Books by Ruth Glynn
California Italian Studies, 2017
This article addresses Italian cultural representations of the Allied Occupation of Naples, with ... more This article addresses Italian cultural representations of the Allied Occupation of Naples, with reference to their understanding of the relationship between the city and the Italian nation-state. The analysis focuses on two texts which, despite enjoying notable prominence and influence, are rarely considered together: Eduardo De Filippo’s Napoli milionaria! (1945) and Curzio Malaparte’s La pelle (1949). Deploying a psychoanalytical frame of reference and paying close attention to the gendering of discourses relating to Naples and Italy, it is argued that where La pelle gives symptomatic expression to the conditions of the Occupation, underlining the exceptionality of the Neapolitan experience with respect to the national post-war narrative, Napoli milionaria! instead seeks overtly to heal the psychological wounds of the Occupation by aligning the conditions in Naples with those experienced in the center-north of the country. The article closes with the proposition that the different approaches taken to the relationship between Naples and the Italian nation-state are key to the radically divergent reception of the texts in Naples.
Addressing cultural representations of women's participation in the political violence and terror... more Addressing cultural representations of women's participation in the political violence and terrorism of the Italian anni di piombo ('years of lead', c. 1969-83), this book conceptualizes Italy's experience of political violence during those years as a form of cultural and collective trauma. The intermittent clustering of cultural representations that feminize terrorism is interrogated in close relation to the psychological, social and political purposes served by such feminization at distinct historical moments. A broad range of texts are analyzed, including press reports, memoir, literary fiction and film, dating from the 1970s to the present; attention is also paid to the recent re-emergence of domestic terrorism and to cultural representations of the women of the 'New Red Brigades'.
The 1978 kidnapping and murder of Christian Democrat politician, Aldo Moro, marked the watershed ... more The 1978 kidnapping and murder of Christian Democrat politician, Aldo Moro, marked the watershed of Italy’s experience of political violence in the period known as the ‘years of lead’ (1969-c.1983). This uniquely interdisciplinary volume explores the evolving legacy of Moro’s death in the Italian cultural imaginary, from the late 1970s to the present. Bringing a wide range of critical perspectives to bear, interventions by experts in the fields of political science, social anthropology, philosophy, and cultural critique elicit new understandings of the events of 1978 and explain their significance and relevance to present-day Italian culture and society.
![Research paper thumbnail of Terrorism, Italian Style: Representations of Political Violence in Contemporary Italian Cinema [co-edited with Giancarlo Lombardi and Alan O'Leary]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/32698309/thumbnails/1.jpg)
The legacy of Italy's experience of political violence and terrorism in the anni di piombo ('year... more The legacy of Italy's experience of political violence and terrorism in the anni di piombo ('years of lead', c. 1969-83) continues to exercise the Italian imagination to an extraordinary degree. Cinema has played a particularly prominent role in articulating the ongoing impact of the anni di piombo and in defining the ways in which Italians remember and work through the atrocities and traumas of those years. Terrorism, Italian Style brings together some of the most important scholars contributing to the study of cinematic representations of the anni di piombo. Drawing on a comparative approach and a broad range of critical perspectives (including genre theory, family and gender issues, trauma theory and ethics), the book addresses an extensive range of films produced between the 1970s and the present and articulates their significance and relevance to contemporary Italian society and culture.
In the second half of the twentieth century, the Italian historical novel provided an unrivalled ... more In the second half of the twentieth century, the Italian historical novel provided an unrivalled number of best sellers and publishing 'phenomena'. The success of the genre is closely related to a more general interest in revisiting the past in the light of a changed understanding of the nature, or philosophy, of history. This study aims to explore the particularly marked increase in the production and popularity of the historical novel in the period between the mid-1960s and the early 1990s, with reference to current debates on the nature of history. It presents a theoretical framework which establishes the centrality of philosophy of history to the development of the genre. The employment of this framework opens out the discussion of literary change to the consideration of historiographical developments and wider critical debate. The theoretical insights gained inform the close textual analysis provided in the chapters dealing with novels written by five of Italy's foremost contemporary writers: Leonardo Sciascia, Vincenzo Consolo, Sebastiano Vassalli, Umberto Eco, and Luigi Malerba.
Articles / Book Chapters by Ruth Glynn
This article addresses Italian cultural representations of the Allied Occupation of Naples, with ... more This article addresses Italian cultural representations of the Allied Occupation of Naples, with reference to their understanding of the relationship between the city and the Italian nation-state. The analysis focuses on two texts which, despite enjoying notable prominence and influence, are rarely considered together: Eduardo De Filippo’s Napoli milionaria! (1945) and Curzio Malaparte’s La pelle (1949). Deploying a psychoanalytical frame of reference and paying close attention to the gendering of discourses relating to Naples and Italy, it is argued that where La pelle gives symptomatic expression to the conditions of the Occupation, underlining the exceptionality of the Neapolitan experience with respect to the national post-war narrative, Napoli milionaria! instead seeks overtly to heal the psychological wounds of the Occupation by aligning the conditions in Naples with those experienced in the center-north of the country. The article closes with the proposition that the different approaches taken to the relationship between Naples and the Italian nation-state are key to the radically divergent reception of the texts in Naples.
Modern Italy 18:4, pp. 373-90, Nov 2013
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This article consid... more http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13532944.2013.816473#tabModule
This article considers the emergence of a corpus of victim-centred narratives addressing the experience of political violence during the anni di piombo in the period surrounding the establishment of the 'Day of Memory for Victims of Terrorism'. Bringing a critical victim-studies approach to bear, it explores how the victim of terrorism is portrayed in the corpus of victim-centred narratives and asks what is claimed, effected and achieved by the corpus in cultural terms. It further explores how the perspective of survivors of terrorist attacks and of relatives of the victims reshapes the cultural imaginary of the anni di piombo in the new millennium. "
Feminist Review, 92:1, pp. 1-18., 2009
This paper examines texts written by, or in collaboration with, female ex-members of the Italian ... more This paper examines texts written by, or in collaboration with, female ex-members of the Italian left-wing armed organization, the Red Brigades. The corpus differs from male-authored or male-centred texts in that issues relating to identity and selfhood lie at the very heart of the project of narrating the terrorist past; the primary concern of Italian women's post-terrorist narration is not to narrate the experience of belonging to an armed organization, but to construct a new identity distinct from a pre-existing self identified exclusively with the transgressive experience of political violence. I consider the corpus in the light of a number of critical problems posed both by the specificity of female perpetration and by the dearth of theoretical writings on perpetrator trauma more generally. I identify in each text an acute anxiety about the very act of speech or narration and find that, in order to circumvent the perceived prohibition on speech, the women of the Red Brigades subtly insinuate into their life writing a discourse of alterity bordering on subalternity that obscures the boundary between victim and perpetrator. The unacknowledged slippage between discourses of perpetration and victimization is explored in relation to Ruth Leys’ critique of Cathy Caruth's formulation of trauma as the wound that cries out through the voice of the victim. The paper concludes by questioning whether perpetrator trauma can ever be articulated as such and by considering the implications of that question for traumatized perpetrator and victimized society alike
in P Barrotta, L Lepschy and E Bond (ed.), Freud and Italian Culture (Peter Lang), pp. 107-26., 2009
in R. Glynn and G. Lombardi, Remembering Aldo Moro: The Cultural Legacy of the 1978 Kidnapping and Murder (Legenda), pp. 1-17., 2012
in R Glynn and G Lombardi (ed.), Remembering Aldo Moro: The Cultural Legacy of the 1978 Kidnapping and Murder (Legenda), pp. 78-95., 2012
in P Antonello and A O'Leary (ed.), Imagining Terrorism: The Rhetoric and Representation of Political Violence in Italy 1969-2009 (Legenda), pp. 63-76., 2009
in R Glynn, G Lombardi and A O'Leary (ed.), Terrorism, Italian Style: Representations of Political Violence in Contemporary Italian Cinema (IGRS Books), pp. 117-32., 2012
in M. Jansen and P. Jordão (ed.), The Value of Literature in and after the Seventies: The Case of Italy and Portugal, pp. 317-35, 2006
Italica, 83:3-4, pp. 609-28, 2006
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
MLR, 97:1, pp. 72-82, Jan 2002
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
in N. Bouchard (ed.), Risorgimento in Modern Italian Culture (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press), pp. 96-113, 2005
Italian Studies, 54, pp. 118-131, 1999
Consolo's Sicilian origins are important for an understanding of his work which draws heavily on ... more Consolo's Sicilian origins are important for an understanding of his work which draws heavily on the island's historical and literary heritage. He has observed that there is an east-west cultural divide in Sicily, reflected in the fact that the literary works of the Eastern half of the island are characterized by myth and fantasy, while the literature of the Western half is predominantly historical and rational. His own place, Sant' Agata di Militello, situated halfway between Messina and Palermo, is a type of noman's-land between those two realms. He has therefore been permitted the luxury of a conscious choice between myth and fantasy, on the one hand, and history and reason on the other. He clearly enunciates his predilection for the latter: 'ho scelto la storia'.l As in many other Sicilian historical novels (for example, De Roberto's I Vicere, Pirandello's I vecchi e i giovani, and Lampedusa's If gattopardo), the temporal setting for If sorriso dell'ignoto marinaio is the Risorgimento. 2 The political event of primary importance within the narrative scope is the fortyday long rioting and occupation of Alcara Li Fusi following Garibaldi's landing at Marsala, and the subsequent imprisonment and sentencing of the peasant rebels. Consolo writes a revisionist history of the time, declining to concentrate on such political events and protagonists as would have formed the focal point of a traditional historical novel. Rejecting the precedent set by his Sicilian predecessors of writing from the perspective of the power holders, Consolo pre-empts the microhistorical practice of the late I970S by electing instead, 3 in Manzonian fashion, to centre his narration on more banal, everyday happenings; on people and events which were peripheral to the historical uprising. He therefore allows those who had been excluded from, or defeated in, the power games of others, to find a voice which they had consistently been denied in both history and literature. In bringing the experiences of these previously ignored protagonists to centre stage in an effort to redress the age-old trend of history in If sorriso dell'ignoto 1 Grazia, 30 October I988, p. 97. 2 Vincenzo Consolo, II sorriso deltignoto marinaio (Turin: Einaudi, I976). All page references are to this text and edition unless otherwise stated. 3 The microhistorical approach to the writing of history was predominantly advanced and debated in the journal Quaderni storici between I976 and I983. However, it also owes its development and dissemination to the establishment of an Einaudi 'Microstoria' series, now subsumed under the series 'Einaudi Paperbacks e Readers'.
The Italianist, 17:1, pp. 99-116, 1997
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Books by Ruth Glynn
Articles / Book Chapters by Ruth Glynn
This article considers the emergence of a corpus of victim-centred narratives addressing the experience of political violence during the anni di piombo in the period surrounding the establishment of the 'Day of Memory for Victims of Terrorism'. Bringing a critical victim-studies approach to bear, it explores how the victim of terrorism is portrayed in the corpus of victim-centred narratives and asks what is claimed, effected and achieved by the corpus in cultural terms. It further explores how the perspective of survivors of terrorist attacks and of relatives of the victims reshapes the cultural imaginary of the anni di piombo in the new millennium. "
This article considers the emergence of a corpus of victim-centred narratives addressing the experience of political violence during the anni di piombo in the period surrounding the establishment of the 'Day of Memory for Victims of Terrorism'. Bringing a critical victim-studies approach to bear, it explores how the victim of terrorism is portrayed in the corpus of victim-centred narratives and asks what is claimed, effected and achieved by the corpus in cultural terms. It further explores how the perspective of survivors of terrorist attacks and of relatives of the victims reshapes the cultural imaginary of the anni di piombo in the new millennium. "
In the cultural arena, cinema has played a particularly prominent role in articulating the ongoing impact of the anni di piombo and in defining the ways in which Italians remember and work through the events of the 1970s. Each year sees the release of one or more films addressing the atrocities and traumas of those years. The persistence of the cinematic return and the strength of feeling surrounding the reception of recent films addressing the events and legacy of political violence bear witness to the degree to which the anni di piombo are deemed to impact on present-day conditions, and to the contentious nature of the representation of political violence."