Thesis (M.A.)--Miami University, Dept. of English, 2006. / Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 81-86).

In this report, the phenomenon of vowel lengthening in Standard Italian and two Northern Italian dialects, Friulian and Milanese, is discussed. For each language, the facts of vowel lengthening are presented and analyzed in the framework of several theories previously proposed to account for the data. These include primarily derivational theory, moraic theory, and optimality theory. Vowel lengthening is analyzed predominantly from a synchronic perspective for Standard Italian, but for Friulian and Milanese, both diachronic and synchronic accounts are presented. Vowel length in Italian and Milanese is seen to result from bimoraic enforcement, a principle requiring that all stressed syllables be bimoraic. A constraint prohibiting long vowels in word-final position interacts with the principle of bimoraic enforcement in Italian. In Milanese, bimoraic enforcement responds to a lexical contrast in moraic and non-moraic codas. Vowels before non-moraic codas lengthen to create a bimoraic syllable, while those before moraic codas do not since those syllables are already bimoraic. In Friulian, on the other hand, historical vowel lengthening which resulted from compensatory lengthening following the apocope of final vowels has been reanalyzed as a synchronic process of compensatory lengthening resulting from loss of consonant voice following word-final devoicing. / text

This thesis discusses clerical censorship against the film industry as a phenomenon encompassing questions of popular education and mass culture, power formation, and ideological struggles. It argues that clerical censorship should be understood not as the undertaking to simply make sins less attractive, in films, but as the Church's efforts to influence the state and police force, magistrates, or government censorship boards to prohibit or remove certain films’ offensive contents, which are believed to be ideologically contrary to the Church’s doctrine. The financial, political and legal sanctions called in force by Church censorship surely go beyond the idea of moral reprimand recommend by the Catholic teachings. They put in action what Gramsci called culturally influential ‘hegemony’. In particular, film boycott will be flagged out as that method which empowers the clergy (composed of high prelates, clergymen, and nuns) to influence their followers (flock of souls) to not even consider watching films, containing representations and ideas unapproved of by the Pope. In implementing its control techniques, by means of its reticular system, the church edits indexes, which set criteria for condemning and banning as ‘immoral’ and ‘harmful’, artistic products and ideological ideas, which threaten its theological standpoints. In this sense, the Catholic’s habit to set film ratings and spread public shaming may be said to contribute towards Church censorship as a wide-ranging practice. In consideration of the fact that the various forms of influence and control over the Catholic communities, exercised at local and national level by the clergy in parish churches, communities, schools, associations, and through the media, are acknowledged in this thesis as methods of clerical censorship, I also discuss the action and the militancy of self-appointed censors of Catholic background, who align themselves with the existing governmental censorship boards. In particular, this thesis conducts and examination of how filmmakers, producers, and distributors may at times witness their films being totally suppressed by state and church censorship, and at others, manage to bypass the trouble of compliance with censorship regulations by negotiating ploys to escape severe confrontation in the field of legal censorship. To reveal facts hidden behind the nation’s façade of liberalism and progressivism, this thesis addresses the conceptions behind constitutional/legal censorship and Church censorship. I demonstrate how the power of film censorship located in the nation's major centres of power, the judiciary and the religious, exercise double-edged forms of censorship, using their authority to influence society and individuals. A focus will be placed on recent reforms, which have aptly solved this impasse, and secured larger margins of freedom for the Italian film industry. Indeed, as my argument supports, cinema, as an art form, is also highly fertile in ideological and artistic dissidence against censorial forms of state and church, which attempts to influence and at times limit both the artists' expressive freedom and the audience's right to be entertained and informed.

Critical interpretations of the work of Mario Giacomelli often disagree as to whether he should be classified within the style of Italian neorealism. This thesis argues that Giacomelli's photography strikes a balance between realism and abstraction that is best explained as neorealist. Neorealist films such as Rome, Open City (1945) and Bicycle Thieves (1948) sought to capture the social realities of postwar Italy. The realism in these films is complicated however, subjecting postwar social actuality to the artistic initiative of the director. I seek to identify the filmic qualities in Giacomelli's work to clarify a connection to neorealism. Though Giacomelli physically manipulated his images, these manipulations give his images the appearance of a film. To reveal Giacomelli's connection to neorealism, I will investigate the cinematic qualities of mise-en-scene, montage and narrative. This thesis will argue that Giacomelli's photography stems from a cinematic approach that was first developed in neorealism.

Doctor of Philosophy / This thesis analyses language shift in a Sicilian-Australian family, from the parents' use of three languages: Sicilian, Italian and English, to the children's almost exclusive use of English.

The Italian political crisis of 1992-94, often referred to as Tangentopoli, emerged after the revelation of endemic corruption throughout the political system. First and foremost the crisis saw the collapse of the main political parties, the Christian Democracy and the Socialist Party. In a different manner and only one year prior to this crisis, the former Communist Party, also underwent major changes and evolved into a social democratic party, the Democratic Party of the Left. Though this crisis was sparked by a corruption revelation, it became a catalyst for a change in the deformities of a political system, of the partitocracy, which was itself the product of Cold War conditions faced by Italy in the post-war period. The focus of this study has been to re-evaluate the causes of this crisis with particular attention to the role of the Cold War as the over-arching influence which directly and indirectly influenced many of the internal dynamics of the Italian political process. The hypothesis of this research was that the end of the Cold War in 1991 as a factor which provoked this political crisis, was far more important as a cause than has hitherto been acknowledged. The study examines the other indicated possible causes including the impact of the corruption revelations, the role of the magistrates in uncovering corruption, the economic crisis, the role of the new protest movement of the Lega Nord and finally the especially brutal equilibrium with Italian political forces re-established by the Mafia after 1992.

Thesis (doctoral)--Université de Paris III, 1979. / Includes bibliographical references (v. 2, p. [1113]-1134) and index.

Based on the author's Thesis (Ph. D.). / Includes bibliographical references and index.

No description available.

The Italian political crisis of 1992-94, often referred to as Tangentopoli, emerged after the revelation of endemic corruption throughout the political system. First and foremost the crisis saw the collapse of the main political parties, the Christian Democracy and the Socialist Party. In a different manner and only one year prior to this crisis, the former Communist Party, also underwent major changes and evolved into a social democratic party, the Democratic Party of the Left. Though this crisis was sparked by a corruption revelation, it became a catalyst for a change in the deformities of a political system, of the partitocracy, which was itself the product of Cold War conditions faced by Italy in the post-war period. The focus of this study has been to re-evaluate the causes of this crisis with particular attention to the role of the Cold War as the over-arching influence which directly and indirectly influenced many of the internal dynamics of the Italian political process. The hypothesis of this research was that the end of the Cold War in 1991 as a factor which provoked this political crisis, was far more important as a cause than has hitherto been acknowledged. The study examines the other indicated possible causes including the impact of the corruption revelations, the role of the magistrates in uncovering corruption, the economic crisis, the role of the new protest movement of the Lega Nord and finally the especially brutal equilibrium with Italian political forces re-established by the Mafia after 1992.