This thesis explores the development of the Bildungsroman in Italian narrative between 1980 and 2011 and focuses, as a case study, on seven novels by three contemporary writers: Pier Vittorio Tondelli, Sandro Veronesi, and Giuseppe Culicchia. By contrasting the idea of an end of the literary genre with the First World War, as theorised by Franco Moretti in The Way of the World (an influential study on the European Bildungsroman published in 1987), this research will aim to demonstrate that contemporary Italian literature still engages with the genre. However, this analysis will show that a traditional coming of age process is no longer possible in contemporary society and will propose a different perspective from which to observe the transition from youth to adulthood – and its representation – in Italy. Acknowledging that the postponement of adulthood has become a common trope to describe this process, this thesis will argue that, instead of a coming of age process, the male young protagonist of the novels selected faces a ‘delaying of age process’, a conscious choice to postpone his entry into an unwelcoming adult world. The first two chapters of this work will establish the methodological background on which the textual analysis conducted in the following two chapters will be based. Chapter One will develop along two complementary lines: on the one hand, by basing my discussion on Moretti’s study, I will trace the origins of the Bildungsroman and identify the elements of continuity and diversity between the traditional examples of the genre in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and its evolution in the twentieth century. On the other hand, I will study the changes undergone by youth over the centuries, especially focusing on the shaping of male identity in the first decades of the twentieth century. Chapter Two will provide the socio-historical framework of this research, drawing a picture of contemporary Italy (from the aftermath of the Second World War), which will discuss the central issues against which the ‘delaying of age process’ will be analysed: generation, family, gender roles, work environment and consumption. In Chapters Three and Four, I will read the narrative texts selected as representing that ‘delaying of age’ trend which I will identify as a specifically Italian way of coming of age in contemporary society. By focusing on the relationship between the male protagonists and the ‘other’, the textual analysis will show new ways of conceiving the process of becoming a man in contemporary Italy.

The object of our diploma thesis was Jewish memory and identity in contemporary Italian literature. The work is divided into two parts. The first theoretical part in its historical introduction which deals with the Shoah in Europe. This will be a brief introduction to the european situation. The work continues by introducing more specific roots of anti-Semitism in Italy, its continuation until 1945 and describes the situation after 1945. In the next chapter, we will reflect about the relationship between memory and literature. What are the processes discussed and what is the relationship of memory and the Shoah. After that, we will also mention the complexity of Jewish identity and on her way how it is perceived. The next chapter will present medallions of individual authors whose works will be devoted to the practical part. The second practical part is divided into two main chapters. The first is devoted to the search for identity in three works by Alessandro Piperno- Con le peggiori Intenzion Elena Loewenthal- Lo strappo nell'anima and Silvia Ballestra- La seconda Dora. The second main chapter is devoted to tendencies that prevail in the individual authors - forgetting vs. remembering. The chapter is divided into two subsections that address specific perspective 2nd and 3rd generation. Separately...

Cette thèse se propose d'étudier la présence et la fonction des insertions dialectales dans les oeuvres littéraires italiennes contemporaines. Se focalisant sur les genres narratifs (prose et nouvelle) où le phénomène du plurilinguisme est le plus marqué, l'étude se concentre sur quatre auteurs (Andrea Camilleri, Salvatore Niffoi, Laura Pariani et Andrej Longo) chez qui le mélange vernaculaire / italien est le plus représentatif. Après avoir évoqué la situation linguistique particulière de l'Italie, ce travail de recherche analyse cette langue mêlant deux systèmes linguistiques différents sous lřangle de la traduction pour pouvoir dresser un parallèle entre les situations italienne et française. C'est le problème de la restitution de la langue mêlée, laquelle renvoie à un ancrage culturel et géographique très fort, qui est au centre de cette étude. Elle interroge la possibilité d'une recréation du même effet de lecture dans une culture cible qui ne connaît pas la même situation de diglossie. Nous voulons toutefois montrer, par l'analyse des traductions existantes, que le recours à un parler régional hexagonal peut être à même de restituer l'effet de défamiliarisation provoqué à la lecture des textes sources. / This PhD thesis examines Italian contemporary literary works (novels and short stories) in which dialect is used as a linguistic variety in combination with the national Italian idiom. The analysis is conducted through the works of four Italian writers, in which multilingualism is particularly significant: Andrea Camilleri, Salvatore Niffoi, Laura Pariani and Andrej Longo. Taking into account the complex linguistic situation of Italy, the thesis focuses on the translation of these works characterized by the co-existence of two different linguistic systems. Through an examination of the colourful mixture of linguistic varieties and the function of dialect in these contemporary texts, the thesis aims to make a contribution to the field of Translation Studies and of History of modern and contemporary Italian Literature (examining in particular linguistic and stylistic aspects). It begs the question of the reproducibility of the linguistic mosaic created by these Italian authors in their French translations. Translation of dialect and linguistic varieties, intended as a non-standard language usage in contemporary Italian literature, represents a challenge for countries (in this case France) in which diglossia has disappeared. However, the author argues that the use of certain regional French dialects enables to recreate the defamiliarization effect of the original Italian texts.