Buried Caesars, And Other Secrets of Italian American Writing

by Viscusi, Robert

• ISBN13: 9780791466346
• ISBN10: 0791466345
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-06-01
• Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr

Summary

Robert Viscusi takes a comprehensive look at Italian American writing by exploring the connections between language and culture in Italian American experience and major literary texts. Italian immigrants, Viscusi argues, considered even their English to be a dialect of Italian, and therefore attempted to create an American English fully reflective of their historical, social, and cultural positions. This approach allows us to see Italian American purposes as profoundly situated in relation not only to American language and culture but also to Italian nationalist narratives in literary history as well as linguistic practice. Viscusi also situates Italian American writing within the "eccentric design" of American literature, and uses a multidisciplinary approach to read not only novels and poems, but also houses, maps, processions, videos, and other artifacts as texts. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Robert Viscusi is Professor of English and Executive Officer at The Ethyle R. Wolfe Institute for the Humanities, Brooklyn College, The City University of New York

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Acknowledgments	xix
Introduction: Secrets of Italian American Writing	1	(24)
English as a Dialect of Italian	25	(14)
De vulgari eloquentia: Ordinary Eloquence in Italian America	39	(20)
Il caso della casa: Stories of Houses in Italian America	59	(10)
Immigrant Ambitions and American Literature	69	(12)
The Text in the Dust: Writing Italy across America	81	(14)
The Semiology of Semen: Questioning the Father	95	(16)
Circles of the Cyclopes: Concentric History	111	(28)
A Literature Considering Itself: The Allegory of Italian America	139	(22)
The Italian American Sign	161	(28)
The Imperial Sopranos	189	(30)
Notes	219	(30)
Index	249