{"id":2165,"date":"2012-06-28T10:00:35","date_gmt":"2012-06-28T08:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elanguage.net\/blogs\/booknotices\/?p=2165"},"modified":"2012-06-26T09:32:35","modified_gmt":"2012-06-26T07:32:35","slug":"voci-dal-sud-a-journey-to-southern-italy-with-carlo-levi-and-his-christ-stopped-at-eboli","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/?p=2165","title":{"rendered":"Voci dal Sud: A journey to southern Italy with Carlo Levi and his Christ stopped at Eboli"},"content":{"rendered":"
Voci dal Sud: <\/strong>A journey to southern Italy with Carlo Levi and his Christ stopped at Eboli.<\/em> By Daniela Bartalesi-Graf<\/strong>. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011. Pp. 448. ISBN 9780300137446<\/a>. $55.<\/div>\n

Reviewed by John Ryan<\/a><\/strong>, University of Northern Colorado<\/em><\/p>\n

This book <\/em>is an advanced-level, Italian-language textbook based on the literary and visual artistic work of Carlo Levi, namely, that associated with his acclaimed novel, Christ Stopped at Eboli<\/em>, and his ten-month exile to the southern Italian region of Basilicata (also known as Lucania) during the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini. The reason for the book\u2019s specific regional focus is to give voice to Italy\u2019s south, hence the book\u2019s title, deviating from the more typical coverage of such northern regions of the Peninsula as Florence, Rome, or Venice.<\/p>\n

This book <\/em>is carefully divided into seven chapters, spanning historical, regional, literary, visual art, and cinematic treatment of Levi\u2019s novel and exile. Providing an historical backdrop to Levi\u2019s novel from the years of unification until the time when the novel takes place (1935), Ch. 1 takes students through several important milestones and realities which helped form the south as a different entity from the north. Ch. 2 is a comprehensive review of Levi\u2019s novel, which summarizes each of Levi\u2019s chapters, and each summary includes vocabulary, comprehension questions, and prompts for reflection. Ch. 3 transforms the student\u2019s experience from literary to visual with inclusion and analysis of twelve color reproductions of paintings produced by Levi during his exile. Students are encouraged to reflect and think critically by \u2018reading\u2019 the featured paintings.<\/p>\n

Moving from the visual arts to cinematographic representation, Ch. 4 is a comprehensive discussion of Francesco Rosi\u2019s 1979 film based on Levi\u2019s novel and emphasizes certain topics more suited to discussion of the film medium, such as the use of language, portrayal of women, nationalism, power, Levi\u2019s transformation in the film, and American colonization, among others. Chs. 5\u20137 provide a more modern look at Italy\u2019s south. Ch. 5 resumes the history lesson of Ch. 1 from World War II to modern times. Ch. 6 takes a closer look at the Basilicata region of Italy, how it has evolved since Levi\u2019s times and continues to evolve. Finally, Ch. 7 takes a closer look at Aliano, the town of exile in Levi\u2019s novel, where it is today, and what its present-day citizens think and feel about its past, present, and future.<\/p>\n

The book includes separate appendices in which short essays and narratives about the south by authors other than Levi are included for additional reading. The book is also supplemented by a companion website at yalebooks.com\/vocidalsud, which currently includes audio files of the interviews presented in the text, sample syllabi, photos of the Basilicata region, and web links mentioned in the textbook. Readers are urged to return periodically for updates to the site.<\/p>\n

This book makes a valuable contribution for all advanced students of Italian in that it presents another side to the story of Italy\u2019s history and development, namely that of its southern region. This is especially important given the large percentage of Southern Italians who immigrated to America at the end of the nineteenth-early twentieth century, a theme also treated in the book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Voci dal Sud: A journey to southern Italy with Carlo Levi and his Christ stopped at Eboli. By Daniela Bartalesi-Graf. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011. Pp. 448. ISBN 9780300137446. $55. Reviewed by John Ryan, University of Northern Colorado This book is an advanced-level, Italian-language textbook based on the literary and visual artistic work of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2165"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2165"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2166,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2165\/revisions\/2166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}