb-: for example, Galabrian quandu, ‘when’, and Salento palumbu, ‘pigeon’.
The linguistic distance of Sardinian and Friulian from the other dialects together with
other factors (such as their high number of speakers and a long written tradition) has
allowed them to be classified as separate languages rather than dialects, with important
consequences in terms of legislation protecting minority languages.
The process of Italianization of dialects which has been occurring in recent decades is
taking place in varying degrees in different regions. It has caused the loss or reduction of
the most distinctive features of local dialects and given greater uniformity at the regional
level. It is generally believed that such factors as speaker’s age, socioeconomic position
and aspirations, conversational topic and situational context may be important variables
in this process, and that Italian forms and rules penetrate into dialects more readily via
younger, middle-class and more educated speakers, and via cities and towns more than
villages. However empirical studies have shown that this is not always the case.
Italianization occurs particularly at the phonological and lexical levels. Dialectal
sounds may be substituted with Italian ones: for example, in Sicilian, cavallu, ‘horse’,
replaces cavaddu, with the substitution of Sicilian retroflex [d] with [1]. This can occur
even when the sound is unknown to the dialect: the Venetian [s] shifts to [ts] in words
such as canzone, ‘song’. At the word level, (1) terms connected with the context of rural
societies tend to disappear; (2) traditional dialectal words may coexist with terms taken
from Italian (e.g., Calabrian custuréri alternates with sartu from the Italian sarto,
‘tailor’); (3) local and often more specific terms may be substituted with Italian ones
(e.g., Sicilian visulatu, ‘tile floor’, is replaced by pavimentu, ‘floor’, from the Italian
pavimento); and (4) words may be borrowed from Italian to express notions previously
unknown to the dialects, such as Calabrian delegazziòni, ‘delegation’.
While some may argue that both the reduced use of the dialects and their Italianization
may cause them to disappear completely, others maintain that it is this very Italianization
that shows not only flexibility but also resilience.
Entries A–Z 251
See also: dialect usage; Italian language; Italian and emigration; language attitudes;
language education; language policy; minority languages; varieties of Italian
Further reading
Bruni, F. (1984) Elementi di storia delta lingua e delta cultura (Elements of the History of
Language and Culture), Turin: Utet, ch. 6 (a concise profile of dialects, in their historical and
linguistic aspects).
Devoto, G. and Giacomelli, G. (1972) I dialetti delle regioni d’Italia (The Dialects of the Regions
of Italy), Florence: Sansoni (a clear description of dialects, region by region).
Grassi, C. (1993) ‘Italiano e dialetti’ (Italian and dialects), in A.A.Sobrero (ed.), Introduzione
all’italiano contemporaneo. La variazione e gli usi (Introduction to Contemporary Italian:
Variation and Usage), Bari: Laterza (an account of the impact of Italian on dialects).
Lepschy, A.L. and Lepschy, G. (1988) The Italian Language Today, 2nd edn, London: Hutchinson,
ch. 3 (a discussion of the main linguistic features of the dialect groups).
Maiden, M. and Parry, M. (eds) (1997) The Dialects of Italy, London and New York: Routledge (a
collection of essays on dialects by specialist scholars; see part II on the dialect areas with
separate chapters on each region).
Rohlfs, G. (1966–9) Grammatica storica della lingua italiana e dei suoi dialetti (Historical
Grammar of the Italian Language and its Dialects), Italian translation, Turin: Einaudi (a
complete linguistic history of dialects).
ANTONIA RUBINO
Dini, Lamberto
b. 1 March 1931, Florence
Economist and politician
After graduating in economics from the university of Florence, Dini studied in America
as a Fullb-right scholar. He joined the International Monetary Fund in 1959 and in 1976
he was elected its Executive Director. From October 1979 to May 1994 he was director-
general of the Bank of Italy as well as holding other high economic posts. Between May
1994 and January 1995 he served as Minister for the Treasury in the Berlusconi
government. After the fall of Berlusconi, Dini was appointed Prime Minister in January
1995 and remained in the office until the May 1996 elections. Highly respected for his
administrative capacities and as the leader of Rinnovamento italiano (Italian Renewal), a
small moderate-liberal political party which he founded in 1996, Dini became Minister
for Foreign Affairs in the first Ulivo (Olive Tree) government. His negotiating skills
proved useful during a number of severe international crises which included the flood of
illegal immigrants into Italy from the North African countries and the dispute with
Turkey over its demands for the extradition of rebel Kurdish leader, Abdullah Ocalan.
GINO MOLITERNO
Encyclopedia of contemporary italian culture 252
Dionisotti, Carlo
b. 9 June 1908, Turin; d. 22 February 1998, London
Academic and literary critic
Regarded by many as among the finest Italianists of the second half of the twentieth
century, Dionisotti held minor positions at the universities of Turin and Rome before
becoming lecturer in Italian Literature at the University of Oxford, and then Professor of
Italian at Bedford College, London, where he remained until his death.
Dionisotti’s historical and philological studies focussed primarily on the Renaissance
period and in particular on the works of Pietro Bembo. His essays on Machiavelli were
collected in 1980 in a lively polemical book, and his later critical studies addressed some
authors and themes of intellectual history of the last two centuries. Perhaps his most
original historiographical research is the Geografia e storia della letteratura italiana
(The Geography and History of Italian Literature) (1967), a work which showcases
Dionisotti’s skilful integration of rigorous philological study and vast cultural erudition
with a solid civil sensibility in order to read Italian literature in terms of the larger picture
of Italy’s history and its passione politica (political passion).
An influential teacher with a strong cultural presence, Dionisotti was a prolific author
and actively contributed to many critical journals, especially to the Giornale storico della
letteratura italiana and to Italia medioevale e umanistica, for which he served as an
editor and as co-director respectively.
SHERRY ROUSH
divorce
Galls for legislation on divorce had been heard in Italy since Unification and the Civil
Code of 1865. While civil marriage was now possible in Italy, despite the bitter
opposition of the Church, most political parties took an anti-divorce stance in order to
appease the clerics and guarantee their support against the growing tide of socialism.
Women continued to be denied the right to administer their own property or finances,
while the husband could dispose of his wife’s income and goods at will. However, while
civil divorce was out of the question, the provisions of the Lateran Pacts, later confirmed
in the Republican constitution of 1946, incorporated Catholic doctrine into the
Fundamental Law, and marriages could be annulled by the Church where the wife turned
out not to be a virgin.
The divorce law was first introduced into the Italian Parliament in 1965 by the
Socialist deputy, Loris Fortuna, but, although extremely moderate in its formulation, it
was effectively blocked by the ruling Christian Democrats (see DC). By 1969, however,
in part due to the effective publicity of the Lega Italiana per I’Istituzione del Divorzio
(Italian League for the Introduction of Divorce), public opinion had changed and the bill,
Entries A–Z 253
with a number of amendments proposed by Liberal deputy Antonio Bislini, was again put
before the Parliament and was passed with broad support, being opposed only by the
Christian Democrats and the neo-fascist MSI. Pope Paul VI remained aloof from the
heated debates and the more progressive areas of the Church admitted the need for
change, but immediately after the law was passed various militant Catholic organizations
decided to call for a referendum on the issue and were soon able to collect the necessary
500,000 signatures.
Originally scheduled for 1972, the referendum was not held until 1974 but it proved to
be a significant moment in postwar Italy since it was the first of several pieces of
progressive legislation to be brought in and upheld over the course of the 1970s through
the use of the referendum, confirming an abyss both between post-1968 public opinion
and a stagnant political culture, and between civil and religious society. The referendum
also marked the first serious defeat for the Christian Democrat party. Set against the
background of a number of economic scandals rocking the ruling Christian Democrats,
the referendum was seen by Amintore Fanfani as a means of restoring credibility to his
party through a turn to the Right, a move encouraged by the results of the 1972 elections
from which anti-divorce parties had emerged well. Furthermore, while the socialist and
lay centre parties were in favour of divorce, the communists, although finally acceding to
the need for change, were more tentative both in their estimation of public readiness for a
programme of radical civil liberties and in their desire not to disrupt the growing
understanding between Catholics and communists which was supposed to lead to the
historic compromise. The result, however, proved that public opinion was in advance of
the ruling elite, and the divorce law was upheld by an unexpectedly high 59.1 per cent of
the vote.
Despite hard-won legislation, Italy still has one of the lowest divorce rates in Europe,
together with Greece. There is considerable regional variation, with Italians in the South
and the islands of Sardinia and Sicily less likely to divorce than their northern
counterparts. Factors implicit in the relative reluctance to divorce in these areas include
social opprobrium in cultural contexts which continue to value the family unit above all,
and traditional working patterns which militate against financial independence for
women.
See also: family; feminism
Further reading
De Rose, A. (1992) ‘Socio-Economic Factors and Family Size as Determinants of Marital
Dissolution in Italy’, European Sociological Review 8 (1): 71–91.
Maggioni, G. (1990) Il divorzio in Italia: storia dell’applicazione di una legge nuova (Divorce in
Italy: the History of the Application of a New Law), Milan: F.Angeli (study of the effect of the
divorce law on family life with reference to regional variation).
SHARON WOOD
Encyclopedia of contemporary italian culture 254
Dolce and Gabbana
After working for Marzotto for several years, Sicilian Domenico Dolce and Milan-born
Stefano Gabbana joined forces in 1982 to open their own design studio. In 1985 they
presented their collections in a ‘new talents’ category in Milan, and their name became
associated with a new era of Italian design. Using lace, wool and silk, Dolce and Gabbana
appeared to want to dress ‘real’ women, not just supermodels, and this contributed to
their international success. They expanded into knitwear design in 1987, into lingerie and
summerwear in 1989 and to a men’s wear collection in 1990. Other lines include the
Dolce and Gabbana Basic and a youthful line. In 1988 they began distributing their
designs in Japan, and later opened a number of boutiques in Hong Kong, Singapore,
Taipei and Seoul. Dolce and Gabbana also won an international award for best female
fragrance in 1993.
Among the designers’ most famous clients are ‘unreal’ women like the pop star
Madonna (for whom they designed a number of outfits for a world tour) and actress Demi
Moore. In a recent show in Milan, their style was labelled ‘rude and ironic’ as the two
self-proclaimed deeply Catholic men displayed silk-lined cellophane dresses and a top
veiling an embroidered reproduction of Murillo’s Madonna and Child.
BERNADETTE LUCIANO
Dolci, Danilo
b. 28 June 1924, Sesana, Yugoslavia; d. 30 December 1997, Palermo
Writer, poet, sociologist, educator and social worker
A rather unique figure in postwar Italian culture, Dolci was a talented poet and writer as
well as a committed social worker, an educator and an internationally respected social
theorist. Although brought up in a middle-class environment in Northern Italy, in 1952 he
moved to Trappeto, one of the poorest and most underdeveloped areas of Palermo, to
help the local people improve their lives. One of his first actions was a hunger strike to
publicize the high rate of infant mortality due to malnutrition, a strategy he used often in
the next forty years to draw official attention to the poverty and exploitation of the
underprivileged in Sicily and elsewhere. His effective use of non-violence led to his
being known as the Gandhi of Sicily, and his achievements came to be admired and
recognized internationally, with a large number of his works being translated into many
languages. A passionate supporter of community and self-determination, he was also
active in the International Peace Movement.
GINO MOLITERNO
Entries A–Z 255
Domus
Founded in 1928 by Milanese architect Giò Ponti, Domus (Home) presented itself as a
journal of architecture and related arts committed to discovering the quintessential
‘home’. Ceasing publication in 1941 when Ponti initiated Stile (Style), an alternative
journal of arts, crafts and culture, it was revived in 1946 with Ponti appointing Ernesto
Rogers as editor. To Domus, Rogers added the subtitle Casa dell’uomo (House of Man),
to indicate an architecture that aimed at accommodating the functional, cultural and
spiritual needs of both individuals and the collective. Dismissed after only two year as
editor, Rogers nevertheless realized his polemical intentions in a revitalized Casabella
while Ponti again took over Domus and edited it until his death in 1979. The editorship
passed first to Mario Bellini, then to Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani and, in 1996, to the
Swiss critic François Burkhardt.
See also: architectural and design magazines
KEITH EVAN GREEN
Donatoni, Franco
b. 9 June 1927, Verona
Composer
Donatoni’s fertile imagination and constant recourse to experiment have maintained his
position at the forefront of the Italian avantgarde. He initially qualified as an accountant,
but concurrently pursued musical studies with such figures as Liviabella, Pizzetti and
Maderna. From 1954–61 he attended the summer courses at Darmstadt, and in 1969 was
appointed professor of composition at the Milan Conservatory. Donatoni enjoyed early
success with works such as the cantata Il libro dei sette sigilli (The Book of the Seven
Seals) (1951), which shows the influence of Petrassi, but in 1955 turned wholeheartedly
towards advanced serialism as pioneered by Boulez. Serialism was to prove a transitional
phase, however, and in 1961 Puppenspiel introduced the concept of indeterminacy that
was to provide the foundation for Donatoni’s work in the 1960s and 1970s. His
subsequent compositions have continued to demonstrate a constantly impressive level of
craftsmanship, often within structures of great complexity.
Further reading
Collage (1968) ‘Scheda 9: Franco Donatoni’, Collage 8:27, Palermo (contains biography,
discography, bibliography, worklist and essays by A.Gentilucci and P.Castaldi).
JOHN KERSEY
Encyclopedia of contemporary italian culture 256
Dorfles, Gillo
b. 12 April 1910, Trieste
Art critic, academic and painter
Dorfles grew up in Trieste in a vibrant intellectual milieu which included the novelist
Italo Svevo. In 1948, as a practising artist, he helped to form MAC, the Movimento Arte
Concreta (see arte concreta). He subsequently taught aesthetics at Italian and foreign
universities and in 1995 participated in the organization of the Venice Biennale.
In his Il divenire della critica (The Coming-To-Be of Criticism) (1976), Dorfles
provided some of the more reflective and informed writing on the state of Italian art
criticism of the postwar period. He meticulously charted the change from prewar
criticism, which was historicist, content-based, even romantic, to the later critica
militante (militant criticism) and postmodern writing which borrowed its language from a
range of disciplines. The critic, Dorfles concluded, has little real effect on artistic
production. The best the critic can do is to explore the links between art, the artist’s epoch
and the broader cultural context.
Dorfles strongly criticized fellow-critic Germano Celant for restricting his attention to
the semiotic functioning of the artwork, emphasising instead the need for a return to a
discussion of content and to making judgements of value and taste, something Dorfles
himself practised in his teaching and writings. Dorfles thus helped to revive the discipline
of aesthetics as a way of looking at art and culture by focussing on the notion of taste and
the way things go in and out of fashion. In opposition to the cultural pluralism which
developed in the 1960s and 1970s, Dorfles developed the concept of ‘kitsch’, which he
defined as absolute bad taste. Dorfles described kitsch as the product of an intellectually
lazy consumer society: inferior, false and sentimental artwork intended to give pleasure
while not placing any demands on the viewer.
In his 1997 work, Conformisti (Conformists), Dorfles expands his topic to cover the
way we live our daily lives. He suggests that many people conform to a bland middle-
class mediocrity, based on what they judge to be common sense and common usage,
because of a mistaken obsession with what other people think. Examples of needless
conformist behaviour and the desire to run with the herd range from the innocuous, such
as using .verbal clichés, to the dangerous tendency to fascism, a connection which was
also proposed by Alberto Moravia in some of his novels.
Further reading
Dorfles, G. (1969) Kitsch: An Anthology of Bad Taste, London: Studio Vista (an illustrated
anthology of what Dorfles regarded as representative examples of kitsch, with essays by various
authors).
——(1976) Il divenire della critica, Turin: Einaudi.
——(1997) Conformisti, Rome: Donzelli.
MAX STAPLES
Entries A–Z 257
Dorotei
A leading faction of the Christian Democrat Party (see DC) which took its name from the
convent of Saint Dorotea in which it was founded in 1959, the Dorotei occupied a
powerful pivotal position in the party for the next decade, conditioning the party’s
leadership and political choices. Led by Mariano Rumor, Emilio Russo, Emilio Colombo
and Paolo Emilio Taviani, the group’s main aim was to oppose the then party secretary
and prime minister, Amintore Fanfani and his policy of an ‘opening to the Left’. For a
time the faction was supported by Aldo Moro, until he founded his own group (the so-
called ‘Morotei’). By 1964 the Dorotei controlled around 46 per cent of the party’s
national congress delegates, but they also embodied the worst aspects of Christian
Democrat clientelism and power-grabbing. The faction split in the early 1970s and
became identified more directly with various leaders such as Colombo, Rumor and
Piccoli. The term doroteismo, or sometimes neo-doroteismo, was used until the late
1980s to describe the centre of the DC.
JAMES WALSTON
Dossetti, Giuseppe
b. 13 February 1913, Genoa; d. 15 December 1996, Oliveto, Bologna
Catholic politician, ideologue and priest
After having taken part in the Resistance movement during the Second World War,
Dossetti became the deputy secretary of the newly-formed Christian Democrat Party. As
charismatic leader of the integralist wing of the party organized around the journal
Cronache Sociali (Social Chronicles), he was De Gasperi’s main party opponent until
1951 when, despairing of the DC’s ability to ever carry through any serious reforms, he
abandoned politics in favour of the religious life. He subsequently lived a monastic
existence, and a number religious communities and families developed around him. He
returned to politics briefly in 1994 in order to oppose the rise of Silvio Berlusconi, whom
he regarded as Italy’s ‘public enemy number one’, and, as guru of the left wing of the
former DC, Dossetti expressed his strong support for both Leoluca Orlando’s new anti-
mafia party, La Rete (see mafia) and for Romano Prodi and the Ulivo coalition.
See also: DC
Further reading
Leonardi, R. and Wertman, D. (1989) Italian Christian Democracy: The Politics of Dominance,
Basingstoke: Macmillan.
JOHN POLLARD
Encyclopedia of contemporary italian culture 258
drug culture
The close association of intravenous drug use and AIDS in Italy, the role of the mafia in
drug trafficking and regular party political confrontations between 1989 and 1993 on the
question of legalization have given the topic of illicit drugs and their associated social
problems substantial publicity since the 1980s. As a result, much less attention has been
paid to the disparity between even the worst postwar figure for drug-related deaths (1,383
in 1991) and the 35,000 deaths annually from the immediate or long-term consequences
of alcohol consumption, especially liver cirrhosis.
Among illicit drugs, cannabis is the most widespread: up to one-third of high school
students even in provincial centres have probably tried it. Cocaine and synthetic drugs
remain minority choices, but police seizures of drugs suggest rapid expansion since 1990.
The estimates of heroin consumption suggest a large increase in users during the 1970s,
followed by substantial containment between 1984 (100,000–240,000 regular injectors)
and 1992 (195,000–313,000). Regular users are likely to have begun injecting in their
early teens, to live in a city in north or central Italy and to be men: only one in five
injectors are women. Since illicit drugs lost their early countercultural associations in the
early 1980s, injectors are also increasingly likely to be enrolled in treatment programmes:
50 per cent of programme participants manage to combine their addiction with full-time
employment. Another feature of the institutionalization of drug culture is that regular
users have come to constitute a significant segment of the prison population, up from 8
per cent in 1980 to 31 per cent by 1992. Both forms of institutionalization derive largely
from changes in drug policies. In 1975, as part of a general expansion of civil liberties,
possession of small quantities of drugs for personal use was legalized. Consumption
increased, but was overshadowed as a social problem by the more urgent issue of youth
involvement in political violence (see terrorism). By the mid-1980s the anticipated
treatment centres had finally been established by the new health service, flanked by
increasing numbers of private lay and religious ‘therapeutic communities’ and
associations (notably Gmppo Abele, Comunità Incontro, San Patrignano). Participation in
their programmes grew tenfold, doubling each centre’s average caseload and shifting
treatment emphasis away from methadone towards psychotherapeutic and social
rehabilitation. In 1990 this success was put at risk by the political grandstanding of the
Socialist Party, which forced its coalition government partners to accept recriminalization
of all drug possession and a shift in emphasis from treatment to repression. Imprisonment
of users, increasing slowly in the 1980s, rose sharply. In 1993, the law’s opponents, led
by the heirs of the Radical Party, submitted its key feature to a referendum in which it
was narrowly overturned, leaving management of drug culture to the local discretion of
police and judges (see also referenda).
Further reading
Journal of Drug Issues 24 (1994) (4), special issue on Italy (survey of epidemiological, social and
legal aspects of drug use).
Entries A–Z 259
Moss, D. (1991) ‘Combating Drug Use in the AIDS Decade: The 1989 Campaign in Context’, in
F.Sabetti and R.Catanzaro (eds), Italian Politics: A Review. Vol. 5, London: Pinter (drug use and
policy from 1975 to 1990).
DAVID MOSS
Duranti, Francesca
b. 2 January 1935, Genoa
Writer
Originally trained as a lawyer, Duranti started writing in the 1970s. Her first novel, La
bambina (The Little Girl), published in 1976, immediately became a popular bestseller.
There followed Piazza, mia bella piazza (Piazza., My Beautiful Piazza) (1978) which
relates the breakup of Duranti’s marriage caused by her husband’s opposition to her
writing, and La casa sul logo della luna (The House on Moonlake) (1984), which was
translated into several other languages and which won Duranti international renown. In
this stylistically refined novel, which was awarded several prizes, including the
prestigious Bagutta (see literary prizes), the boundaries between fiction and reality, and
the writer and the translator, become blurred. In Effetti personali (Personal Effects),
Duranti’s next novel and winner of the Campiello prize in 1989, the protagonist’s quest
for an independent identity after her husband leaves her is extended to the search for an
ideal social system. Duranti has continued to publish and now has an international
readership.
Further reading
Vinall, S.W. (1993) ‘Francesca Duranti: Reflections and Inventions’, in Z.G.Baranski and L.Fertile
(eds), The New Italian Novel, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
PIERA CARROLI
Dylan Dog
Created in 1986 by novelist and poet Tiziano Sclavi for the veteran comic-book publisher
Sergio Bonelli, and subsequently written by Sclavi but drawn by a number of different
illustrators, Dylan Dog became the publishing success of the decade. By the time sales
peaked in the mid-1990s, the comic was selling over 1,200,000 copies a month, although
sales fell thereafter to settle at about 450,000 in the late 1990s.
Encyclopedia of contemporary italian culture 260