Acculturation and Its Discontents

by Myers, David H.; Ciavolella, Massimo; Reill, Peter H.; Symcox, Geoffrey

• ISBN13: 9780802098511
• ISBN10: 0802098517
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-09-18
• Publisher: Univ of Toronto Pr

Summary

Exploring the fascinating cross-cultural influences between Jews and Christians in Italy from the Renaissance to the twentieth century, Acculturation and Its Discontents assembles essays by leading historians, literary scholars, and musicologists to present a well-rounded history of Italian Jewry.The contributors offer rich portraits of the many vibrant forms of cultural and artistic expression that Italian Jews contributed to, but this volume also pays close attention to the ways in which Italian Jews - both freely and under pressure ¬- creatively adapted to the social, cultural, and legal norms of the surrounding society. Tracing both the triumphs and tragedies of Jewish communities within Italy over a broad span of time, Acculturation and Its Discontents challenges conventional assumptions about assimilation and state intervention and, in the process, charts the complex process of cultural exchange that left such a distinctive imprint not only on Italian Jewry, but also on Italian society itself.This collection of rigorous and thought-provoking essays makes a major contribution to both the history of Italian culture and the cultural influence and significance of European Jews.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 3
Renaissance Reverberations
How 'Other' Really Was the Jewish Other? The Evidence from Venice	p. 19
Emotion and Acculturation: Masquerading Emotion in the Roman Ghetto	p. 56
Between Exclusion and Inclusion: Jews as Portrayed in Italian Music from the Late Fifteenth to the Early Seventeenth Centuries	p. 72
Can Fundamentalism Be Modern? The Case of Avraham Portaleone (1542-1612)	p. 99
Into Modernity
Jewish Women, Marriage Law, and Emancipation: The Civil Divorce of Rachele Morschene in Late Eighteenth-Century Trieste	p. 119
The Jews of Italy in the Triennio Giacobino, 1796-1799	p. 148
Singing Modernity: Synagogne Music in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Italy	p. 164
'Their True Tongue': History, Memory, Language, and the Jews of Italy	p. 183
Growing Up Jewish in Ferrara: The Fiction of Giorgio Bassani	p. 203
Index	p. 211
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