italian studies, Vol. 70 No. 2, May 2015, 280–291 Reviews Dante and Augustine: Linguistics, Poetics, Hermeneutics. By Simone Marchesi. 251 pp. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 2011. $70. ISBN 978 1442642102. Il volume di Simone Marchesi si propone di indagare l’influenza esercitata dalle opere di Sant’Agostino su Dante, sia sul piano della teoria che della prassi poetica. L’autore chiarisce fin da subito, nelle pagine della sua fitta e corposa introduzione al volume (pp. 3–18), come lo studio si collochi all’incrocio tra due diversi tipi di approccio a Dante: da un lato, infatti, ci si interroga sull’articolazione interna e sui fondamenti teorici del pensiero metapoetico dantesco; dall’altro, si analizza l’influenza di Agostino esercitata sulla prassi poetica del poeta. Al fine di ravvicinare i due orientamenti, l’autore intende concentrarsi sia sul dialogo tra Dante e Agostino considerato quale teorico del linguaggio e della letteratura, sia su quello tra il Dante poeta e l’Agostino filosofo dottrinale. Il volume, come già si ricava dal titolo, è composto da tre parti principali, ‘Linguistics’ (pp. 19–64), ‘Poetics’ (pp. 65–106), e ‘Hermeneutics’ (pp. 107–53), sviluppate e discusse in ciascuno dei tre primi capitoli, cui segue un capitolo conclusivo, ‘Augustine in Dante: Three Readings’ (pp. 154–96), dedicato alla rilettura, in chiave agostiniana, di tre episodi tratti da ciascuna delle tre cantiche della Commedia, rispettivamente Inferno 13, Purgatorio 30, e Paradiso 30. Nel primo capitolo Marchesi si concentra sulla nozione di linguaggio in Dante, attraverso una lettura in parallelo dei ‘mid-career works’, ossia Convivio e De Vulgari Eloquentia da una parte — giacché in entrambi i trattati è possibile ricavare una identica definizione di linguaggio (‘the definition of language that Dante gives in them is not only perfectly compatible, but almost the result of a literal translation’, p. 25) — e della Commedia dall’altra. Secondo l’autore, sia nel Convivio che nel De Vulgari Eloquentia Dante definisce il linguaggio come il mezzo attraverso il quale lo scambio di pensieri razionali è reso possibile (Convivio 1.x.12; De Vulgari Eloquentia 2.i.8). Tuttavia questa spiegazione è limitante rispetto al modello agostiniano, secondo il quale il linguaggio, se, da una parte, è in grado di trasmettere i moti dell’anima, dall’altra è anche spesso inadeguato, dato che ‘it can perform its function only in determinate circumstances’ (p. 42). Secondo l’autore, Dante rielaborerebbe nella Commedia la propria teoria del linguaggio in chiave agostiniana, riconciliandosi così anche con le idee già espresse ai tempi della Vita Nova. Nel secondo capitolo Marchesi riflette su questioni di ‘poetria Dantis’ (p. 66) teorizzate in maniera esplicita già nelle tre opere precedenti la Commedia. In particolare, l’autore si concentra su ciò che Dante ‘says he does in the metapoetic passages of his pre-Commedia works, as much as at what he does in the body of the same texts’ (p. 66). Difatti, ‘examining what Dante has to say about his activity as a poet may help illuminate the basic cultural lexicon and syntax of Dante’s audience’ (p. 67). L’autore ritiene che, anche per quanto riguarda la concezione della poesia, le idee espresse da Dante nel poema siano da avvicinare alla fase poetica della Vita Nova piuttosto che a quella che immediatamente precede la stesura del poema. L’autore suggerisce inoltre che Dante potrebbe essere stato influenzato dalla lettura del De Doctrina Christiana, in particolare dei libri terzo e quarto, nei quali il filosofo d’Ippona descrive e definisce compiutamente le caratteristiche e gli obiettivi della retorica Cristiana, contrapponendoli a quelli della retorica classica. L’autore mostra infine che ‘Dante’s evolving sensibility to biblical writing paralleled, in some respects, Augustine’s experience’, e che ‘Dante’s eventual adoption of a biblical model for the Commedia was a choice that matured in his dialogue with Augustine’s ideas and texts’ (p. 95). © The Society for Italian Studies 2015 DOI 10.1179/0075163415Z.000000000101 REVIEWS 281 Nel terzo capitolo l’autore, interrogandosi su questioni di ermeneutica dantesca, riflette sul significato di intenzionalità autoriale. Nel Convivio e nella Vita Nova, e, implicitamente, anche nel De Vulgari Eloquentia, il lavoro interpretativo del lettore è volto principalmente a cogliere il significato che l’autore intende veicolare. Al contrario nella Commedia il ruolo del lettore cambia radicalmente poiché egli diventerebbe protagonista attivo del processo ermeneutico. Tale argomentazione è dimostrata attraverso una rilettura dell’episodio di Stazio (Purgatorio 21 e 22), giacché ‘the reading of two passages from Virgil’s Aeneid 3 and Eclogues 4 had the effect of converting him to both a more balanced use of his wealth and to Christianity’ (p. 110). L’autore conclude la propria argomentazione proponendo di considerare ancora una volta il De Doctrina Christiana quale antecedente del nuovo modello ermeneutico dantesco. Nell’ultimo capitolo Marchesi rilegge tre passaggi della Commedia, tratti dalle tre diverse cantiche: Catone (Inferno 13, ‘where Piero becomes a proxy for Cato’, p. 173), Didone (Purgatorio 30), Enea e le api (Paradiso 30). Lo studio di questi tre episodi costruiti attorno a personaggi ‘romani’, e dunque particolarmente sensibili e rappresentativi della relazione Dante-Agostino permette all’autore di riflettere sia su questioni di ‘intertestualità agostiniana’ sia su argomenti più generalmente metapoetici. L’autore invita a impiegare come chiave di lettura dei tre episodi la dottrina filosofica agostiniana, quella espressa in particolare nel De Civitate Dei, nel De Doctrina Christiana, e nelle Confessioni (‘reading Dante with an Augustinian filigree’, p. 4). Concludono il volume un fitto apparato di note (pp. 197–227), un’accurata bibliografia dei testi citati (pp. 229–46), e un indice dei nomi (pp. 247–51). Claudia Tardelli Terry The Early Modern Italian Domestic Interior 1400–1700: Objects, Spaces, Domesticities. Edited by Erin J. Campbell, Stephanie R. Miller and Elizabeth Carroll Consavari. 282 pp. Farnham: Ashgate. 2013. £65. ISBN 978 1409468110 (hardback). ISBN 978 1472411365 (eBook). The collection of essays, The Early Modern Italian Domestic Interior 1400–1700: Objects, Spaces, Domesticities, explores the changing social diffusion of goods within the household and the transformation of domesticity in early modern Italy. Each of the volume’s four sections — ‘Domesticities’; ‘People, Spaces, and Objects’; ‘Domestic Objects and Sociability’; and ‘Objectifying the Domestic Interior’ — consists of essays that explore the social and cultural aspects of domestic space as well as the material culture linked to this sphere. In the first three chapters Catherine Fletcher and Adelina Modesti analyse the fluid and heterogeneous domesticity of two upper-class Bolognese interiors, while Susan Nalezyty explores the family art collection of Pietro Bembo in Padua and Rome. The next three chapters by Stephanie Miller, Margaret Morse, and Erin Campbell are even more sophisticated in their doublepronged approach, which considers the interaction between people and domestic space and objects. Based on sound and thorough archival work, but also informed by a good range of the recent literature, the following five chapters by Maria DePrano, Elizabeth Carroll Consavari, Katherine McIver, Allyson Burgess Williams, and Jennifer Webb offer perhaps the most interesting section of the book by exploring the wide-ranging levels of sociability generated by people’s relations with different objects. The authors of the last two chapters, Adriana Turpin and Susan Wegner, offer an interpretation of the symbolism of objects within historical contextualization by looking at the popular Renaissance revival movement during the nineteenth century in Britain, America, and Italy. The authors rightly pinpoint the necessity of treating the house as ‘constituted by contingent and shifting concatenations of people, spaces, and objects’ (p. 9). In order to shed light on early modern Italian interiors, studying spatial arrangements as well as the materiality of the household and the house itself is essential. Furthermore, the identification of transitional social spaces is crucial to understanding concepts such as ‘domestic’ versus ‘public’, or ‘private’ versus ‘collective’. A general interest in practices in the micro-space of the house must include domestic 282 ITALIAN STUDIES, Vol. 70 No. 2, May 2015 work and leisure, consumption, sociability, genre, display, devotion, and childrearing, which are just some of the themes the contributors treat convincingly. The volume’s cutting-edge research is accompanied by a clear sensitivity to the transformation of the concept of domesticity that occurred during this period of transition. According to Jan de Vries, an ‘industrious revolution’, which emerged in northwestern Europe, radically modified the traditional economy of the household: the increasing demand for household goods contributed to that transformation. The subsequent effects influenced consumption rates, and led to the emergence of new types of consumer behaviour. How these changes affected individual households, however, still remains unclear. The volume’s contributors acknowledge that a transformation in the consumption and display of household goods occurred at a different speed and in various modes depending upon social and economic status. In fact, they emphasize how the display of certain artefacts, paintings, and works of art became a true vehicle for the social advancement of an individual. However, they also illustrate how the transmission and reinforcement of certain cultural ideas and artistic models became part of renewed social rituals. Moreover, the diffusion of certain objects within the house, like paintings, devotional images, furniture, and sculptures, which were specifically reserved for public or semi-public display, can be regarded as one of the primary indicators of luxury, but also most crucially as evidence for the circulation of knowledge and new attitudes towards a shifting sociability. In this changing context, consumption was not only a matter of economic choice, but also of representation of wealth, prestige, and influence. While this concept has already been widely explored by both economic and material culture historians, it is the ‘domestic’ approach that is worthy of note here. In regard to the domestic interior, the primary point of inquiry considers how the material culture of the domestic micro-space was arranged and rearranged throughout the course of the early modern era. Again, transformation is key. More precisely, can we detect a functional differentiation and reorganization of domestic settings into several specialized spaces? And what was the role of those who lived in the house? Homes included spaces devoted to work, living, display, and quasi-public sociability (like the portego), each of which could be filled with specific everyday objects. Once again the question of social differentiation in the domestic sphere applies to consumption. However, the contributors subtly take into account yet another approach, which raises the question of spatial differentiation according to gender, generation, and social status within the household. The rapidly growing field of the history of consumption has widened the scope of research enormously and it comes as no surprise that gender is now a crucial issue in the reorganization of the research field. However, it is still debatable whether an increasing gender divergence in the private as well as the public sphere was due to the different positions of women on the social scale. The authors seem to suggest that this was the case, while the reality can certainly be interpreted as more nuanced. The essays focus almost entirely on the upper layers of society while lower-rank families are not represented. It would have been equally interesting to explore their contrasting practices or habits similar to the new ‘ideals’ of domesticity expressed by the wealthy. However, the collection should be congratulated for a number of reasons. First of all, it draws attention to some issues that are essential to microhistory and makes them an integral part of a functional and diachronic narrative. The decision to focus on specific geographic case studies, such as Bologna, Urbino, and Ferrara, which have previously been under-represented, is again something that deserves praise. Another strength appears in the book’s recognition of women as historical actors through their agency, craftsmanship, and sensitivity. The analysis and the reach of some case studies proves that women’s skill and overall ability to entertain successful social and business relationships, even within a domestic context, did not necessarily equate to a change in their status; instead, women could promote themselves beyond a patriarchal equilibrium and find a place in society. This collection of essays is an important source for anyone interested in issues of gender, consumption and display, and the organization and development of domestic space, as well REVIEWS 283 as the social practices and rituals that took place within the Italian casa during the early modern era. Alessia Meneghin Display of Art in the Roman Palace. Edited by Gail Feigenbaum with Francesco Freddolini. 384 pp. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute. 2014. $75. ISBN 978 1606062982 This magnificently presented volume represents the outcome of an international collaborative research project run by the Getty Research Institute over three years. No fewer than twentyseven art historians, both emerging and established, American and other nationalities (the latter in large part Italian), have contributed to the volume. While not the final word on this subject, Display of Art makes a new and important contribution to scholarship on the early modern Roman palace, a neglected but significant topic both in Italian cultural studies, and for the history of Rome. Few such palaces have been destroyed, but many of their original contexts have been altered beyond recognition in the shifting history of the city. Besides, the general public, and even scholars, now have untrammelled access to very few such Roman palaces, the Doria Pamphilj and a small portion of the Colonna being the major exceptions. The once huge importance of these imposing structures for the urban fabric of Rome has consequentially been forgotten. The only previous large scale study, for a slightly earlier period, has been Christoph Frommel’s two volume, Der Römische Palastbau der Hochrenaissance, but that work is now over forty years old, often inaccurate, and has never been translated into English. The Getty volume builds on more recent but focused research, such as Patricia Waddy’s SeventeenthCentury Roman Palaces (1991), or Patrizia Cavazzini’s Palazzo Lancellotti ai Coronari (1998), to produce a novel and holistic approach to its subject matter. As well as such secondary literature, and along with a strong basis of traditional archival research, Display of Art builds also on recent theoretical developments in fields such as the display of art, and material culture, or technical developments such as in the field of digital humanities, to inform the approaches of its various contributors. That said, the essays often draw largely on those records available in Los Angeles itself, notably the portion of the Orsini archive held at UCLA. Furthermore, the new theoretical departures that are promised at the beginning are not necessarily followed through in the succeeding essays. What does distinguish this volume, however, and marks a departure from previous studies, is in being not so much an architectural history of the palace itself, but a history specifically of the display of art held within it, or ‘living with art’ as the preface puts it. In this way, works of art are brought back into focus as players in a wider social history of the period under discussion. This collection is also especially valuable since, unusually for any study of Rome from the medieval to early modern periods, it gives equal weight to the role played in the life of the city not only by the Popes but also by the city’s long established baronial families, such as the Orsini, a dualism that co-existed uneasily. The volume makes reference, not only to the great families of the city but also to a lesser aristocracy, both of papal officials and an urban middle class. A further strength lies in the number and quality of illustrations included throughout, especially those in colour, as well as plans and reconstructions of the Roman palace, to bring a lost world vividly to life. Space is too limited here to discuss the many and varied contributions in detail, but let me draw attention to the overall structure of the volume, and to some highlights. The volume begins with a theoretical, general introduction, ‘Framing the Problem of Display’, that is led by the overall editor, Gail Feigenbaum, before branching into the many manifestations of the display of art in the more focused essays that follow. In her own, densely layered, contribution, Feigenbaum correctly emphasises the exceptionalism of Rome in this period, a unique city that had its own historical background and its own contemporary special needs. What she does not explain, and strikes this reviewer as somewhat arbitrary, is the choice of dates for the study, 284 ITALIAN STUDIES, Vol. 70 No. 2, May 2015 1550–1750, that bear no relation to any conventional periodization of Roman history. The studies that follow are divided first into four larger sections of differing lengths, each with its own somewhat opaque title. These are then broken down further into subsections of varying lengths. Sometimes such essays form a specific case study, at others a theoretical introduction, as in that by Feigenbaum, or else Renata Ago’s essay on ‘Splendor and Magnificence’. It is evident on reading the essays that some of them have been translated from the original Italian and, unfortunately, the translation appears to be of varying quality, as with the first essay by Francesca Cappelletti. There is also a certain degree of recycling of earlier work in the contributions of some authors. Nonetheless, these essays do cover every aspect of the decoration of the Roman palace in the years under discussion in a fresh and lively manner, while the standard topics of painting, sculpture and architecture find refreshingly little place. At the end of the first part, for example, there is a fascinating discussion by Stefanie Walker on the manifold other types of furnishing used in the palace. The second part, ‘Rank and Display’, considers those who used the Roman palace, and how it was used, by both cardinals and aristocrats, and of varying ranks and means. It is based on and discusses theories of magnificence and of splendour both then and now and contains contributions from the eminent Italian experts in this field, such as Renata Ago, Francesca Cappelletti, and Patrizia Cavazzini. The third part, ‘Dynamics of Decoration’, considers the decorative fixtures themselves. Here, the plurality of the arts is considered and the importance of often ignored decorative materials, are restored to their rightful place in the social hierarchy. In Chapters 8 and 9, for example, authored by Tristan Weddigen, Caterina Volpi, and James Gordon Harper, it is tapestries and textiles that are brought into focus. This part also considers even more unusual areas of study such as Stefanie Walker’s other stimulating contribution on ‘State Beds’. As Barbara Furlotti begins, furthermore, throughout this part the Roman palace is not considered as a fixed entity but as a constantly shifting stage set for differing actors in which all the various decorative arts had a specific role to play, and often moved themselves. The fourth part, ‘A Place for Everything’, considers display, how the setting out of these various objects within the palace had a specific function to play, and display itself was a deliberate act. Frances Gage’s opening essay is based around a specific text, this time that of Giulio Mancini. There is a further especially interesting contribution here on frames, by Adriano Amendola. While, in the fifth and final part, ‘Rome beyond Rome’, the study broadens out and discusses selectively the experience of outsiders of the world of the Roman palace, how much access they had, and what their reactions were. There is, however, no overarching conclusion at the end to link all these manifold contributions, unless it is Carole Paul’s final contribution on the Grand Tour. Nonetheless, this often groundbreaking and thought-provoking volume forms a resounding culmination to the Getty project. The one curiosity, and potential problem, is the lack of an independent bibliography; its addition would, admittedly, have significantly increased the length, but its absence makes it hard for scholars to approach this volume as a research tool. Likewise, there is a distinct lack of discussion of comparative material, with reference to similar studies that have been carried out recently for France and Britain in this period — allusion to which could have been made in order to illustrate the singularity of the Roman context for the development of the palace in seventeenth-century Europe. Piers Baker-Bates Postal Culture: Writing and Reading Letters in Post-Unification Italy. By Gabriella Romani. 288 pp. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 2013. $75. ISBN 978 1442647084 (hardback). ISBN 978 1442667259 (eBook). The very few letters that hit the mailboxes of Italians these days are feared bills or tedious administrative nuisances. Correspondence appears as an old-fashioned ritual reserved to some REVIEWS 285 eccentrics, while Italy does not enjoy the flow of cards and postcards that still characterize sociability in other parts of Europe. However, as Gabriella Romani argues in her book, after the unification, letters played a fundamental role in the formation of national identity. With her research, Romani has filled a gap in the scholarship on the subject. The book is neither an inquiry into the postal service and the letter in the second half of the nineteenth century, nor an essay on epistolary culture in unified Italy. On the contrary, it is focused on postal culture, which, in Romani’s words, consists in the ‘the interconnections, influences and overlapping of the literary representation, cultural productions, and communicative practices revolving around the letter’ (p. 4). The book analyses, at a twofold level, the transformation of letter writing as a social practice and its relation to the development of literary fiction in the epistolary form in the second half of the nineteenth century and, in particular, in the work of Giovanni Verga and Matilde Serao. After the methodological premise, the book is divided in two parts: in the first (Chapter 2), Romani deals with the establishment and development of a postal culture in Italy; in the second (Chapters 3 and 4), the inquiry is focused on Verga and Serao respectively. The conclusions are followed by an appendix. A bibliography and an index are also provided. The second chapter of Romani’s book (‘Writing and Reading Letters’) is perhaps the most accomplished one in terms of a vigorous study of the letter, against a backdrop of the major economic, social, and cultural transformations that took place in nineteenth-century Italy. The chapter is divided in three parts. In the first one, Romani sketches a brief history of the nationalization of the postal service, focusing on its impact on the social diffusion of the letter and the formation of a community of writers. The second part of the chapter is devoted to a particular subgenre of the so-called conduct books in the nineteenth century, epistolary manuals. In the third part, Romani delves into the practice of publishing letters in newspapers, a practice she links with the decline of the social institution of the salon as a new means of circulation of ideas and the production of public opinion. Romani then moves on to examine why the letter was ‘an effective literary strategy for engaging the growing public of readers and experimenting with a “modern” approach to literary production’ (p. 71). The second part of the book begins with Chapter 3, devoted to Verga and his epistolary novel Storia di una capinera, published in 1870. Here, Romani offers the first comprehensive study of the novel, read through the lens of the findings of the previous chapters. The form of the letter, Romani argues, ‘effectively enabled the author to avoid an introspective monologue and to elicit the readers’ empathy’ (p. 88), but could also facilitate the use of a more spontaneous and colloquial prose style, believed by the theorists of the time to be the right ‘instrument of investigation of both the internal world of feelings and the external environment’ (p. 108). The chapter’s major point of originality consists in the analysis of the expectations of Verga’s public: Romani links the Storia to a couple of texts that appeared in the 1860s, and in particular the autobiography of Enrichetta Caracciolo, entitled Misteri del chiostro, published in 1864 and translated all over Europe. The basic plot of both the Storia and the Misteri was the same: a young woman forced into a convent by her family. Romani investigates how the memoir of Caracciolo conveyed into Verga’s epistolary novel ‘the authenticity of the representation’ (p. 94). Sentiments — and love in particular — were an important and yet problematic aspect of Verga’s production (the so-called ‘minor’ production). And the ‘sentimental’ participation of women in arts and politics is the underlying theme of Chapter 4, dedicated to Matilde Serao. Romani reassesses and appreciates the later production of Serao, often referred to scornfully as ‘sentimentalist’. The chapter focuses on the role of sentiments in such fictional works, which derive from the elaboration on passions and emotions in the society and culture of unified Italy. The letter, in this context, represented at the same time an instrument that immediately appealed to the inner sphere of the individual, and was used by Serao in order to promote discussion on specific, intimate subjects among her female readership in a modern consumer society: sexuality, sensuality, and erotic love. The letter was also central in Serao’s journalistic 286 ITALIAN STUDIES, Vol. 70 No. 2, May 2015 activity, as throughout her career as a journalist, she saw the press as the instrument with which to keep in touch with the interests and the desires of her readership, especially women. In the conclusion, one of the major points put forward by Romani is the reappraisal and the appreciation of the sentimental writings of Verga and Serao. Postal culture, as understood by Romani, provided the ‘national network of social and cultural identities’ that allowed this kind of fiction to thrive. The book ends with a plea to scholars to map Italian popular fiction, not only in order to unveil the readership, but also eventually to identify once and for all ‘the growth of modern Italian cultural sensibilities and identities’ (p. 160). The appendix presents a set of seventeen letters already quoted in the main body of the book, and here reproduced in their entirety (but not translated, unlike all the quotations in Italian that appear into the first and second parts of the book). The selection deals with the problems tackled in the book itself, and mainly the social condition of women, and their role in contemporary society. Romani’s Postal Culture represents an original piece of research on Italian literary culture in the second half of the nineteenth century. The book casts light on the whole period, to which Romani has dedicated much of her scholarship to date. The felicitous integration of both Italian and Anglo-American scholarship, with no theoretical obscurities, also represents, it is hoped, a fruitful example to be followed in the field of nineteenth-century studies. Federico Casari Reconstructing Italy: The Ina-Casa Neighborhoods of the Postwar Era. By Stephanie Zeier Pilat. 306 pp. Farnham: Ashgate. 2014. £70. ISBN 978 1409465805 (hardback). ISBN 978 1409465829 (eBook). The jobs and housing programme launched by Amintore Fanfani, the Minister of Labour and Social Security, and financed by the National Insurance Agency (Istituto Nazionale d’Assicurazione or INA) resulted in the construction of over 350,000 new homes in Italy between 1949 and 1963. The programme, known officially as Ina-Casa but often referred to as the ‘Fanfani Plan’, had dramatic and immediate consequences for the landscape of post-war Italy. In her thoughtful account of the formation of the programme, its realization, and its legacy, Stephanie Zeier Pilat argues that Ina-Casa provides an instructive alternative to the muchmaligned government sponsored housing programmes launched elsewhere after World War II. The book also, and here is perhaps its greatest contribution, addresses the difficult question of continuity and difference between inter- and post-war Italian architecture and planning. The first part of the book (Chapters 1 and 2) details the organization of the Ina-Casa programme against the extraordinary complexities of the political and economic situation of postwar Italy. The plan, devised by Fanfani with the head of INA, Annetto Puggioni, promised to address the nation’s unemployment and housing crisis through the construction of residential communities. Its administrative structure, which effectively split power between architect Arnaldo Foschini, who had ties to the fascist regime, and engineer Filiberto Guala, a former member of the Italian Resistance, mirrored the larger political conflict in post-war Italy between those who sought to preserve personal and professional gains made under Fascism and those who staked their claim to legitimacy on repudiating the Fascists. Throughout Pilat elucidates how Ina-Casa’s mission to create jobs, temporary character (the original legislation was set to expire in 1956), and decentralized structure shaped the programme’s results. Because its primary objective was to boost employment and it had to meet geographical distribution requirements, Ina-Casa funded new construction in small towns and provincial capitals as well as in major urban centres. Local governments and agencies, rather than officials in Rome, had the responsibility of selecting the site and designer or design team from a preapproved list. Design manuals, small pamphlets richly illustrated with black and white photographs, diagrams, and drawings, provided a framework for design but left room for architects to shape the character of individual projects. REVIEWS 287 Of the four manuals produced (two date from the first seven-year phase, 1949–56, and another revised set from the second, 1956–63), Pilat argues that the first two were the most significant. These were produced by the Ina-Casa while it was under the direction of Adalberto Libera, a former student of Foschini who was tied to interwar avant-garde circles in Italy. The manuals drew on national and international experiments and theories, especially recent Swedish housing projects, and advocated a contextually sensitive approach to design. Architects and designers were encouraged to take into consideration a broad range of factors including climate, landscape, the built environment, traditional modes and materials of building, and established cultural habits. The result was a comprehensive critique of the universal solutions proposed by avant-garde architects in the interwar period. This concern for context and the repetition of terms such as ‘collective’, ‘organic’, and ‘anonymous’ was also, Pilat argues, a means to distinguish the aims of Ina-Casa from the architectural and planning initiatives sponsored by the fascist regime, which were now associated with monumental neoclassicism and geometrical order. The second section of the book (chapters 3–5) looks closely at the results of the plan through three primary case studies: Tiburtino (Mario Ridolfi, Ludovico Quaroni and others, 1949–54) in Rome; Borgo Panigale (Giuseppe Vaccaro, 1951–55) in Bologna; and Villa Longo (Domenico Virgili and others, 1958–62) in Matera; sites from central, northern, and southern Italy respectively. (Additional projects are included in the Appendix.) Pilat’s perceptive analysis of these communities, especially their urban plan and architectural character, positions each in the context of local building traditions, international architecture and planning debates, larger cultural and political movements, and shifting definitions of family, gender, and class. Photographs, drawings, and plans, some of which were redrawn for this publication, provide visual evidence. Pilat’s discussion of Tiburtino and Garbatella, a residential neighbourhood in Rome begun in 1920, is particularly insightful for its investigation of the differences between the ways in which Italian architects referenced and transformed architectural traditions in the inter- and post-war periods. Although the rustic and vernacular character of Tiburtino shares some formal similarities with Garbatella, it is best understood, Pilat argues, within the context of the romantic narratives of spontaneous and organic formation being linked to the Resistance as it was made a founding myth for the post-war nation. The final part of the book, divided into two chapters, offers an overview of Ina-Casa projects as they were evaluated and understood by those who lived there in the late 1950s (a comprehensive survey taken in 1956 serves as the basis for this discussion), by architecture critics (notably Bruno Zevi and Manfredo Tafuri), and designers (especially Denise Scott Brown who assisted Vaccaro in the design of the Ina-casa’s Ponte Mammolo neighbourhood). The multiplicity of voices and perspectives reminds readers that the success and the importance of the initiative (and architectural and urban design more generally) can be measured in substantially different ways. For Pilat the ultimate lesson of the project is the value the processes placed on individual expression, its acknowledgement of regional building and design traditions, and its ability to adapt with time. These attributes, rather than the particulars of the project’s funding, organizational structure, or relationship to the political dynamics of its time offer, Pilat argues, a compelling lesson for future generations. Lucy Maulsby Meneghello: Fiction, Scholarship, Passione Civile. Edited by Daniela La Penna. 247 pp. Special Supplement to The Italianist 32 (2012). £ 30. ISSN 0261 4340 Il volume raccoglie i contributi di un convegno sull’opera di Luigi Meneghello tenutosi all’Università di Reading nel giugno del 2008, cui si sono aggiunti lavori espressamente commessi a colleghi, amici, giovani studiosi dello scrittore di Malo e già professore nell’ateneo redigense. Questa nuova raccolta di saggi si richiama all’altro importante volume 288 ITALIAN STUDIES, Vol. 70 No. 2, May 2015 Su/Per Meneghello a cura di Giulio Lepschy (Milano: Edizioni di Comunità, 1983), completandone e aggiornandone il quadro critico, anche per la presenza di buona parte dei medesimi contributori. La lucida introduzione di Daniela La Penna offre un’esauriente illustrazione di ciò che Meneghello ha rappresentato per i due paesi, il Regno Unito e l’Italia, che dell’operato suo hanno direttamente beneficiato. Autorevole e anticonvenzionale, autore di libri originalissimi per struttura e per varietà e ricchezza di temi nei quali si faticherebbe a scernere la componente cosiddetta creativa da quella critica, con il proprio magistero di scrittore e di docente Meneghello ha rianimato e ridefinito generi letterari, strutture accademiche, persino la geografia culturale dei luoghi che lo hanno visto protagonista. Di ciò ha offerto in nuce la dimostrazione Giulio Lepschy (nella laudatio per il dottorato h.c. conferito a Meneghello dall’Università di Reading nel 1998) con l’affermare che, se negli anni Sessanta i colleghi italiani che udivano pronunciare il toponimo ‘Reading’ erano soliti esclamare: ‘Ah! Oscar Wilde’, trent’anni dopo la reazione istintiva a quel medesimo nome era invece diventata: ‘Ah! Meneghello’. I contributi sono distribuiti secondo il triplice criterio enunciato nel sottotitolo, ‘Fiction’ (Giuliana Adamo, Laura Peters, Franco Marenco, Gigliola Sulis, Ernestina Pellegrini, Cinzia Mozzato, Lucrezia Chinellato), ‘Scholarship’ (Giulio Lepschy, Francesca Caputo, Pietro De Marchi, Robert Gordon) e ‘Passione civile’ (Paul Corner, Percy e Felia Allum), fra un iniziale doppio tributo, in versi (Peter Robinson) e in prosa (John Scott), e un ricordo finale (Arturo Tosi). Che le diverse sezioni risultino agevolmente comunicanti fra loro è nella natura stessa dell’opera meneghelliana. Si passa dalle ragioni di una vita trascorsa fra due paesi e due culture, cioè di un ‘dispatrio’ (secondo l’elegante e oramai acquisita designazione d’autore), alle tecniche descrittive, allusive e di ‘montaggio’ messe in atto nelle opere a più alta percentuale narrativa (memorabile, fra le altre cose, la galleria di ritratti femminili meneghelliani offerta da Pellegrini in risposta a una sollecitazione di Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo) e agli esperimenti di traduzione, per proseguire con la riflessione critica su lingue e dialetti e momenti della storia dell’istruzione nel Novecento e con la produzione recensoria e saggistica degli anni Cinquanta. Il volume offre nuove e importanti acquisizioni e sollecita il lettore a percorrere vie ancora intentate, su alcune delle quali mi permetto di aggiungere alcune poche osservazioni. Si deve a Sulis e al suo bel contributo sui titoli meneghelliani il reperimento del passo di Henry James in cui ricorre il precedente del neologismo ‘dispatrio’, cioè dispatriation: termine che Meneghello ignorava quando inventò il proprio, e che invano tentò di reperire fra le pagine jamesiane dopo che era stato informato della sua esistenza (pp. 93–95). Ricorre nei titoli di Meneghello, come del resto nel corpo dei suoi libri ma in forma necessariamente più compressa e con valore per così dire programmatico, quella fraseologia deliberatamente e ironicamente arcaizzante (Che fate, quel giovane? ne è forse l’esempio più esilarante) e anche ‘scherzosamente professorale’ (secondo la formula di Cesare Segre, come in Pomo pero. Paralipomeni d’un libro di famiglia o in Maredè, maredè… Sondaggi nel campo della volgare eloquenza vicentina) in cui si avverte distintamente una delle cifre della sua scrittura. Altri titoli parrebbero a prima vista meno eloquenti. Dinanzi a una formulazione apparentemente anodina come Fiori italiani, per esempio, il primo impulso è di riconoscervi — per via del contesto di un discorso sull’istruzione — l’antesignano latino flores, cioè letture, o meglio brani scelti, da autori per così dire approvati; ma l’aspettativa del lettore è subito sviata dalla candida dichiarazione, inserita nelle prime pagine, di uno studente inglese ai propri docenti (‘Noi siamo vasi di fiori… Voi dovreste coltivarci delicatamente, farci fiorire’ — in Opere, a cura di Francesca Caputo (Milano: Rizzoli, 1997), vol. II, p. 238), dichiarazione che risemantizza in parte il titolo attribuendogli connotazioni nuove. Non sarà forse ozioso sottolineare la somiglianza con il titolo di un grande saggista, Fiori freschi (Firenze: Sansoni, 19431; 19442) di Mario Praz (che a sua volta rimonta, quantomeno nella forma, a Pesci rossi (Firenze: Vallecchi, 1920) di Emilio Cecchi). Così come in Meneghello, anche in Praz il pezzo che dà il titolo al volume prende uno sviluppo inaspettato, quasi capovolgendo le premesse dell’enunciato; e del resto a Praz e ai suoi libri, che per un italiano inzialmente trapiantato in Inghilterra come comparatista costituivano REVIEWS 289 un passaggio pressoché obbligato, accenna Meneghello nel Dispatrio, espressamente a p. 170 e velatamente — se non m’inganno — a p. 195, ricordando la visita a Reading ‘di un vero grande, un illustre studioso italiano dall’occhio storto di basilisco’, dove è ripreso un aneddoto accennato nel classico libro di Praz Machiavelli in Inghilterra (Firenze: Sansoni, 19622, p. 390). Ancora: sarà lecito chiedersi se un titolo come L’acqua di Malo (1986) avrà tratto parziale ispirazione dagli elzeviri di Roberto Ridolfi, raccolti appena cinque anni prima sotto il titolo L’acqua del Chianti (1981)? E sarà un caso che due grandi zone vinicole come i colli veneti e il Chianti toscano vengano così caratterizzate attraverso il loro liquido più umile, e non quello più nobile e vulgato? Sono domande che si giustificano alla luce delle ben note dichiarazioni di Meneghello circa il suo essersi voluto discostare dai modelli italiani — perché divenutigli poco congeniali — dopo l’arrivo in Inghilterra: una ‘leggenda’, come giustamente osserva De Marchi, montata parzialmente ad arte dall’autore stesso, e pertanto da ‘relativizzare’ (p. 175). Certi modelli italiani non avranno in realtà mai cessato di essere vivi e operanti per l’opera di Meneghello, anche in virtù del progressivo abbandono della narrativa propriamente detta per il libro-saggio, ovvero per la raccolta di saggi e di conversazioni tenute in pubblico. Merita almeno un accenno la produzione del Meneghello recensore, che s’incrocia con quella del traduttore e saggista in lingua inglese: produzione finora poco studiata e posta qui in debita luce da Gordon e De Marchi, i quali vi riconoscono i primi e decisivi passi dello scrittore in fieri. Che negli anni Cinquanta, in terra inglese, Meneghello facesse le sue prime armi nel genere della recensione non deve sorprendere. La recensione è il tradizionale e quasi obbligato punto d’avvio per chiunque desideri intraprendere la carriera accademica (preoccupa anzi notare, in questi ultimi tempi, come molti nuovi aspiranti a tale carriera tralascino di esercitare l’attività recensoria: di questo avranno colpa gli odierni e sciagurati criteri della valutazione della ricerca, che della recensione hanno contribuito a svilire l’alto valore scientifico e morale nonché la funzione propedeutica ad un serio apprendistato — parola, quest’ultima, meneghelliana quant’altre mai). Nel caso specifico di Meneghello, nel caso cioè di uno scrittore di razza — sia pure ancora in erba — operante nel contesto inglese, il volgersi al genere della recensione sarà stata decisione dettata dalla chiara consapevolezza di un importante fatto storico-culturale: e cioè che la recensione, a partire dal primo Ottocento innanzi, è stata il grande genere critico attraverso il quale la critica insulare si è imposta all’attenzione e al rispetto del pubblico continentale. Può essere indicazione preziosa nella prospettiva di nuove ricerche il fatto che — per fare un unico esempio — Meneghello rammenti a proposito di George Eliot i saggi critici (cioè le recensioni) di Virginia Woolf (La materia di Reading e altri scritti, Milano, Rizzoli, 1997, p. 98). Anche qui le date potranno suggerire qualcosa: della Woolf autrice di recensioni, notevolissime per penetrazione critica e virtù di scrittura, erano note le due sillogi in volume dal titolo identico The Common Reader (1925 e 1932); ma negli anni successivi alla morte, avvenuta nel 1941, uscirono le raccolte postume The Death of the Moth (1942), The Moment (1947) e The Captain’s Death Bed (1950): proprio negli anni in cui Meneghello sbarcava in Inghilterra. Un ultimo sguardo meritano gli esperimenti di traduzione dall’inglese al vicentino, sui quali chi scrive non saprebbe pronunciarsi con sufficiente perizia. Tuttavia, alla luce anche di quanto scritto da coloro che tale materia trattano con competenza e piena cognizione di causa, verrebbe da osservare che la novità e l’originalità di tali esperimenti non risieda tanto nelle versioni quanto piuttosto nelle riflessioni, e quasi direi affabulazioni, generate e alimentate dalle versioni medesime. Il rapporto testo-esegesi sembra ribaltarsi, e il secondo membro assumere rilievo quasi maggiore del primo. Chi osservi del resto la costante e anzi crescente presenza di apparati illustrativi nelle opere di Meneghello, da Libera nos a malo innanzi, non stupirà nel notare come l’autoesegesi abbia finito per occupare un posto tanto cospicuo nella sua opera. Carlo Caruso Masculinity and Italian Cinema: Sexual Politics, Social Conflict and Male Crisis in the 1970s. By Sergio Rigoletto. 176 pp. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 2014. £65. ISBN 978 0748654543 290 ITALIAN STUDIES, Vol. 70 No. 2, May 2015 Until recently, critical focus upon masculinity in Italian film has been sporadic: Jacqueline Reich’s work on Marcello Mastroianni, Beyond the Latin Lover (2004), is a notable exception. Fortunately the past decade has seen the arrival of Italian masculinity studies as a prominent topic of academic inquiry that has helped re-engage a discussion of gender within the Italian context, and numerous recent articles, conference panels, and monographs signify the importance of looking at Italian cultural production from the perspective of how masculinity is constructed (Sandro Bellassai, 2004; Maggie Günsberg, 2005; Elena dell’Agnese and Elisabetta Ruspini, 2007; Catherine O’Rawe, 2014). Sergio Rigoletto’s new book approaches this line of inquiry from a significant historical moment for Italian gender studies: the 1970s, the decade in which the rise of feminism, the gay rights movements, and a culture of male consciousness-raising dramatically impacted notions of Italian male identity and consequently the representations of those identities in film. It is a subject ripe for analysis and the volume is a welcome and necessary addition to the interventions on masculinity occurring within Italian studies today. Rigoletto interweaves the historical context of the 1970s with close textual analyses of a carefully selected array of films. While the subject of masculinity in 1970s films suggests extensive analysis of popular genres such as the spaghetti western, the poliziottesco, and the sexy comedy (genres only briefly alluded to in this work), the author leans towards the art house cinema of auteurs such as Federico Fellini, Bernardo Bertolucci, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Ettore Scola, Lina Wertmüller, Nanni Moretti, and Marco Ferreri. Yet Rigoletto’s narrow range of focus coincides with his theoretical preoccupations; namely the presence of an increased subjectivity in 1970s cinema and the dramatization of masculinity within a self-conscious and self-reflexive idiom. As such he relies heavily on psychoanalytic readings and feminist film criticism, particularly gaze theory, to highlight how filmmakers were consciously grappling with issues of manhood and masculinity in relation to politics and social relations. In his introductory chapter Rigoletto argues against the crisis model that so often characterizes discussions of masculinity, noting that such a perspective implies the existence of a normative masculinity in peril rather than acknowledging the inherent instability of constructions of masculinity in a given culture. Instead Rigoletto proclaims ‘transformation’ to be the primary characteristic of how Italian films of this era spoke to male experience and ideals of masculine identity. In this period, in which legislative milestones such as the legalisation of abortion, the referendum on divorce, and family rights reforms all seemed to signal a shift in the balance of power between men and women in interpersonal relations, cinema was concerned with male characters who were experiencing change, or more often than not, ‘the spaces of desire where change has not yet occurred’ (p. 1). The promotion of a new model of manhood in conjunction with female liberation, however, first had to contend with the challenge to patriarchal authority that was threatened by the spectre of feminism. The crisis model therefore figures prominently in the first set of films Rigoletto analyses, which dramatize men reacting to a loss of authority in response to feminism and female empowerment. He touches on a few mainstream features that view this quest to regain male supremacy either in a melodramatic light (Romanzo popolare) or as an erotic fantasy (Malizia). However, most of the films Rigoletto selects eschew a realist perspective on the masculine predicament and instead adopt surreal scenarios of men in a world dominated by women: the metaphysical odyssey of Snaporaz in Fellini’s Città delle donne; the pseudoapocalyptic vision of Ferreri’s Ciao maschio, and the literal surrender to male castration anxiety in Ferreri’s L’ultima donna. These films do not offer resolutions to these transformations of gender dynamics, but often problematize these issues in relation to masculinity and reveal inconsistencies and ironies in what has often been construed as a backlash to feminism (to wit Fellini’s oft-criticized Città delle donne or Wertmüller’s Seduction of Mimì, another film that Rigoletto analyses in depth). In an era marked by the mantra ‘the personal is political’ and a surge of interest in psychoanalytic theory and Marxist-Freudian perspectives on private life, it is hardly surprising that Rigoletto also focuses upon Bertolucci’s Oedipal cinema, specifically La strategia del ragno REVIEWS 291 and Il conformista. Here the author treads well-worn critical territory in the discussion of Bertolucci’s preoccupation with psychoanalysis and Reichian perspectives on fascism as an expression of the psychoneuroses of the bourgeoisie. It is curious that Rigoletto chooses not to discuss the director’s works later in the decade that also place masculine formation via the Oedipal dimension front and centre, including 1900 and Luna (a film that could also be discussed in relation to the ‘incest films’ that he mentions in the previous chapter). Rigoletto is perhaps more original when he addresses films that reveal shifting perspectives on male homosexuality, particularly in the popular film La patata bollente which confronted homophobia through the guise of popular comedy. This discussion resonates with the strongest theme of the book; that is that the 1970s brought to the fore the integration of critiques of gender constructs into popular forms while refusing to ‘resolve’ issues of gender politics. It is fitting that Rigoletto closes the book with a discussion of Nanni Moretti’s Ecce bombo, a film that epitomizes the disillusionment of politicized intellectuals in the 1970s towards pre’68 idealism, and depicts the predicament of a younger generation of men critical of available male role models yet aware of their own inability to embody ideals of liberated manhood. Moretti’s film also reveals one of the significant problems with many Italian films of this period: while they interrogate gender relations and the power imbalances of gendered social structures, female subjectivity remains a lacuna and one is acutely aware of receiving only a partial perspective. Like Moretti, Rigoletto does not resolve this dilemma, but brings to light the problems and ironies in representing the male in 1970s Italy. While Rigoletto’s book might not provide a wider picture of masculinity’s representations within this very fruitful decade of Italian filmmaking, it deftly illustrates many of the cultural preoccupations with gender and the strategies filmmakers adopted to interrogate how ideas of manhood are conceived and received. Rebecca H. Bauman