Monsters in the Italian Literary Imagination PDF
Preview Monsters in the Italian Literary Imagination
.ousters in the Itafian literary Imagination Edited by KEALA JEWELL J&onsters in the Itafian Jherary Imagination J&01•onsters in the Itafian literary Imagination Edited by Keala Jewell WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS DETROIT Copyright © 2001 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201. All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission. Manufactured in the United States of America. 05 04 03 02 01 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Monsters in the Italian literary imagination / edited by Keala Jewell. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8143-2838-5 (alk. paper) 1. Italian literature—History and criticism. 2. Monsters in literature. I.Jewell, Keala Jane. PQ4053.M66 M66 2001 850.9'37—dc21 000-010959 eISBN 978-0-8143-3987-9 Contents Acknowledgments 7 Introduction: Monsters and Discourse on the Human 9 Kealajewell Vart v. Modern Horrors 1. Creatures of Difference: Myths of Monstrosity in 27 Savinio's La nostra anima Kealajewell 2. "Mon maitre, mon monstre": 51 Primo Levi and Monstrous Science Nancy Harroivitz 3. Monstrous Murder: Serial Killers and Detectives in 65 Contemporary Italian Fiction Ellen Nerenberg 4. The Mother of All Horror: Witches, Gender, 89 and the Films of Dario Argento Jacqueline Reich Vart 2: Monsters and Conception 5. Dante's "dolce serena" and the Monstrosity of the Female Body 109 Naomi Yavneh 6. "A la tetta de la madre s'apprende": The Monstrous Nurse 137 in Dante's Grammar of Selfhood Gary P. Cestaro 7. Incredible Sex: Witches, Demons, and Giants 153 in the Early Modern Imagination Walter Stephens CONTENTS Vart 3: Monsters ancfvoetics 8. Monstrous Movements and Metaphors in 179 Dante's Divine Comedy Virginia Jewiss 9. Monstrous Language, Monstrous Bodies: 191 Bartolotti's Macharonea Medicinalis Antonella Ansani 10. Girolamo Parabosco's UHermajrodito: 203 An Irregular Commedia Regolare Suzanne Magnanini 11. Ogres and Fools: On the Cultural Margins of the Seicento 222 Nancy L. Canepa 12. Reforming the Monster: Manzoni and the Grotesque 247 Robert S. Dombroski ?art4: The Monster as Discourse 13. The Monster as a Refugee 265 Ginevra Bompiani 14. Per Speculum Melancholiae: The Awakening of 279 Reason Engenders Monsters Massimo Riva 15. Monstrous Knowledge 297 Barbara Spackman Contributors 311 Index 315 Acknowledgments This collection of essays on monsters owes a debt of gratitude to the Ramon Guthrie Fund of Dartmouth College, which contributed generously to a confer- ence organized on this topic some years ago at Dartmouth. The Guthrie Fund has also generously supported the publication of the volume. Thanks to Carol Peper for her efficient administration. The dean of the faculty of Dartmouth College also provided research support. I would especially like to thank Professor Patrick Rumble for his valuable comments on the volume in its manuscript form and the anonymous reader for Wayne State University Press, who offered helpful insights. For their advice and valuable comments on my own contributions to this volume, I would like to thank the members of the "Feminist Inquiry Seminar" of Dartmouth College, especially Marianne Hirsch and Melissa Zeiger. For their collegial spirit over the years and their friendship, I want to thank Walter Stephens, Graziella Parati, Nancy Canepa, and Lynn Higgins. Thanks are due to Nancy Harrowitz for many long, thoughtful, useful, exciting phone conversations on questions concerning monstrosity that dogged me for years. Thanks to Kathleen Corrigan for sharing her art-history expertise on the subject of monsters and for being willing to do it so often on our twin treadmills. At Wayne State University Press, my thanks go to Arthur Evans for his excellent advice in the shaping of the volume, to Kristin Harpster for heading the production project so expertly, and to Sandra Williams for superior editorial work. Thanks are due for generous moral support to my parents, William and Martha Jewell, to my sister, Maile Jewell, and to my husband, Claudio ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Pellegrini, for listening even when I waxed very theoretical about monsters and for putting up with many grotesque read-alouds. Thanks, finally, to Antonio Pellegrini for drawing good monsters and for being proud of a mom who is so interested in them.
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