Gino Moliterno. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture
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Jovine overcame his humble beginnings to become a teacher and a headmaster, and the
figure of a poor, self-taught student achieving success is a common motif in his writings.
Moreover, a strong commitment to social justice and a belief that artistic endeavours
should be guided by a moral framework informs all his works, which are usually set in
his native Southern Italy and illustrate the entire spectrum of human virtues and
shortcomings. Several of his early works, including the novel Un uomo provvisorio (A
Temporary Man) (1934), were criticized by the Fascist regime for their antigovernment
stance, a political position which Jovine would develop further by participating in the
Resistance during the Second World War and working with the Communist Party (see
PCI). His major works include the posthumous novel Le terre del Sacramento (The
Estate in Abruzzi), which was awarded the 1950 Viareggio Prize, and the short story
collections Tutti i miei peccati (All My Sins) (1948) and Ladro di galline (Chicken Thief)
(1940).
LAURA A.SALSINI
Entries A–Z 441
K
Kounellis, Jannis
b. 21 March 1936, Piraeus, Greece
Artist
Kounellis settled in Rome in 1956, where he studied art and began painting
monochromes decorated with stencilled letters. From 1967 he abandoned painting in
favour of installation, and his interest in pre-existing materials and objects naturally allied
him with the arte povera movement. The use of ephemeral and changeable elements gave
his work the nature of performance, as when he set fires and displayed live animals.
Cavalli (Horses), of 1969, consisted of eleven live horses. Later displays using caged
birds provoked opposition from animal rights activists. In 1994 he transformed the
interior of the cargo ship Ionian by welding metal works to the walls as a retrospective.
As with other artists of arte povera, Kounellis has sought to draw attention to the
aesthetic qualities of existing objects and actions, rather than trying to add to the sum of
things already in the world.
MAX STAPLES
Krizia
Born in Bergamo in 1933, Mariuccia Mandelli (Krizia) opened her first design studio
with a friend, Flora Dolci, in two rented rooms in Milan in 1955. Beginning with a line of
skirts, they moved to dresses with fitted sleeves and a flat smooth line. Her first public
exhibit in 1957 paraded a series of fruit-print dresses, and this was followed by a black
and white collection shown in the Pitti Palace in 1964. Today Krizia is among the most
successful and wealthiest of Italian fashion designers, an ‘iron woman’ in a world of men.
She designs for active women like herself who, in her own words, ‘like to look good in
practical clothes which are comfortable and pleasant to wear but also fun’. The numerous
Krizia labels include men’s wear, children’s wear, knitwear and licenses for glasses,
purses, ties, perfumes and kitchen furniture. The Krizia empire sells worldwide, and a
microcosm of the Krizia world thrives in the Barbuda resort which she developed and for
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which she designed everything down to the maids’ uniforms. Having no heirs, she
‘invests’ her fortune in altruistic activities, which include a scholarship for a deserving
Barbudan islander and a women’s publishing house.
BERNADETTE LUCIANO
Entries A–Z 443
L
La Capria, Raffaele
b. 8 October 1922, Naples
Novelist and screenwriter
After graduating in law, La Capria turned to journalism and screenwriting. His first
novel, Un giorno d’impazienza (A Day of Impatience) (1952), was followed at ten-year
intervals by Ferito a morte (The Mortal Wound) (1961), which won the Strega Prize, and
Amore e Psiche (Eros and Psyche) (1973). The novels chart the angst of the same
protagonist, at different times of life and in different situations, but always in a
Neapolitan setting. Of socio-historical interest are several volumes of his collected
essays, while his L’armonia perduta (Lost Harmony) (1986) traces the transformation of
Naples from a community at one with nature to a city in continual crisis. His 1996 essay
La mosca nella bottiglia (The Fly in the Bottle) attacks the cult of modernity and the
sectorialization of knowledge.
Further reading
Gaglianone, P. (ed.) (1995) Conversazione con Raffaele La Capria (Conversation with Raffaele La
Capria), Rome: Omicron.
DAVE WATSON
La Gaia Scienza
Together with Magazzini Criminali and Falso Movimento, La Gaia Scienza
represented the leading edge of experimental post-avantgarde theatre in Italy in the 1970s
and 1980s. The company was formed in Rome in 1975 by Giorgio Barberio Corsetti,
Marco Solari and Alessandra Vanzi, who remained its performing nucleus and chief
animators. Its first productions were presented at Beat ’72 in Rome, a performing space
which was home to a great deal of the theatrical experimentation of those years, although
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the group soon moved outside to create their spectacles in various public locations
throughout the city, as well as taking their productions to many other national and
international festivals.
Characteristic of its exuberant and energetic performance style, which was constantly
renewed and extended with each new production, was a mobile configuration of the stage
space in order to permit an effective co-penetration between the sets and other stage
properties and the actors’ bodies. This interpenetration of animate and inanimate on the
stage, when coupled with an emphasis on partly improvised rhythmic body movements,
accompanied but never regimented by music, created a richly poetic theatrical writing
made up of gestures and sounds, patterns and repetitions, presenting fragments of stories
through striking visual and sound images but with no reference to any pre-existing
literary or dramatic text. The overall effect, however, was always of an extreme lightness
and freedom, with the actors’ bodies often appearing to defy gravity as they found their
place almost casually in breathtaking visual tableaux.
Following their brilliant Cuori strappati (Torn Hearts) of 1983, tensions began to
develop and the company presented itself at the 1984 Venice Biennale with two
completely separate works, Il ladro di anime (The Thief of Souls), created by Barberio
Corsetti, and Notturni diamanti (Nocturnal Diamonds), by Solari and Vanzi. A year later
the original name was abandoned and the company split into the Compagnia Giorgio
Barberio Corsetti and the Compagnia Solari—Vanzi, with both companies building on
their earlier experiments to courageously explore new theatrical possibilities. An
interesting development for both companies in the 1990s was a return to the use of an
existing literary text as the basis for performance, with Barberio Corsetti drawing much
inspiration from, amongst others, the works of Goethe and Franz Kafka, and the Solari—
Vanzi company more recently exploring the ritual roots of Euripides’ The Bacchae.
Further reading
Pasquini, M. (ed.) (1983) ‘La Gaia Scienza’, Frigidaire, July—August, 62–71 (notes on Cuori
strappati; well-illustrated with colour photographs and set designs).
Ponte di Pino, O. (1988) Il nuovo teatro italiano 1975–1988 (The New Italian Theatre 1975–1988),
Florence: La casa Usher (see pp. 71–89 for extended interviews with Barberio Corsetti, Solari
and Vanzi on their work).
Solari, M. and Infante, C. (eds) (1992) Percorsi Cifrati: Navigazioni nel teatro della compagnia
Solari Vanzi (Cyphered Paths: Navigations Through the Theatre of the Solari—Vanzi
Company), CD-ROM produced by Solari—Vanzi and Impronte Digitali for CARL and ETI (a
thorough digital documentation of, and interactive journey through, all the work of both La Gaia
Scienza and the subsequent Compagnia Solari—Vanzi).
GINO MOLITERNO
Lagorio, Gina
b. 6 January 1922, Bra, Cuneo
Entries A–Z 445
Novelist, short story writer and essayist
Lagorio grew up in Piedmont, including the Langhe region, and has lived in Savona and
Milan. These geographic landscapes provided the setting for her artistic growth and
personal expression and constitute recurring motifs in her narratives. The notion that
sense of self can be discovered through a sense of place recurs in works such as the short
story collection Il polline (Pollen) (1966), and the novels Tosca dei gatti (Tosca with the
Cats) (1983), winner of the Viareggio Prize, and Tra le mura stellate (Among the Starry
Walls) (1991), a Strega Prize finalist. Another central theme in Lagorio’s works is the
experience of women, as for example the novel Un ciclone chiamato Titti (A Cyclone
Named Titti) (1969) which focuses on motherhood. Lagorio has also written children’s
stories and critical works, amongst them Sbarbaro: un modo spoglio di esistere
(Sbarbaro: A Bleak Existence) (1981), winner of the Città Messina Prize, and Il bastardo
(The Bastard) (1996), a historical reconstruction of the life of Emmanuel of Savoy. In
1987 Lagorio entered Parliament as a representative of the independent Left.
Further reading
Pietralunga, M.F. (1990) ‘Gina Lagorio and the Courage of Women’, in S.L. Aricò (ed.),
Contemporary Women Writers in Italy: A Modern Renaissance, Amherst, MA: University of
Massachusetts Press.
VIRGINIA PICCHIETTI
Lampedusa, Giuseppe Tomasi di
b. 23 December 1896, Palermo; d. 23 July 1957, Rome
Writer
Giuseppe Tomasi was the last Prince of Lampedusa. His life was dominated by his acute
awareness of his place in history at the end of a long line of Sicilian noblemen, and by his
love for Sicily despite what he saw as her present decadence. Lampedusa’s legal studies
were interrupted by the First World War and he never resumed them. Indeed, excepting
his appointment as President of the Red Cross in Palermo (1944–6) he pursued no career,
and lived in impoverished gentility. Shy and introverted by nature, Lampedusa was
exceptionally widely read, but wrote nothing save several articles before the last two and
a half years of his life. Out of this late burst of creativity came the novel Il Gattopardo
(The Leopard) and a number of shorter narrative works. None of these were published in
his lifetime, but after his death Il Gattopardo won the 1959 Strega Prize (see literary
prizes) and went on to be acclaimed as one of the greatest Italian literary works of the
century.
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Further reading
Gilmour, D. (1988) The Last Leopard: A Life of Giuseppe di Lampedusa, London: Quartet Books.
JOHN KERSEY
Landolfi, Tommaso
b. 7 August 1908, Pico, Frosinone; d. 8 July 1979, Rome
Novelist, poet and critic
Landolfi’s belief in the futility of literature led to forays into increasingly experimental
narrative styles whose very wit and inventiveness undermined the author’s thesis. He
straddled two worlds of literature, that stemming from the highly disciplined rhetorical
nineteenth-century French and Russian Schools (whose authors he translated), and that of
the innovative Hermetic movement whose adherents called for radical reworking of both
literary structures and themes. Yet Landolfi’s narrative style was always uniquely his
own, whether he employed a diary format, linguistic tricks or surrealistic characters.
Often his female characters are the repository of a mysterious essence that illustrates the
slippery boundary between reality and unreality. Amongst Landolfi’s numerous works
are the poetry collection, Breve canzoniere (Short Songbook) (1971), the novel Ottavio
de Saint-Vincent (1958) which won the Viareggio Prize, and A caso (By Chance), the
collection of short stories that was awarded the Premio Strega in 1975.
LAURA A. SALSINI
language attitudes
The term ‘language attitudes’ indicates the attitudes held by Italians towards varieties of
the Italian language and its dialects. Overall, with regard to Italian, Italians seem to be
torn between loyalty towards the variety that they actually speak (regional Italian) and the
aspiration towards a standard norm; with considerable uncertainty, however, about what
this norm actually is. With regard to the dialects, they tend to hold positive attitudes
towards their users in terms of personal traits, as they consider them nice and reliable, but
negative ones in terms of socioeconomic position, as they consider them little educated
and poor.
In terms of accent, a comparison between standard (non-regionally accented) Italian
and regional (regionally accented) Italian shows that the former, which is far less
widespread than the latter, is associated with high socioeconomic and educational levels
and is considered the most prestigious variety, according to studies conducted in various
cities (Padua, Catania, Milan, Bologna and Rome). However, the standard accent is
Entries A–Z 447
generally not much liked, as it is seen as somehow unnatural: people speaking without a
regional accent are judged cold, distant and to some extent also as show-offs. On the
other hand, regionally accented Italian elicits a more negative evaluation from a
socioeconomic point of view but a more positive one in personality terms: people
speaking it are viewed as less affected and more friendly. This positive evaluation,
however, tends to decrease with a marked increase of dialectal traits in the regional
variety.
Within these general tendencies, striking differences occur among the various regions.
In particular, southern varieties enjoy lower prestige than the northern or central ones,
and the Florentine variety has definitely lost the privileged status it enjoyed in the past.
The following are some of the most important results from several detailed studies using
both direct questioning and indirect techniques (for example, matched-guise tests, where
judgements on language are elicited by asking for judgements on the actual speakers).
While Milanese people associate a Sicilian accent with low socioeconomic and
educational levels only, Venetians give it a negative evaluation also in personality terms,
as they consider speakers with a Venetian accent more likeable and reliable than those
with a Sicilian accent. Interestingly, this prejudice is also found among Sicilians
themselves, from both the socioeconomic and personal points of view, as Sicilians living
in Padua consider speakers with a Venetian accent to be more educated, more successful,
more beautiful and richer than they themselves are, thus showing a general low self-
image. An even lower self-image is shown by Sicilians living in Sicily, who give
Venetians more positive judgements on the socio-economic level than the ones expressed
by their co-regionals residing in the Veneto. Like the Milanese, Romans and Florentines
also generally claim to prefer their own accent most of all and to wish it for their children
as well; in particular, the Milanese variety enjoys high prestige, given that even the
Florentines opt for it as their second preferred one. The Florentine accent, although it is
never the preferred one outside Tuscany, still retains some prestige, as it is the second
preferred accent by both Milanese and Roman people; on the other hand, the Florentines
do not reciprocate the favour to the Romans, as a Roman accent is not much liked in
Florence.
With regard to dialects, negative attitudes towards them tend to become stronger in
connection with women. In fact, women are both harsher judges of the dialects than the
men, and targets of harsher judgements when they speak them themselves. Furthermore,
certain regional groups stigmatize their own dialect more than others do; for example, the
Sicilians seem to favour their own dialect least. As well as gender and region, other
variables have been investigated such as age, level of education, and socioeconomic
status. A comparison between younger and older Venetians of similar socioeconomic
background, for example, shows major differences in their perception of their own
dialect, with the older group displaying much more favourable attitudes towards it, to the
preference even of locally accented Italian. In Sicily, on the other hand, the younger the
age of the people expressing their attitudes, the milder appear their reactions in terms of
both the directions of maximum dislike and maximum favour of dialect. Furthermore, the
most severe judgements on the dialect are expressed by older women, with limited
education, living in smaller towns.
See also: dialects; Italian language; Italian phonology; varieties of Italian
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Further reading
Baroni, M.R. (1983) Il linguaggio trasparente (Transparent Language), Bologna: Il Mulino (a
detailed study of attitudes towards dialect, regionally accented and non-accented Italian among
Sicilians, Venetians and Milanese, elicited through indirect techniques).
Galli de’ Paratesi, N. (1985) Lingua toscana in bocca ambrosiana (Tuscan Language in Ambrosian
Mouth), Bologna: Il Mulino, part 2, ch. 3 (a survey on attitudes towards regionally accented and
non-accented Italian in Rome, Florence and Milan, in response to direct questions).
Vecchio, S. (1990) ‘Una mappa dell’ideologia linguistica’ (A Map of Linguistic Ideology), in F. Lo
Piparo (ed.), La Sicilia linguistica oggi (Language in Sicily Today), Palermo: Centre di Studi
Filologici e Linguistici Siciliani (a study of judgements on Sicilian by a wide sample of
Sicilians, through responses to a series of statements).
Volkart-Rey, R. (1990) Atteggiamenti linguistici e stratificazione sociale (Linguistic Attitudes and
Social Stratification), Rome: Bonacci (a detailed survey of attitudes towards regionally accented
and non-accented Italian in Catania and in Rome, through indirect techniques).
ANTONIA RUBINO
language education
In the process of postwar reconstruction, the curricula of Italian schools were redrafted in
1945. The approach to language rejected the fascist ideology of the previous programmes
but at the same time returned to earlier, prescriptive conceptions of language education.
The model of Italian offered to school students for study and imitation was a literary one,
and paid scant regard to the dialects which were the first language of the vast majority of
students. Subsequent policy reviews in 1955 and 1963 repeated this approach, instructing
primary teachers not to use dialect while speaking to their pupils and to discourage use of
dialect or of colloquial expressions.
The economic and social developments of the 1950s and 1960s and their linguistic
consequences led to reflection among groups of teachers who led the process of change in
education policy. The Centre d’Iniziativa Democratica degli Insegnanti (Teachers’
Democratic Initiative Centre) drew up a policy document in 1975, the Dieci tesi per
l’educazione linguistica democratica (Ten theses for democratic language education).
The choice of the word educazione is noteworthy, since it suggests a more holistic vision
than the more usual istruzione. This document was adopted by the Gruppi di Intervento e
di Studio nel Campo nell’Educazione Linguistica (GISCEL), formed in 1978 within the
Società di Linguistica Italiana (see language institutions), and had significant influence
on the reform of the scuola media (intermediate schools) promulgated in 1979.
The 1979 programmes set the study of language at the centre of the educational
process:
L’acquisizione di una sempre più sicura padronanza del linguaggio in tutte
le sue funzioni è un diritto dell’uomo e, di conseguenza, uno degli
obiettivi fondamentali della scuola la quale, con la varietà dei suoi
interventi, si propone di promuovere nell’alunno la capacità di esprimere
Entries A–Z 449
una più ricca realtà interiore ossia il suo pensiero, i suoi sentimenti, come
segno di una crescente presa di coscienza di sé, degli altri e del mondo
(The acquisition of an ever more secure mastery of language in all its
functions is a human right and consequently one of the basic aims of the
school which, in its various interventions, aims to promote in the pupil the
ability to express a richer interior reality, i.e. her/his thoughts and feelings,
as a sign of a growing awareness of self, others and world).
The programmes combine a descriptive study of the linguistic universe from which the
students have come and into which they will eventually move (including the historical
context of the Italian language and the dialects, contemporary varieties of Italian and
theoretical reflection on the study of language), with the prescription of a model which is
considerably more flexible and eclectic than previous models of standard Italian.
In the primary schools, there has been some experimentation and progress in
developing contrastive methods of teaching Italian, which involve’ systematic
comparison between Italian and the native dialects of the pupils. This is aimed at
encouraging effective bilingualism and at maintaining children’s contact with their home
cultural environment while introducing them to wider contexts.
From the late 1980s the study of a foreign language has been compulsory for all
children from primary to lower secondary school. However, in practice not every Italian
school, particularly in the South, has complied with the legislation. In the border regions
of Italy, where minority languages are spoken, there are, thanks to the autonomous
status of those regions, numbers of ‘bilingual schools’ which offer tuition in Italian
and/or a second language. In Valle D’Aosta the second language is French; in the
province of Bolzano in the region of Trentino Alto-Adige, the second languages are
German and, in certain valleys, Ladin; in Friuli Venezia-Giulia, the second languages are
Slovene and, in a small number of schools, Friulian. In Sardinia, the regional government
has been considering proposals to introduce bilingual education in Italian and Sardinian,
but no programmes have as yet begun.
One dimension of language education which has come to the fore since the 1980s has
arisen because of the new immigration into Italy. The immigrants themselves need to be
provided with effective tuition in Italian to enable them to contribute to their host society
and gain maximum (human as well as economic) benefit from it; and, even more pressing
and difficult, is the presence of the children of immigrants in Italian classrooms. Official
measures are inadequate, but there is a good deal of informed debate among specialists
on how best to teach Italian to the second generation of migrants, on whether schools
should take on the responsibility of maintaining the migrants’ first languages, and on how
best to educate Italian children to learn from the experience of the new
‘multiculturalism’.
See also: dialects; dialect usage; education; immigrant literature; language policy
Further reading
De Mauro, T. and Lodi, M. (1979) Lingua e dialetti, Rome: Editori Riuniti (a comprehensive and
accessible guide for teachers, written by two of the protagonists of the changes described).
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