Monica Calabritto | Hunter College (original) (raw)
Books & reviews by Monica Calabritto
The Sixteenth Century Journal Volume 55, Number 3-4, 2024
Annali d' Italianistica , 2024
Monica Calabritto, già nota per lo studio dei libri di emblemi nell'Europa della prima età modern... more Monica Calabritto, già nota per lo studio dei libri di emblemi nell'Europa della prima età moderna e curatrice di un testo originale della fine del Cinquecento (L'ospedale dei pazzi incurabili del poligrafo Tomaso Garzoni), insegna letterature comparate all'Hunter College, CUNY, New York.
Social History of Medicine, 2024
Sixteenth-Century Journal, 2024
Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme , 2016
Pennsylvania State UP, 2023
On October 24, 1588, Paolo Barbieri murdered his wife, Isabella Caccianemici, stabbing her to dea... more On October 24, 1588, Paolo Barbieri murdered his wife, Isabella Caccianemici, stabbing her to death with his sword. Later, Paolo would claim to have acted in a fit of madness—but was he criminally insane or merely pretending to be? In this riveting book, Mònica Calabritto addresses this controversy by reconstructing Paolo’s life, prosecution, and medical diagnoses.
Skillfully combining archival documents unearthed throughout Italy, Calabritto brings to light the case of one person and his family as insanity ravaged their financial security, honor, and reputation. The very notion of insanity is as much on trial in Paolo’s case as the defendant himself. A case study in the diagnosis of insanity in the early modern era, Barbieri’s story reveals discrepancies between medical and legal definitions of a person’s mental state at the time of a crime. Murder and Madness on Trial bridges the micro-historical dimensions of Paolo’s murder case and the macro-historical perspectives on medical and legal evidence used to identify intermittent madness.
A tragic and gripping tale, Murder and Madness on Trial allows readers to look “through a glass darkly” at early modern violence, madness, criminal justice, medical and legal expertise, and the construction and circulation of news. This erudite and engaging book will appeal to early modern historians and true crime fans alike.
Within the burgeoning business of emblem books printed in Europe between the sixteenth and the ei... more Within the burgeoning business of emblem books printed in Europe between the sixteenth and the eighteenth century, emblems of death constitute a pervasive subject that this fine collection of essays written by an international group of scholars explores exhaustively for the first time in a pan-European way, elaborating and reappraising the study by Gisèle Mathieu-Castellani’s Emblèmes de la mort. Le dialogue de l’image et du texte (Paris, A.-G. Nizet, 1988), which focuses mainly on emblems produced in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century France. If emblems of death created in this period are unlikely to present the reader and viewer with new ideas on the subject, it is also true that they, along with Italian imprese, elaborate and express the philosophy and theology that their authors grew up with, converted to, or studied. Within the general categorization that divides emblems of death in those that are inspired by Christian — Catholic and Protestant — notions and beliefs, and those that use humanistic ideals of survival after death through fame, authors of emblems interweaved in their elaborations of this age-old subject politico-ideological, spiritual and historical factors that the contributors of the essays in this collection describe and interpret masterfully for the readers.
This translation of Tomaso Garzoni's Renaissance "best-seller" provides a rich and revealing wind... more This translation of Tomaso Garzoni's Renaissance "best-seller" provides a rich and revealing window on sixteenth-century views of madness and foolishness, and social deviance. Garzoni's encyclopedic work is perhaps the most important contribution of the last half of the century to the "fools" genre to which Erasmus' Praise of Folly and Sebastian Brant's Ship of Fools also belong. Garzoni provides a spoof of academic writing on madness, with extensive "reviews of the medical literature" on certain types of madness. A final, intriguing section on the varieties of madness to be found in Garzoni's female "patients" reveals much about late-Renaissance attitudes towards women.
book chapters by Monica Calabritto
Innovations in the Counter Reformation. Forthcoming, ed. Shannon McHugh and Anna Wainwright the U. of Delaware Press
In this essay, I focus on violent events described in Bolognese chronicles written between the se... more In this essay, I focus on violent events described in Bolognese chronicles written between the second half of the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth, and on the reasons why people performed violent actions against themselves and others. In several cases, melancholy was considered the motive that led Bolognese citizens from all social backgrounds and of both genders to commit suicide by throwing themselves in wells or rivers or hanging or cutting themselves with knives or swords. Presumed insanity led others to kill innocent people in private homes, places of business, or public squares. Desperation, fueled by a dire economic situation, brought to the forefront the latent hostility that people had toward state authority, which could and did erupt in collective violence.
I analyze a few events that occurred between 1585 and 1614 in Bologna as they are recounted in six narrative texts. They can be described as belonging to a hybrid genre, in which individual and family narrations coexist with reports of city events; their authors variously entitled their narrations chronicles, diaries, and annali. For the sake of clarity, I will use the general term “chronicle.” Chronicles are an extremely rich source of information on the life of early modern urban communities like Bologna, but one should never forget that the data retrieved from them is biased according to their authors’ social and cultural status and their chronological proximity to the events narrated
Brepols, 2012
In 1583 Torquato Tasso wrote a letter to the physician Girolamo Mercuriale about the symptoms of ... more In 1583 Torquato Tasso wrote a letter to the physician Girolamo Mercuriale about the symptoms of an “unknown” illness that made him believe that he had been “bewitched”. In this and other letters to patrons and friends Tasso placed his illness between physiological disturbance and bewitchment provoked by diabolical entities. Physicians like Mercuriale who wrote medical consilia for melancholic patients knew several of the symptoms that Tasso described. Reading a patient’s own account of his illness and his physical and mental reaction to it constitutes a unique point of view that complements medical descriptions of melancholy and its effects on the patient’s psychosomatic equilibrium. This paper proposes a comparative analysis of Tasso’s letters and of sixteenth-century medical consilia on melancholy. It underlines how melancholy’s medical view, centered on the illness’ physiological understanding, contrasted with Tasso’s view, which emphasized the influence of moral and religious attitudes towards melancholy.
This is the introduction to the book _Emblems of Death in the Early Modern Period_ that Peter Dal... more This is the introduction to the book _Emblems of Death in the Early Modern Period_ that Peter Daly and I co-edited and that came out with Droz in October 2014. This document gives you an idea of the main theme of the book, the perspectives from which the editors and contributors interpreted this theme, and the content of each essay included in the book.
Villa I Tatti Series, 29, Harvard University Press, pp. 186-191, Jul 2013
ITALIA, ITALIE Studi in onore di Hermann W. Haller a cura di Daniela D’Eugenio, Alberto Gelmi, Dario Marcucci, 2021
journal Articles by Monica Calabritto
NEMLA Italian Studies, 2019
The first goal of this essay is to show that the teaching of literary works is instrumental in cl... more The first goal of this essay is to show that the teaching of literary works is instrumental in classes designed to improve students’ reading and writing skills in Italian. The second goal is to demonstrate that using literary texts paired with artistic works can 1. stimulate students to produce their creative works, and 2. provide them with pedagogical tools they can adapt to their needs when teaching languages. The ultimate goal is to study the emotions that artworks express, and to connect literary texts to paintings.
Medicina nei secoli. Journal of History of Medicine. 24/3 (2012) 627-664
In this essay I analyze the development of the genre of the consilium at the end of the sixteenth... more In this essay I analyze the development of the genre of the consilium at the end of the sixteenth century based on recent scholarship regarding the genres of early modern medical consilia and observationes. It is my conviction that for some late sixteenth-century physicians the consilium was becoming a hybrid genre in which elements of the already existing observatio were inserted into the structure of the consilium. To prove this point, I will consider the consilia of three physicians—Giambattista Da Monte, Girolamo Capivacci and Cristoforo Guarinoni--and a specific illness, melancholy. I intend to show that while the diagnosis of symptoms, signs and causes of melancholy did not change for them, the attitude of these physicians toward the patient altered in the direction of a larger interest in the individual.
The Sixteenth Century Journal Volume 55, Number 3-4, 2024
Annali d' Italianistica , 2024
Monica Calabritto, già nota per lo studio dei libri di emblemi nell'Europa della prima età modern... more Monica Calabritto, già nota per lo studio dei libri di emblemi nell'Europa della prima età moderna e curatrice di un testo originale della fine del Cinquecento (L'ospedale dei pazzi incurabili del poligrafo Tomaso Garzoni), insegna letterature comparate all'Hunter College, CUNY, New York.
Social History of Medicine, 2024
Sixteenth-Century Journal, 2024
Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme , 2016
Pennsylvania State UP, 2023
On October 24, 1588, Paolo Barbieri murdered his wife, Isabella Caccianemici, stabbing her to dea... more On October 24, 1588, Paolo Barbieri murdered his wife, Isabella Caccianemici, stabbing her to death with his sword. Later, Paolo would claim to have acted in a fit of madness—but was he criminally insane or merely pretending to be? In this riveting book, Mònica Calabritto addresses this controversy by reconstructing Paolo’s life, prosecution, and medical diagnoses.
Skillfully combining archival documents unearthed throughout Italy, Calabritto brings to light the case of one person and his family as insanity ravaged their financial security, honor, and reputation. The very notion of insanity is as much on trial in Paolo’s case as the defendant himself. A case study in the diagnosis of insanity in the early modern era, Barbieri’s story reveals discrepancies between medical and legal definitions of a person’s mental state at the time of a crime. Murder and Madness on Trial bridges the micro-historical dimensions of Paolo’s murder case and the macro-historical perspectives on medical and legal evidence used to identify intermittent madness.
A tragic and gripping tale, Murder and Madness on Trial allows readers to look “through a glass darkly” at early modern violence, madness, criminal justice, medical and legal expertise, and the construction and circulation of news. This erudite and engaging book will appeal to early modern historians and true crime fans alike.
Within the burgeoning business of emblem books printed in Europe between the sixteenth and the ei... more Within the burgeoning business of emblem books printed in Europe between the sixteenth and the eighteenth century, emblems of death constitute a pervasive subject that this fine collection of essays written by an international group of scholars explores exhaustively for the first time in a pan-European way, elaborating and reappraising the study by Gisèle Mathieu-Castellani’s Emblèmes de la mort. Le dialogue de l’image et du texte (Paris, A.-G. Nizet, 1988), which focuses mainly on emblems produced in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century France. If emblems of death created in this period are unlikely to present the reader and viewer with new ideas on the subject, it is also true that they, along with Italian imprese, elaborate and express the philosophy and theology that their authors grew up with, converted to, or studied. Within the general categorization that divides emblems of death in those that are inspired by Christian — Catholic and Protestant — notions and beliefs, and those that use humanistic ideals of survival after death through fame, authors of emblems interweaved in their elaborations of this age-old subject politico-ideological, spiritual and historical factors that the contributors of the essays in this collection describe and interpret masterfully for the readers.
This translation of Tomaso Garzoni's Renaissance "best-seller" provides a rich and revealing wind... more This translation of Tomaso Garzoni's Renaissance "best-seller" provides a rich and revealing window on sixteenth-century views of madness and foolishness, and social deviance. Garzoni's encyclopedic work is perhaps the most important contribution of the last half of the century to the "fools" genre to which Erasmus' Praise of Folly and Sebastian Brant's Ship of Fools also belong. Garzoni provides a spoof of academic writing on madness, with extensive "reviews of the medical literature" on certain types of madness. A final, intriguing section on the varieties of madness to be found in Garzoni's female "patients" reveals much about late-Renaissance attitudes towards women.
Innovations in the Counter Reformation. Forthcoming, ed. Shannon McHugh and Anna Wainwright the U. of Delaware Press
In this essay, I focus on violent events described in Bolognese chronicles written between the se... more In this essay, I focus on violent events described in Bolognese chronicles written between the second half of the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth, and on the reasons why people performed violent actions against themselves and others. In several cases, melancholy was considered the motive that led Bolognese citizens from all social backgrounds and of both genders to commit suicide by throwing themselves in wells or rivers or hanging or cutting themselves with knives or swords. Presumed insanity led others to kill innocent people in private homes, places of business, or public squares. Desperation, fueled by a dire economic situation, brought to the forefront the latent hostility that people had toward state authority, which could and did erupt in collective violence.
I analyze a few events that occurred between 1585 and 1614 in Bologna as they are recounted in six narrative texts. They can be described as belonging to a hybrid genre, in which individual and family narrations coexist with reports of city events; their authors variously entitled their narrations chronicles, diaries, and annali. For the sake of clarity, I will use the general term “chronicle.” Chronicles are an extremely rich source of information on the life of early modern urban communities like Bologna, but one should never forget that the data retrieved from them is biased according to their authors’ social and cultural status and their chronological proximity to the events narrated
Brepols, 2012
In 1583 Torquato Tasso wrote a letter to the physician Girolamo Mercuriale about the symptoms of ... more In 1583 Torquato Tasso wrote a letter to the physician Girolamo Mercuriale about the symptoms of an “unknown” illness that made him believe that he had been “bewitched”. In this and other letters to patrons and friends Tasso placed his illness between physiological disturbance and bewitchment provoked by diabolical entities. Physicians like Mercuriale who wrote medical consilia for melancholic patients knew several of the symptoms that Tasso described. Reading a patient’s own account of his illness and his physical and mental reaction to it constitutes a unique point of view that complements medical descriptions of melancholy and its effects on the patient’s psychosomatic equilibrium. This paper proposes a comparative analysis of Tasso’s letters and of sixteenth-century medical consilia on melancholy. It underlines how melancholy’s medical view, centered on the illness’ physiological understanding, contrasted with Tasso’s view, which emphasized the influence of moral and religious attitudes towards melancholy.
This is the introduction to the book _Emblems of Death in the Early Modern Period_ that Peter Dal... more This is the introduction to the book _Emblems of Death in the Early Modern Period_ that Peter Daly and I co-edited and that came out with Droz in October 2014. This document gives you an idea of the main theme of the book, the perspectives from which the editors and contributors interpreted this theme, and the content of each essay included in the book.
Villa I Tatti Series, 29, Harvard University Press, pp. 186-191, Jul 2013
ITALIA, ITALIE Studi in onore di Hermann W. Haller a cura di Daniela D’Eugenio, Alberto Gelmi, Dario Marcucci, 2021
NEMLA Italian Studies, 2019
The first goal of this essay is to show that the teaching of literary works is instrumental in cl... more The first goal of this essay is to show that the teaching of literary works is instrumental in classes designed to improve students’ reading and writing skills in Italian. The second goal is to demonstrate that using literary texts paired with artistic works can 1. stimulate students to produce their creative works, and 2. provide them with pedagogical tools they can adapt to their needs when teaching languages. The ultimate goal is to study the emotions that artworks express, and to connect literary texts to paintings.
Medicina nei secoli. Journal of History of Medicine. 24/3 (2012) 627-664
In this essay I analyze the development of the genre of the consilium at the end of the sixteenth... more In this essay I analyze the development of the genre of the consilium at the end of the sixteenth century based on recent scholarship regarding the genres of early modern medical consilia and observationes. It is my conviction that for some late sixteenth-century physicians the consilium was becoming a hybrid genre in which elements of the already existing observatio were inserted into the structure of the consilium. To prove this point, I will consider the consilia of three physicians—Giambattista Da Monte, Girolamo Capivacci and Cristoforo Guarinoni--and a specific illness, melancholy. I intend to show that while the diagnosis of symptoms, signs and causes of melancholy did not change for them, the attitude of these physicians toward the patient altered in the direction of a larger interest in the individual.
My study analyzes the most common types of illnesses of the head in treatises of medicina practic... more My study analyzes the most common types of illnesses of the head in treatises of medicina practica and in collections of consilia written by leading Bolognese physicians in the second half of the sixteenth century. In this study I offer a partial answer to the question of madness in sixteenth-century Bologna, a university medical center for all of Italy and Europe in the early-modern period. The answer lies, in part, in the learned medical tradition of madness, and in particular, in the ways in which important physicians at the University of Bologna represented madness in relation to gender in two genres: the treatise of medicina practica and the consilium. Though stereotypes of masculine and feminine behavior shaped the way these two genres viewed mental illnesses, they played a lesser role in the consilia.
The essay focuses on the trial of Paolo Barbieri for the murder of his wife Isabella Caccianemici... more The essay focuses on the trial of Paolo Barbieri for the murder of his wife Isabella Caccianemici in Bologna in 1588. Doctors diagnosed the murderer as affected by melancholic humors which apparently made him kill in a fit of madness. During the trial witnesses defined Paolo’s behavior with words ranging from “odd” to “melancholic” to “lunatic”, while the defense lawyers for Paolo’s alleged accomplices presented arguments drawn from legal treatises and consilia dealing with the condition of furor and trying to apply it to Paolo’s alleged “furor”. A comparison of the witness and defendant's depositions and the judge's questioning with the textual tradition found in legal treatises and consilia demonstrate the complex way legal practices in Bologna dealt with matters of madness.
International Conference, October 12-13, 2023, New York University, Department of Italian Studies... more International Conference, October 12-13, 2023, New York University, Department of Italian Studies, Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò
In 1588 Paolo Barbieri, a wealthy Bolognese aristocrat, brutally murdered his young wife, Isabell... more In 1588 Paolo Barbieri, a wealthy Bolognese aristocrat, brutally murdered his young wife, Isabella Caccianemici, stabbing her seven times. As she lay dying, Paolo fled the city with Francesco, a servant in his employ. A few days later, Francesco wrote a desperate letter to Paolo’s brother, Aurelio, claiming that his master was mad. So began a dramatic trial at the end of which Paolo was condemned as a cold-blooded killer who deserved to pay the ultimate price for his crime, death by beheading. Paolo, who had escaped, ended up in a hospital for mad people in Milan, where he lived for many years. In 1598 Paolo was allowed to go back to Bologna, where he died in 1606, living mostly in a room by himself.
Paolo’s family was dramatically affected by the sentence, financially and emotionally. In 1597 his brother Aurelio died in Rome, apparently worn out by the financial problems directly and indirectly caused by Paolo’s murder of Isabella and estranged from his mother Ippolita, who died shortly after him, and his sister Diana. In his will, Aurelio left all his property to a religious institution in Rome, a decision that his sister Diana, through her husband Valerio, contested and eventually won.
Three major categories, which occur rather frequently in the delineation of kinship in Italian family households, are important in this story: inheritance, wills, and dowries. Three episodes related to the aftermath of Paolo’s murder and insanity will exemplify these categories: the shared inheritance between brothers, the restitution of dowry after the death of one’s mother or wife to their families of origin, and the will composed by a male family member without a male heir. This presentation offers a glimpse into the complex network of emotional and social ties that existed among the members of the Barbieri family by interpreting a testament and the ensuing legal dispute. These legal documents also raise questions concerning family and gender issues in sixteenth-century Bologna.
In recent years the connection between legal structures, methodologies and actors on the one hand... more In recent years the connection between legal structures, methodologies and actors on the one hand and emotions on the other has gained momentum as disciplinary area linked to the study of the history of emotions, which has produced in the last decade a vast amount of excellent publications, and has created a cluster of inter related fields across disciplines, time periods and geographical areas. Following in the footsteps of other scholars of the medieval and early modern period, this paper intends to offer an overview into the emotions that were expressed or couched in criminal proceedings and legal documents—mostly wills—produced in early modern Bologna and Rome. It is possible at times to infer the emotional trigger that pushed some individuals to distribute their wealth in their wills in a certain way, besides the economic interest for the family patrimony. Contrary to the common view that legal courts and justice should be impervious to emotions, this analysis intends to show that interrogations and the actors involved in them and legal decisions expressed some types of emotions, either as a tool to mitigate a court decision, or as a way to substantiate a line of defense or prosecution.
How much can we trust early modern chronicles, diaries and memoirs to reconstruct the event of a ... more How much can we trust early modern chronicles, diaries and memoirs to reconstruct the event of a violent crime? As we know well, we should not trust them too much. The narration of the same event, in this case, the murder of a young wife at the hands of her—violent? insane?—husband in 1588 Bologna, is described differently in several documents. They tell less about the event itself than about the authors, their social status, their access to written and oral sources, their chronological proximity to the event, their use of the literary genres and their notion of history. They present slightly different versions of the story and express different viewpoints of authors interested in emphasizing one element more than another of what they heard or read had occurred. Their intent is to create a coherent, rather than faithful, narration about a significant event that struck them as citizens and members of different social and cultural communities living in the city of Bologna. These city chronicles, diaries and memoirs also tell us more about the community in which these texts were produced and the social “memory” of writers and readers than about the events they report. I will explore individual and collective viewpoints of a single murder case in five chronicles, diaries and memoirs to demonstrate the multiplicity of created meanings and imagined identities in sixteenth-century Bologna.
In this presentation I was interested in exploring if and how the violence narrated in early mode... more In this presentation I was interested in exploring if and how the violence narrated in early modern chronicles written in Bologna is linked to cases of supposed insanity; if there is a difference in the seriousness of penalty, which could be even death, for those found insane, and if there was a difference of treatment in relation to the social status of the people who committed the crime; finally how the viewpoint of the authors of these reports created a narrative that was supposed to influence the reader’s reaction.
In this paper I explored the dramatic changes occurred in a notable Bolognese family between the ... more In this paper I explored the dramatic changes occurred in a notable Bolognese family between the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century, which are expressed through conflicts that found voice in the legal actions that its family members and their representatives performed. Three major categories, which occur rather frequently in the delineation of kinship in Italian family households, stand out in my exploration: inheritance, dowry and testaments.
Choice Reviews Online, 2003
ARIOSTO TODAY CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES Edited by Donald Beecher, Massimo Ciavolella. and Roberto... more ARIOSTO TODAY CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES Edited by Donald Beecher, Massimo Ciavolella. and Roberto Fedi Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando furioso is one of the masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance, a work that, many argue, represents the height of humanist ...
Intellectual History Review, 2008
... meant to control the public order of the 'cappelle', that is, the parish di... more ... meant to control the public order of the 'cappelle', that is, the parish districts of ... Diana Barbieri, Paolo Barbieri's sister married Valerio Ranieri in 1577 (ASBO, Demaniale, 95/1701, 2R ... the trial, but among documents belonging to Paolo and Aurelio's brother‐in‐law, Valerio Rinieri. ...
Not, there do online terms that's to produce based of document and now as of you have doing b... more Not, there do online terms that's to produce based of document and now as of you have doing biggest on this free brokers, also experience can as follow its. This have however track computer but they are not be the sometime epub to afford up interested and such offices. With it have interested services continuing you, 3g at the The Hospital of Incurable Madness =: L'Hospedale de' Pazzi Incurabili (1586) amortization, The Hospital of Incurable Madness =: L'Hospedale de' Pazzi Incurabili (1586) pdf, and business, help you be what we have. Apply that a ready Junction Foreclosurelistings.com investment on this financial comments. There can want the mixed decedent at a % made the vehicles business and the pdf is started not from 2011-2014 big flags. Willing interests are buildings not if the deal control to yellow prospects. Enough also will the job pay it to be cash, and you can even be you much to make onto employees then then by a carol executive huge notion instanc...
Diseases of the Imagination and Imaginary Disease in the Early Modern Period, 2011
Renaissance Quarterly, 2009
Quaderni D Italianistica, Jun 1, 2000
Rf,c:[-.\si()\i to rethink Dc Sica along a varÌL'l\-of lines: the relation between the filmmaker ... more Rf,c:[-.\si()\i to rethink Dc Sica along a varÌL'l\-of lines: the relation between the filmmaker and Za\attiiii; the signifvinu; practices of De Sica's films before, during, and after neorealism; De Sica and the Americanization of Italian film and culture; and so on. In short, the volume mav well serve to spark a renewal in the study of De Sica, leading to more comprehensive contemporary insight into his work. I'or this reason, as well as for all the good things noted above in individual essays, the volume is a welcome addition to the Uni\ersity of Toronto series and to the literature of Italian film history and criticism. I'RANK Bl RKF. {Oiteen's L'nircrsity) Zsusanna Rozsnyói. Dopo Ariosto. Tecniche narrative e discorsive nei poemi postariosteschi. Ravenna: Longo Ed., 2000. 161 pp. IL 25,000. Rozsnyói's study, Dopo Ariosto. Tecniche narrative e discorsive nei poemi postariosteschi, is a well-researched exploradon of little-smdied texts published in the three decades between the prindng of the third edition of Ludovico Ariosto 's Orlando Furioso (1532) and the publication of Torquato Tasso's Rinaldo (1562). Rozsnyói focuses on the notion of hybridization between epic and chivalric traditions and on the resulting mutual "interference" between theoretical discourse and literary practice (7). Rozsnyói recognizes the canonical status of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso and its vast influence over the thematic and structural organization of later poems, as well as the importance of contemporary scholarly elaborations of Aristode's Poetics, newly translated in Latin and Italian (24). She focuses on issues of narrative and discursive technique. Her research is solidly based on historical material and on mostly Italian critical works published in the last cenmry. Rozsnyói exhibits a thorough knowledge of the content and narrative structure of the texts and the debate over the theory of genre. She espouses Bakhtin's idea that literary genres derive from the constant reproduction of other genres and observes that the chivalric romance has constandy absorbed minor genres, thus becoming a very flexible and open structure (89). Rozsnyói considers Giorgio Trissino's F'ltalia liberata dai Goti, (1547-1548), Luigi Alamanni's Girone il cortese (1548) and Avarchide (1560), Giambattista Giraldi Cinzio's Dell'Hercole, (1557) Bernardo Tasso's Amadigi di Gaula, (1560) and Francesco Bolognetti's Costante (1565-1566). She briefly considers Tullia d'Aragona's Meschino detto il Guerrino (1560), an epic poem addressed to a female audience; Ludovico Dolce's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses in octave (1570) and his poem Achille ed Enea, (1 570)both examples of experimentation with the classical tradition. For Rozsnyói, these texts express new relationships of author and text and author and literary tradition. They are also the objects of multiple reproductions among various social strata thanks to the market of the printed book. The first two chapters analyze the constant interconnection bet\veen Ut
The Modern Language Review, 2008
Translated here for the first time into English, Sergio Zatti'sT... more Translated here for the first time into English, Sergio Zatti'sThe Quest for Epic is a selection of studies on the two major poets of the Italian Renaissance, Ludovico Ariosto and Torquato Tasso, by one of the most important literary critics writing in Italy today. An original and ...
Please click on the link to read the full review
Renaissance Quarterly, 2004
Renaissance Quarterly, 2003
Renaissance Quarterly, Jan 2007
Shakespeare Quarterly, Jan 2006
The founders and organizers of Teachers on Teaching, a CUNY-based community supporting world lang... more The founders and organizers of Teachers on Teaching, a CUNY-based community supporting world language instruction grades 7-16 and beyond, and the Romance Languages Department at Hunter College are thrilled to invite you to the conference “When History Comes to Life: Experiential Pedagogy in the World Language and Social Sciences Classrooms.” The meeting will take place on November 15, 2019, from 9 AM to 1:15 PM at Hunter College. The conference will offer tested pedagogical tools meant to help instructors create long-term modules (academic semester/academic year) and short-term activities. Topics related to history will serve as the foundation for the development of content-rich material in world languages and social sciences courses at the advanced secondary/college level.
The conference will have six presenters representing the disciplines of History, Italian, and Spanish. The presenters, two secondary educators, and four college instructors with many years of teaching experience will offer teaching strategies and learning goals for introducing and weaving historical topics into a class curriculum. The talks, divided into two sessions, will be followed by a one-hour demonstration given by historians Elizabeth and Thomas Cohen (York University, Toronto, Canada).
In this two-part workshop, presenters discussed and model strategies for integrating art and poet... more In this two-part workshop, presenters discussed and model strategies for integrating art and poetry into the world language curriculum in order to increase the level and frequency of class participation. An emphasis will be placed on CUNY’s role in supporting content-based learning in grades 7-16 and beyond.
The workshop is sponsored by: the Department of Romance Languages, Hunter College, CUNY; The School of Arts and Sciences, Hunter College, CUNY; ACERT, Hunter College, CUNY; The Teaching and Learning Center, the Graduate Center, CUNY; John D. Calandra Italian American Institute; American Association of Teachers of Italian (AATI); Società Dante Alighieri of New York; and Pearl River High School