Papers by Saskia Ziolkowski
Italian and Italian American studies, 2024
Italian and Italian American studies, 2024
This series brings the latest scholarship in Italian and Italian American history, literature, ci... more This series brings the latest scholarship in Italian and Italian American history, literature, cinema, and cultural studies to a large audience of specialists, general readers, and students. Featuring works on modern Italy (Renaissance to the present) and Italian American culture and society by established scholars as well as new voices, it has been a longstanding force in shaping the evolving fields of Italian and Italian American Studies by re-emphasizing their connection to one another.
Modern Language Quarterly, Dec 7, 2023
Springer eBooks, Nov 20, 2023
Forum Italicum, Jun 1, 2023
This article examines Italian ghetto stories, which are distinguished by confusions of time, cont... more This article examines Italian ghetto stories, which are distinguished by confusions of time, continuities, tourism, reflections on collective identities, and movements in and out, in order to outline one potential literary history. In contrast to German-language and Anglophone literary ghettos, Italian ones are generally absent as a critical category from literary debates, though they appear in works by Leon Modena, Israel Zangwill, Rainer Maria Rilke, Umberto Saba, Giorgio Bassani, Elsa Morante, Caryl Phillips, and Igiaba Scego, among others. A transnational approach can bring together works that have not been considered collectively because of disciplinary formations. Italian ghetto fictions expose the disheartening continuities of prejudice and, relatedly, have generally not been considered together because of restrictive ideas about the nation as an organizing principle.
The Comparatist, 2009
"So, then people do come here in order to live" For many, Trieste is better known as the temporar... more "So, then people do come here in order to live" For many, Trieste is better known as the temporary home of the Irish immigrant whom Ezra Pound once referred to as a "refugee from Trieste, "1 than for the numerous modern Italian authors who lived there. The final words of Ulysses, "Trieste-Zürich-Paris, " not only catalogue the three cities in which James Joyce worked on his masterpiece, but also emblematize the way scholars tend to place Italian and German-language literature, in an itinerary that ultimately leads to Paris, as the presumptive capital of modernist culture. Trieste, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until its fall, can, however, also be seen as the geographic and intellectual passage between the German-speaking world, particularly Austria-Hungary, and Italy.2 An Austro-Italian rather than a Franco-Italian or Euro-Italian perspective highlights elements of Italian modernism that remain underexplored. Italian modernism has been less examined than most other national European modernisms and, perhaps because it is chronologically and geographically diffuse, critics tend to concentrate on individual authors, such as Gabriele D'Annunzio, Italo Svevo, Carlo Emilio Gadda, Luigi Pirandello, and F.T. Marinetti, while the idea of a more general Italian modernism has remained a questionable proposition. A comparison of Austrian and Italian authors that concentrates primarily on what is similar between them adds to the picture of Italian literary modernism.3 Engaging German criticism to read Italian works also helps reveal unnoticed meanings. This comparison of Rainer Maria Rilke and Scipio Slataper's novels is part of a larger project that focuses on what Austrian literature brought Triestine writers, and what Triestine writers then brought to the peninsula as a whole, by focusing on the analogous qualities between pairs of Triestine and Austrian novelists.4 Italian Triestine authors were influenced by many of the same philosophers, critics, and psychoanalysts that informed the German-language authors of the Empire. These (at least) bilingual Triestine authors also read, often in the original, and were influenced by Austrian authors. In addition, due to the comparable cultural climate of Trieste and other Austro-Hungarian cities, such as Prague, these Italian and German-language authors often produced similar works. The affinities between Rilke's Die Aufzeich-
Italian Culture, Jul 3, 2022
This article argues that recognizing Jewishness as a crucial part of modern Italian literary hist... more This article argues that recognizing Jewishness as a crucial part of modern Italian literary history offers one path for discussing the current and historical diversity of Italian culture. The first section discusses key twentieth-century Italian authors — Giorgio Bassani, Natalia Ginzburg, Primo Levi, Elsa Morante, and Italo Svevo — not to assess how Jewish they are, but to illuminate the Jewishness of modern Italian literature, which prompts a reconsideration of the construction of Italian identity. The second section, “Jewish, Black, and Italian: The Archival Fictions of Helena Janeczeck, Claudio Magris, and Igiaba Scego,” scrutinizes how these three authors interrogate Italy’s role in the persecution of Jews, racial violence, and colonialism, drawing on historical documents that show the gaps in dominant discourses and asking readers to reflect on how historical narratives have been constructed. Being more cognizant of Jewish Italians, their backgrounds, and their representations in literature contributes to the growing analyses of Italy’s diversity, adding to examinations of Italian literature that focus on belonging, borders, migration, and colonialism.
“Kafka and Italy: A New Perspective on the Italian Literary Landscape,” Franz Kafka for the Twent... more “Kafka and Italy: A New Perspective on the Italian Literary Landscape,” Franz Kafka for the Twenty-First Century. Eds. Ruth Gross and Stanley Corngold. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2011. 237-49. Reissued in paperback 2015.
University of Toronto Press eBooks, Feb 26, 2020
"Names, Mediation, and Italian Literature in Emilia Galotti: From Dante’s Galeotto to Le... more "Names, Mediation, and Italian Literature in Emilia Galotti: From Dante’s Galeotto to Lessing’s Galotti.” Lessing Yearbook/Jahrbuch. XLIII (2016):161-182.
Rowman & Littlefield eBooks, Dec 18, 2014
“Svevo’s uomo senza qualità: Musil and Modernism in Italy,” Gender and Modernity in Central Europ... more “Svevo’s uomo senza qualità: Musil and Modernism in Italy,” Gender and Modernity in Central Europe: The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and its Legacy. Ed. Agatha Schwarz. Ottawa: University of Ottawa, 2010. 83-101.
Manchester University Press eBooks, Nov 8, 2022
This chapter examines an Italian collection of refugee stories from 2018, Anche Superman era un r... more This chapter examines an Italian collection of refugee stories from 2018, Anche Superman era un rifugiato: Storie vere di coraggio per un mondo migliore (Superman Was a Refugee Too: True Stories of Courage for a Better World) to analyze key elements that Italian literature brings to discourses about migration literature. With the increase of migration to Italy, and the harsh Bossi-Fini immigration laws of 2002, a growing number of scholars have examined migration in Italian literary and cultural studies, but English-language anthologies and criticism still often overlook Italian work. Restricting analyses of literature in Italian to just Italian studies contributes to an international power imbalance, which is reflected not only in migratory movements, but also literary studies as a field. Arguing for the importance of including untranslated works in debates about migration literature, I put Anche Superman era un rifugiato in conversation with two well-known collections, The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives (2018) and The Penguin Book of Migration Literature: Departures, Arrivals, Generations, Returns (2019), in order to trace how Italy is positioned in these three migration literature anthologies and to show how Italy decenters ideas of one-directional migratory movement. The English-language collections share various qualities with Anche Superman era un rifugiato that underscore shared investments in challenging concepts of migration but also shed light on the Italian collection's unique configuration. The Displaced is a collection of contemporary essays edited by Viet Thanh Nguyen, the award-winning author of The Sympathizer (2015) and The Committed (2021). Anche Superman era un rifugiato is a collection of stories co-edited by Igiaba Scego, the award-winning author of Oltre Babilonia (2008), Adua (2015), and La linea del colore (2020). Nguyen and Scego's collections emphasize refugees as artists and authors, The Displaced in its choice of contributors and Anche Superman era un rifugiato with the subjects of its stories. Nguyen and Scego's own novels also bear important thematic relationships to their edited volumes: both
Forum Italicum, Jul 11, 2022
Explores the Italian authors Calvino, Ferrante, and Magris through the lens of the Austrian autho... more Explores the Italian authors Calvino, Ferrante, and Magris through the lens of the Austrian author Bernhard. In the new Bloomsbury volume "Thomas Bernhard’s Afterlives," edited by Stephen Dowden, Gregor Thuswaldner, and Olaf Berwald. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. 189–212.
Comparative Literature Studies, 2015
Italian Triestine literature tends to be seen as somewhat foreign to the Italian literary traditi... more Italian Triestine literature tends to be seen as somewhat foreign to the Italian literary tradition and linguistically outside of Austrian (or Austro-Hungarian) literature. Instead of leaving it as “neither nor,” viewing it as “both and” can help shape the critical view of the Italian literary landscape, as well as add to the picture of Austro-Hungarian literature. Joseph Roth's Radetzkymarsch (Radetzky March) and Pier Antonio Quarantotti Gambini's novel Il cavallo Tripoli (The Horse Tripoli) depict the experience of loss brought on by the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in similar ways, although they do so from different linguistic and national sides. However, the writings of the Italian author are generally categorized as representing a pro-Italian perspective and those of the Austrian as pro-Austro-Hungarian. This article argues that their novels provide a more nuanced portrayal of the world and identities than just their nationalities or political views do. Because of assumptions about the authors, the complexity of the novels' representations of layered linguistic and cultural interactions have often been missed, especially those of Il cavallo Tripoli. This comparison provides a case of how engaging Austro-Hungarian work can benefit the critical understanding of Italian literature.
Forum Italicum: A Journal of Italian Studies
This article examines Italian ghetto stories, which are distinguished by confusions of time, cont... more This article examines Italian ghetto stories, which are distinguished by confusions of time, continuities, tourism, reflections on collective identities, and movements in and out, in order to outline one potential literary history. In contrast to German-language and Anglophone literary ghettos, Italian ones are generally absent as a critical category from literary debates, though they appear in works by Leon Modena, Israel Zangwill, Rainer Maria Rilke, Umberto Saba, Giorgio Bassani, Elsa Morante, Caryl Phillips, and Igiaba Scego, among others. A transnational approach can bring together works that have not been considered collectively because of disciplinary formations. Italian ghetto fictions expose the disheartening continuities of prejudice and, relatedly, have generally not been considered together because of restrictive ideas about the nation as an organizing principle.
Journal of Austrian Studies
"Italo Svevo and His Legacy," the international conference held at Oxford University in December ... more "Italo Svevo and His Legacy," the international conference held at Oxford University in December of 2011, was organized by Giuseppe Stellardi and Emanuela Tandello Cooper. It was this gathering of Svevo scholars which convinced me that there was a need for a volume of essays on Svevo and Shakespeare. It was there that I met Elisa Martínez Garrido, who has done a great deal for Svevo studies in Spain. She was immediately supportive of the idea for this volume and embraced the opportunity to contribute to it by expanding the study she presented at Oxford. It was also at Oxford that Elizabeth Schächter, who had already been immensely supportive of my work on The Diary of Elio Schmitz, gave me the idea of translating Svevo's "Profilo autobiografico." And it was this trip to England that made it possible for me, finally, to take a train to Hull and meet Brian Moloney, the Svevo scholar whose ongoing work has been a model for the rest of us to follow. That he has contributed an essay to this volume is for me a very great honor indeed. I must also express my gratitude to Charles Klopp, at The Ohio State University, who had the excellent idea of hosting a conference there on Trieste a few years ago. His interest in Triestine writers has renewed my own. It was there, moreover, at the conference in Columbus, Ohio, that I first met Saskia Ziolkowski, whose wide reading in modern world literature has allowed her to contribute a most illuminating study to this volume. Special thanks go to Dino S. Cervigni, editor of Annali d'italianistica, not only for his generosity and guidance, but for his friendship and encouragement. It would not have been possible to complete this volume, however, without the support of my Department Head, Robert Felgar, who found a way to give me a semester's leave, prompted by his deep and unwavering respect for scholarship. 1 This note is transcribed in Elio Schmitz, Diario (137). Not long afterward, Eleonara Duse would be exalted for her ability to perform Shakespeare (Rebora 222). 2 Later Svevo would similarly send his own novels to people from whom he sought recognition or whom he admired. 3 Garber, for instance, provides a wide-ranging list of the similarities between Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream (Shakespeare After All 213-14). For this issue, see Morris's Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere.
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Papers by Saskia Ziolkowski