Gino Moliterno. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture

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such as l’aumento del metabolismo ‘the increase of metabolism’ instead of il

metabolismo aumenta ‘metabolism increases’. Other features include a narrow range of

verbal tenses and moods, a reduced use of prepositions, as nouns are juxtaposed or

separated with a dash, (la spirale prezzi-salari ‘the price-salary spiral’), and a frequent

use of the passive voice and of impersonal forms. Furthermore, these texts are

characterized by a linear structure of the sentence, with very few subordinate clauses. All

these features contribute to create texts that are both lexically very dense, that is, with a

high number of words compared to the number of sentences, and rather neutral and

impersonal. The textual structure is also very rigid, with precise and obligatory stages in

the presentation and the frequent use of few connectors: for example, dato che ‘given

that’, ammesso che ‘admitting that’ and ne segue ‘it follows’. With the rapid increase of

scientific publications, many new types of text, such as the abstract or the report, are also

being introduced.

With regard to the impact on everyday language, it has been noted that, due to the

popularity of sport, many sporting expressions are now in common use: examples include

serie B ‘second rate’, salvarsi in corner ‘to get off by the skin of one’s teeth’, and

prendere in contropiede ‘to catch someone off balance’. Likewise, some advertisements

tend to become set phrases, such as Il signore sì che se ne intende! ‘Sir really knows

what’s what’, from an advertisement for a brandy. Advertising has also had an impact at

the grammatical level: it has reinforced the use of adjectives in the place of adverbs, as in

parcheggia facile ‘park easy’, where the adjective facile ‘easy’ is used instead of the

adverb facilmente ‘easily’, and it has reduced the use of prepositions through formations

such as alimentinatura ‘food from nature’ instead of alimenti della natura, and modello-

famiglia ‘family model’ instead of modello per la famiglia. With respect to the

popularization of scientific terms, the press has played a fundamental role by presenting

them accompanied by their explanation: for example, ipertermia, cioè la febbre alta

‘hypothermia, that is, high fever’.

It is recognized that, in order to satisfy the need to reach out to the wider public, each

language, including specialist languages, operates at various levels according to the type

of interlocutors and the specific purpose. The language used by scientific researchers to

talk about their field will vary if they are writing for an academic journal, for a high

school textbook or for a newspaper.

See also: advertising; Italian language; Italian lexicon; Italian morphology; sport and

society; varieties of Italian

Further reading

Beccaria, G.L. (1973) I linguaggi settoriali in Italia (Sectorial Languages in Italy), Milan:

Bompiani (essays on specific sectorial languages and their relationship to ordinary language).

Dardano, M. (1981) Il linguaggio dei giornali italiani (The Language of Italian Newspapers), Part

II, Roma-Bari: Laterza (the lexicon of some sectorial languages through the Italian newspapers).

——(1994) ‘I linguaggi scientifici’ (Scientific Languages), in L. Serianni and P. Trifone (eds),

Storia della lingua italiana (History of the Italian Language), vol. 2, Turin: Einaudi (a historical

account of the rise of scientific languages up to the present day).

Sobrero, A.A. (1993) ‘Lingue speciali’ (Specialized Languages), in A.A. Sobrero (ed.),

Introduzione all’italiano contemporaneo. La variazione e gli usi (Introduction to Contemporary

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Italian: Variation and Usage), Bari: Laterza (the differences between sectorial and specialist

languages at various linguistic levels).

ANTONIA RUBINO

Segni, Mariotto

b. 16 May 1939, Sassari

Politician

Son of a former President of the Republic, Mario Segni was politically inactive until

elected as a deputy in 1976 in the DC’s attempt at self-renewal. A conservative

technocrat, Segni opposed any accommodation with the PCI, preferring institutional and

party reform. DC-PSI resistance to electoral reform led to his championing the

referendum as an instrument to force change on an inadequate political class. The

overwhelming success of the 1991 and 1993 referendums, which he had done so much to

bring about, made him a potential prime ministerial candidate in this volatile period, but

Church hostility to the challenge he presented to his party—which he left in March

1993—and his flirtation that summer with the PDS—the only effectively organized

reformist force—alienated his natural backers. Hostile to Berlusconi yet lacking any

allies other than the PPI, the quasi-majoritarian 1994 election ironically proved to be a

disaster for him. Although he aligned himself openly with the centre-left in 1995–6, his

campaign for presidential government reinforced his identification with the Right and

continued to keep him in a political no man’s land.

MARK DONOVAN

Segre, Cesare

b. 4 April 1928, Verzuolo, Cuneo

Academic and literary critic

Professor of romance philology at the universities of Trieste and Pavia, Segre has served

as president of the International Association for Semiotic Studies and editor of the

journals Strumenti critici and Medioevo romanzo and the series Critica e filologia for the

Feltrinelli publishing house. Segre’s philological contributions are particularly

significant in the study of the Old French Song of Roland and the Orlando Furioso, the

Italian Renaissance chivalric poem by Ludovico Ariosto. He is also responsible for

editing a critical edition of Italian thirteenth-century prose works and directing an edition

of the complete works of Ariosto. A more historiographical emphasis is apparent in other

books by Segre, which bring to the study of literary language and style considerations of

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the influences of society and experience. Segre’s enthusiastic promotion of structuralist

methodologies in the late 1960s, together with his foundational work in linguistic theory,

evolved to produce Strutturalismo e critica (Structuralism and Criticism), a collective

work that Segre edited, and which is generally considered the first Italian text devoted to

the semiotics of literature.

Further reading

Segre, C. (1988) Introduction to the Analysis of the Literary Text, trans. J. Meddemmen,

Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

SHERRY ROUSH

semiotics

The study of signs is as old as the divinatory practices of ancient cultures, but semiotics

as the science of signs and the academic discipline that analyses the process of

signification is usually taken to originate in the early 1960s in France within the ambit of

structuralism. However, despite its French origins, semiotics also exerted a very strong

influence in postwar Italy where, from the early 1960s onwards, theorists and critics like

Umberto Eco, Gillo Dorfles, Cesare Segre, Maria Corti, Ferruccio Rossi-Landi and

others used semiological analysis to both undermine the overwhelming influence which

the thought of Benedetto Croce had exercised over most aspects of Italian culture since

the early 1900s, and to develop new theoretical tools for understanding and appreciating

the irresistible spread of popular culture. Within ten years of the publication of Barthes’s

Elements of Semiology, usually taken as one of the discipline’s founding texts, the

University of Bologna had instituted a chair of semiotics, which was immediately filled

and held for the next two decades by the prolific and ubiquitous Umberto Eco.

The desire to escape the cultural parochialism fostered by the Fascist regime was, in

part, responsible for the rise of semiotics in Italy. The rapid diffusion of television and

the development of postwar Italian cinema were also crucial for the discipline, whose

beginnings contested the dominance of Croce’s philosophy and Marxist historicism. The

Frankfurt school’s variation on Marxist theory was imported to Italy in the late 1950s,

and it shared with Croce’s aesthetics a tendency to radically separate mass or popular

culture from the exalted sphere of Art. Semiotics undermines this division by considering

the various forms of cultural activity all as rule-bound signifying practices. This stance

implies that a work of art should be seen neither as an isolated expression of artistic

intuition, nor as the determined reflection of a particular historical situation. Against

historicism, the critical activity of semiotics seeks to discover the internal logic of the

construction of cultural artefacts, and against Croceanism, semiotics insists that cultural

artefacts are meaningful because they refer to signifying systems operating in the larger

field of the culture itself. In fact, Eco has even proposed that all cultural phenomena can

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and should be studied as a set of communication processes founded on systems of

signification (Eco, 1976:22)

Thus, despite the fact that many semioticians were explicitly engaged in aesthetics,

their quest for new aesthetic criteria contributed to a re-evaluation of the opposition

between high and low culture. This trend was evidenced in early semiotic studies of

advertising by Gillo Dorfles and Umberto Eco, and in fact, were it not so exceptional,

Eco’s career, with its trajectory from the offices of RAI television to international

academic and literary stardom, could be seen as paradigmatic of the progressive fortunes

of the discipline itself. And if Eco and other semioticians have seen fit to take an interest

in popular culture, the reverse could also be said to be the case. Since 1965, Eco has

written a column entitled ‘La bustina di Minerva’ in the magazine L’Espresso, which he

has used to divulge information about semiotics as a discipline as well as to disseminate

semiotically informed cultural commentary. The stature and credibility of semiotics in

Italian culture is also illustrated by the participation of Eco and Paolo Fabbri in the Aldo

Moro affair, when government authorities saw fit to solicit their assistance in order to

verify the authenticity of letters written by Moro while he was being held in a terrorist

hideout.

Perhaps more mundanely, semiotics has also made the rounds of the various academic

and critical disciplines. In Italian literary studies, Cesare Segre and Maria Corti have been

instrumental in unifying semiotics and the various threads of twentieth-century literary

theory. Film theory has a rich Italian history, and semioticians such as Gianfranco

Bettetini and Emilio Garroni have made important contributions to the discipline.

Meanwhile, anthropology and folklore have been influenced by Eco’s La Struttura

assente (The Absent Structure) (1968) and by Antonino Buttita’s Ideologia e folklore

(Ideology and Folklore).

Theatre, art, architecture, non-verbal communication, television, fashion, journalism,

game theory and even cartoons have been similarly studied by semioticians. Semiotics

also plays an important role in one of Italy’s newest and most exciting educational

opportunities at the university level. In 1996, more than 2,100 students competed for only

140 openings for the degree programme in ‘Sciences of Communication’ at Bologna. The

programme is considered to offer excellent employment prospects, and, as befits the

information era, it includes coursework in semiotics, sociology, law, computer science,

psychology, advertising and journalism. Currently, the programme is also offered at the

universities of Turin, Siena, Trieste, Padua and Rome.

The place of semiotics in postwar Italian culture has been summed up by Thomas

Sebeok, one of the foremost American semioticians: ‘Italy is the country where the

European renaissance of semiotics has its roots and whence some of its best work

continues to resonate worldwide’ (Sebeok in Segre, 1988: vii).

Further reading

Bettetini, G. and Casetti, F. (1986) ‘Semiotics in Italy’, in T. Sebeok and J. Umiker-Sebeok (eds),

The Semiotic Sphere, New York: Plenum, 292–321 (the most comprehensive English-language

history of Italian semiotics to date).

Corti, M. (1978) An Introduction to Literary Semiotics, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press

(a useful introduction to semiotics with emphasis on its literary applications).

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Danesi, M. (1994) Messages and Meanings: An Introduction to Semiotics, Toronto: Canadian

Scholar’s Press (an outstanding general introduction to a variety of perspectives on semiotic

issues).

De Lauretis, T. (1978) ‘Semiotics in Italy’, in R. Bailey, L.Matejka and P.Steiner (eds), The Sign:

Semiotics Around The World, Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Slavic Publications (a conveniently

succinct summary of the development of Italian semiotics).

Eco, U. (1976) A Theory of Semiotics, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

——(1994) Apocalypse Postponed, ed. R.Lumley, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press (an

excellent selection of Eco’s occasional writings on Italian culture).

Segre, C. (1988) Introduction to the Analysis of the Literary Text, trans. J. Meddemmen,

Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

THOMAS KELSO

Sereni, Vittorio

b. 27 July 1913, Luino, Varese; d. 10 February 1983, Milan

Poet, essayist and translator

The son of a customs officer, Sereni was born on the Lago Maggiore (one of the great

northern lakes), which remains a constant landscape in his poetry. In 1937 he published

his first poems in Il Frontespizio (The Frontispiece) and founded the literary journal

Corrente (Current), although it was not until 1941 that his first volume of poetry,

Frontiera (Frontier), was published, which suggested to some critics the influence of

Ungaretti and Montale. However, the thematic focus on Lombard landscapes, the

musicality of the verse and a colloquial language that resembles the poetic diction of

Saba underscored from the beginning Sereni’s own originality. Called up to join the

Italian army that same year, Sereni served on the African front. He was captured in 1943

and spent two years in prisoner of war camps in Algeria and Morocco, an experience that

is central to his second book, Diario d’Algeria (Algerian Diary). Here, the personal

experience of captivity becomes the lyrical counterpoint for the grander historical drama

of the war, and reveals the poet’s shame and sense of futility at being a helpless spectator

of historical events.

After the war, Sereni returned to Milan, where he taught high school before going to

work in the advertising branch of industrial giant Pirelli and, later, as literary editor for

Mondadori. Gli strumenti umani (Human Instruments), published in 1962, begins with

the poems that closed Diario, revealing Sereni’s desire to present his poetry as a lifelong

continuum. The discussion of moral and social concerns begun in the previous volume is

continued, although it is transferred to the familiar landscape of the great industrial city.

But in observing this world, the poet gradually suggests that his hopes for social

reconstruction after the war have fallen by the wayside. Considered to be Sereni’s most

important collection, Gli strumenti experiments heavily with dialogue and everyday

spoken language, and thus reflects the poet’s desire to abandon his literary world in order

to actively denounce the injustices of capitalism

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Sereni’s pessimism continues and increases with Stella variabile (Variable S), the

volume of poetry published two years before his death. No longer buoyed by the hope

that ‘human instruments’ will guide him, Sereni confides in the Variability’ of the stars to

lead him through his later years, as hopelessness and despair close about him.

A candidate for the Nobel Prize in literature in his later years, Sereni also wrote a

number of essays, collected in Letture preliminari (Preliminary Readings) and the short

stories L’opzione (The Option) and Il sabato tedesco (The German Saturday). He is also

known for his translations of Apollinaire, Char, Pound and W.C. Williams, collected in Il

musicante di Saint-Merry (The Musician of Saint-Merry).

Further reading

Baffoni Licata, M.L. (1986) La poesia di Vittorio Sereni: alienazione e impegno (The Poetry of

Vittorio Sereni: Alienation and Commitment), Ravenna: Longo (a discussion of Sereni’s

movement from the aesthetic to the social sphere in his poetry).

Sereni, V. (1990) Selected Poems of Vittorio Sereni, trans. M. Perryman and P. Robinson, London:

Anvil Press Poetry.

VALERIO FERME

Severino, Emanuele

b. 26 February 1929, Brescia

Philosopher

Emanuele Severino teaches at the university of Venice and contributes regularly to Il

Corriere della Sera and various periodicals. His writings contest the tradition of Western

metaphysics as a whole. Severino’s crucial insight concerns the opposition of post-

Platonic philosophy to the static conception of the universe that is associated with

Parmenides. His proposed ‘return to Parmenides’ is predicated upon the possibility of

undoing the fundamental alienation from Being that he sees as inherent in the Western

metaphysical paradigm, insofar as it views beings as entities that emerge and return to the

void after a transitory existence. He has defended this thesis in a three-volume history of

philosophy, but he has also written extensively on the nature of technology, aesthetics

and ideology.

Further reading

Borradori, G. (1988) ‘Introduction’, in G. Borradori (ed.), Receding Metaphysics: The New Italian

Philosophy, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1–26.

THOMAS KELSO

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sexism in language

Questions related to gender discrimination and stereotyping through language play a

lesser role in Italy than they do in English-speaking countries. In Italy, such debates

generally tend to address more philosophical and ideological aspects, and focus less on

specific points of usage. There are two main reasons for this. The first concerns the

nature of the language itself: grammatical gender affects not only all Italian nouns, but

also their pattern of agreement with articles, adjectives, pronouns and participles (see also

Italian morphology; Italian syntax); if Italian were to leave unspecified the sex of the

person, saying for example, ‘I have gone’ (in Italian inevitably either sono andato or sono

andata), then it would become a completely different language. The second reason

concerns language usage: Italian has suffered a long tradition of prescriptivism based on

purist, and in this century also fascistic, grounds (see also Italian language); hence, any

official attempt to tamper with spontaneous use and enforce a language policy meets with

scepticism, if not downright resistance.

However, even if the debate on sexist language in Italy developed less forcefully and

later than in other Western countries, when it did, progressive ideas obtained prompt

endorsement by the government. In the 1980s a Commissione Nazionale per la

Realizzazione della Parità fra Uomo e Donna (National Commission for the

Implementation of Parity between Man and Woman) was set up in the Office of the

Prime Minister, under whose auspices Le raccomandazioni per un uso non sessista della

lingua italiana (Recommendations for Non-Sexist Use of the Italian Language) were

written by Alma Sabatini. Its proposals were numerous and varied, but include the

following. First, words referring to males, which are usually masculine in form, should

not be used as general terms denoting both men and women; for example, i diritti

dell’uomo (the rights of man) should become i diritti umani (the human rights) or i diritti

della persona (the rights of the person). Second, masculine agreement should be avoided

when both sexes are involved; for example, Ragazzi e ragazze furono visti (Boys and

girls were seen/masc.) should become Ragazzi e ragazze furono viste (Boys and girls

were seen/fem.), or Ragazze e ragazzi furono visti (Girls and boys were seen/masc.),

where the agreement is made with the latter, closer item. Third, when referring to women,

terms for professions, titles and so on should be used in the feminine, and this should be

expressed in its simplest form if more than one is available; for example Maria Rossi,

direttore (director/masc.) should be replaced by Maria Rossi, direttrice (director/fem.),

and la studentessa (the student/ fem.) by la studente (the student/fem.).

Despite these official recommendations, common usage has changed only slightly,

partly for the two reasons mentioned above, and partly because some of the proposals are

not sufficiently sensitive to the history of the language and the implications they entail.

Thus, for example, Italians may call a woman who is a chief constable questore (masc.),

questora (fem.) or questrice (fem.), and make whatever agreement they like, i.e., il

questore Maria Rossi è arrivato (the chief constable Maria Rossi has arrived/masc.) or il

questore Maria Rossi è arrivata (the chief constable Maria Rossi has arrived/fem.).

See also: feminism; Italian lexicon; language education; language policy

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Further reading

Lepschy, G. (1991) ‘Language and Sexism’, in Z.G. Baranski and S.W.Vinall (eds), Women in

Italy. Essays on Gender, Culture and History, Moundmills: Macmillan (a review of Sabatini’s

Raccomandazioni and a balanced survey of some of the problems they entail).

Sabatini, A. (1986) Raccomandazioni per un uso non sessista della lingua italiana, Rome:

Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri.

CAMILLA BETTONI

sexual mores

As with many other countries, Italy witnessed a radical transformation of sexual mores

beginning in the 1960s. although low rates of divorce and the survival of a predominant

role for the family into the 1990s both suggest a fair amount of continuity and testify to

the survival of at least some traditional values.

In the immediate postwar period, the wide-spread fear of moral disorder was closely

linked with the idea of national decline. The presence of American troops and the

popularity of American movies showing independent women and angry young men

favoured the process of moral liberalization. Moreover, secularization seemed to threaten

social stability and the proposal to introduce divorce raised fears about the disintegration

of family life. In an attempt to save the traditional family, Catholic mass organizations

like the Azione Cattolica (Catholic Action) launched a strong campaign for moral

‘rearmament’, which obtained the support of the DC politicians in power.

The combined efforts of religious and political authorities were aimed at preventing a

radical change in sexual mores. Censorship, social pressure and police measures served to

combat bikinis, striptease and obscenity in the attempt to safeguard national customs.

Repression, however, was not the only characteristic of the 1950s, for during the same

years reformist movements obtained the elimination of some of the more glaring social

inequities: for example, the legal position of illegitimate children was improved and the

1958 legislation promoted by Lina Merlin abolished ‘closed houses’ for prostitution.

Convinced that better information about sexual life before marriage and sexual

harmony after marriage were necessary to avoid the break-up of marriages, Catholic

priests like Don Paolo Liggeri organized courses of sexual education and created the first

family advisory agencies in Italy. In a different way, the public discussion of scandals

tore through the veil of silence, although a moralizing tone was always prevalent.

After an attempt by left-wing politicians to abolish the legal obstacles to birth control,

the Italian Association for Demographic Education (AIED) was created in 1956. For

many years, however, the efforts of the AIED remained without success, and those

speaking up in favour of the legalization of contraception risked legal persecution (see

feminism).

The ‘economic miracle’ of the late 1950s and the rapid transformation from a rural to

an industrial society were at the roots of the change which occurred in the following

decades. Mass migration from the South to the North, urbanization, secularization, the

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higher standard of living, improved education and increased social and geographical

mobility all contributed to undermine parental authority and the role of the local

community and created new opportunities for women and young people to conquer

higher levels of personal freedom and autonomy.

Sexual themes now appeared more often in popular literature and in cartoons such as

Kriminal and, at a more sophisticated level, Guido Crepax’s Valentina (see comics). In

the early 1970s, magazines like Cosmopolitan and Liberal tried to exploit the commercial

opportunities offered by the general interest in sexual issues, soon followed by other

women’s magazines which offered their readers a ‘scientific’ approach to sexuality, while

condemning pornography. The film industry both reflected the changes in sexual

morality and tried to promote change, as with Pietro Germi denouncing the male code of

honour and the absurdities of Italian legislation in films like Divorzio all’italiana

(Divorce, Italian Style) (1961) and Sedotta e abbandonata (Seduced and Abandoned)

(1964).

The transformation of sexual mores in these years emerges clearly from court cases.

After a long debate, kissing in public was declared legal in 1969. In the same year a

Roman Court declared that miniskirts, although of dubious taste in aesthetic terms, were

not contrary to public decency. Finally in 1982 the Court of Cassation made a similar

decision about women going topless at the beach. Gradually, legislation regarding sexual

behaviour was adapted to the changed reality. Still, in 1965 the Constitutional Court

had ruled that detailed information about contraceptives should remain illegal because it

offended public morality, and that only generic pleas in favour of birth control could be

allowed. The law prohibiting propaganda in favour of birth control, however, was

declared anti-constitutional in 1971. In 1969 the Court had already abolished the crime of

adultery, and a year later divorce had been introduced.

The year 1975 marked a watershed in the transition from repression to an attitude

more respectful of personal values and civil liberties. The new family law finally

recognized the principle of equal rights for men and women. In the same year, public

family advisory agencies were set up with the aim of assisting singles and couples to

solve problems regarding sexuality, procreation and related matters. When abortion

became legal in 1978, family advisory agencies became responsible for providing the

necessary information.

The more active role played by public authorities in issues relating to the intimate life

of citizens created problems for the Catholic Church, which in the past had enjoyed a

virtual monopoly in this sector. Hopes for a major liberalization in questions of sexuality

and birth control had been dashed in 1968, when Pope Paul VI published the encyclical

letter Humanae vitae which confirmed the traditional teaching of the Church. In the

attempt to strengthen Catholic influence, in 1975 the Italian Conference of Bishops made

the attendance of courses preparing for matrimony mandatory for young people who

opted for a religious ceremony.

Equally critical of the changes in sexual mores—albeit from a different point of

view—was Pier Paolo Pasolini, who denounced the pre-dominance of the values of a

consumer society which had halted a more authentic process of liberation. Sexual

liberation in the 1960s and early 1970s was clearly male-oriented and this may explain

why many women in this period complained of an unsatisfactory sexual life. Moreover,

at least initially, the movement had a strong heterosexual bias and shared the general

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attitude of repressive tolerance with regard to homosexuality. Only in 1972 did the gay

movement FUORI make its first public appearance during a conference of sexologists.

Not surprisingly, the major efforts for further changes in sexual mores and for the

recognition of alternative lifestyles since have emanated from gay, lesbian and feminist

groups. Their requests have been only partially satisfied due to continuing Catholic

opposition, but also to the substratum of Italian society, which continues to be

characterized by a strong institutionalization of marriage and a generally conservative

attitude.

Further reading

Sabatini, R. (1988) L’Eros in Italia. Il comportamento sessuale degli italiani (Eros in Italy: The

Sexual Behaviour of Italians) Milan: Mursia (a survey of the sexual mores of Italians in the

1980s).

Wanrooij, B. (1996) ‘Back to the Future: Gender, Morality and Modernisation in Twentieth-

Century Italy’, Italian History & Culture 2:41–59.

BRUNO P.F. WANROOIJ

Sgorlon, Carlo

b. 26 July 1930, Cassacco, Udine

Writer and critic

Sgorlon’s early study of the Austrian author Franz Kafka infused his work with grotesque

and oneiric undertones, most apparent in his first works, which include La poltrona (The

Easy Chair) (1968). Sgorlon’s devotion to the culture of his region and his love of the

Friulian dialect is also already evident in these early works, for the short work entitled

Prime di sera (1971), written in Friulian, later evolved into the novel Il vento nel vigneto

(The Wind in the Vineyard) (1973). His later works are typified by narratives rich in

magic and myth, influenced perhaps by a period of study in Germany as well as by his

study of the author Elsa Morante. Sgorlon lyrically depicts his native Friulian region in

such novels as Gli dei torneranno (The Gods Will Return) (1977), L’armata dei fiumi

perduti (The Armada of Lost Rivers) (1985) and La fontana di Lorena (The Fountain of

Lorena) (1990). In 1973 he won the Campiello prize for his novel Il trono di legno (The

Wooden Throne), which portrayed a Friulian community torn between the past and

present. His short stories are collected in Il quarto re mago (The Fourth Wise Man)

(1986).

LAURA A. SALSINI

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