Objects in Italian Life and Culture: Fiction, Migration, and Artificiality, by Paolo Bartoloni, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, 203pp., $90 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-349-94875-8 (original) (raw)
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feature a need of 'extensive ego-feeling', Bartoloni posits the failure of the Italian Forum in Sydney, 'an imitation of the Italian square lifestyle', to recapture an idealised Italian culture. The idealisation of Italy is also the core of the last chapter. The Sicilia Outlet Villagea re-proposition of a traditional Sicilian villagestands as a fascinating yet perturbing physical representation of a dematerialised bond between the human and the non-human world. Objects are treated as simple props in a hyper-real experience of imaginary landscapes, feelings, sounds, and sensoriality. The need for replicas of real life triggers continuous relational distortions and perversions that fuel the anaesthetisation of reality commanded by economic desires.
The discussion of Italian literature and culture within Italian Studies has been for a long time restricted to the geographical boundaries of Italy itself. The last decades have shown, however, an opening towards a broader vision, especially in the context of theoretical approaches such as Postcolonialism, Cultural Translation, and TransArea Studies.Analogous to Francophone and Hispanophone Studies, Italian Studies has begun to also focus on the so-called ‘guest worker’ and Migration literature, a genre which includes not only the literature of authors who migrated to Italy, but also ‘Italian’ literature originating in countries like France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Strikingly, up until now, literature and media originating in the Italo-American context have been studied much more frequently in other fields of research, such as American and Canadian Studies, than in (European) Italian Studies. This edition of Lettere aperte’s 2nd edition will for that reason be dedicated to Italo-American Culture.