This dissertation offers a comparative study of two key figures of the Italian Renaissance, the ambassador and the courtesan, and the place of their bodies in relation to the Renaissance body politic. In studying myriad textual spaces of the body natural within writings by and about these two seemingly opposite figures, I find that these spaces range from the material to the metaphorical. In the Renaissance material spaces were increasingly allocated to both figures, urban confinement for the prostitute, and the establishment of the embassy for the ambassador. Metaphorically, the prostitute becomes the "body" of the state, while the ambassador personifies its "mind". My dissertation proves that by allocating such material and metaphorical spaces to these figures, the early modern state effectively denies them the possibility of ownership over their own bodies. This ownership, however, is rhetorically reclaimed, I argue, through the bodies of their own texts. / Romance Languages and Literatures

In this thesis we have not entered the names of all the authors who wrote in the Venetian language in the course of the XX century, but only the names of those who distinguished themselves. / This thesis does not deal exclusively with poetry, but it includes also prose, theatre and journalism. In fact, analyzing so many and such varied works allowed us to formulate working hypotheses on the origins, evolution and various motivations of their respective authors. It also supplied us with some clues as to why they chose to write in a regional language and, sometimes, in one of its dialects. / Our work has taken into account the literary production in other regional languages of Italy, as well as the theoretical writings on this subject. / Owing to the synoptic presence of all of these elements, this thesis fills an existing gap and thus offers a positive contribution to contemporary scholarship on regional languages and literatures.

The teaching of a foreign language involves the use of methods, rooted in an approach to language teaching, and often incorporates the use of technology such as computers and multimedia. In order to examine the approach, method, and use of multimedia technology in the teaching of Italian in British Columbia at the elementary and secondary levels, it is important to first define these critical elements. The first chapter examines the global shift from using a Grammar-Translation Approach to teaching foreign languages towards using a Communicative Approach. It is interesting to note that this shift spans numerous centuries and develops gradually through a series of innovative foreign language teaching approaches and methods. The second chapter provides an in-depth look at this Communicative Approach. It examines the theories it is based on, the components a Communicative Language Teaching or CLT syllabus incorporates, as well as the classroom manifestations of CLT, including the types of activities used, the role of grammar, the learning resources used, the teacher's role, and the student's role. The chapter also reviews criticism levied against CLT. The third chapter examines the role of computer technology in foreign language teaching. As computers become ubiquitous, it is important to highlight the reason why computers go hand in hand with CLT; computer technology incorporates aspects of the theories which Communicative Approach is based upon. As such, computer technology should be part of the CLT classroom but only after the most effective Computer Assisted Language Learning or CALL program has been chosen. This chapter identifies criteria for the selection of effective CALL as well as identifying how to implement CALL in the classroom setting. In trying to examine CALL's overall value to CLT, the chapter also highlights some of the positive and negative attributes of CALL. The final chapter uses the terminology and approaches introduced in previous chapters and relates them to the actual panorama of Italian taught at the elementary and secondary levels in British Columbia. The driving force behind the use of the Communicative Approach and the use of computer technology in the local teaching of Italian comes from the Italian Ministero degli affari esteri, or MAE. This can be seen through MAE's foreign policy, their financial assistance, their trained personnel sent to assist local teachers of Italian, and their ongoing commitment to the teaching of Italian abroad. The chapter, through a questionnaire completed by local teachers of Italian, also tries to ascertain whether the resources offered by MAE are being used to their fullest.

Dialects have always had a negative reputation, and have been considered beneath the national language. Even the literature composed in the various regional languages has been considered inferior to the Italian one until only a few years ago, because it was thought that this literature had as an exclusive theme the peasant-popular world. / This thesis will not only demonstrate that dialects are languages deserving of respect, but also that Lucano dialect literature is not bogged down to the peasant-popular world. In fact, it is capable of expressing any concept that any national language is capable of, even if that concept does not originate in the peasant-popular world.

The citizens of utopian Renaissance cities have in common the confidence in the power of reason and moral virtues. The purpose of the thesis is to prove that, in spite of the imaginative and unreal aspects of these utopian societies, they contain the prodroms of the modern societies. / The utopias of the Renaissance are projects of a new commonwealth, based on justice and education. The Italian peninsula of the XVI and early XVII century spawned several works belonging to this literary genre, inspired by Plato's Republic and initiated in England with Thomas More's Utopia (1516). Those considered in this thesis, besides Utopia, are: Francesco Doni's Il mondo savio e pazzo (1552), Francesco Patrizi's La Citta felice (1553), Ludovico Agostini's La Repubblica immaginaria (1580), Tommaso Campanella's La Citta del Sole (The City of the Sun) (1602) and Lodovico Zuccolo's Il Belluzzi (1621). / The thesis examines these six main literary works according to the concept of uchronie and escapism, the definitions of utopia by Karl Mannheim, J.C. Davis and Mikhail Bakhtin, the religious and Arcadian elements and the relationship between utopia and satire. The thesis analyzes three essential aspects of the utopian tales: city planning, relationship between man and woman, and education. The utopias of the Renaissance also reveal two different visions: one innovative if compared to the society of the time, and another, post-tridentina, oriented towards a return to more traditional values. The thesis examines the influence of More's work on the utopias of the Renaissance by analyzing and comparing a series of topics, like the title of the work, the narrator, fantastical names and ideas, the role of Plato, property and inequity, the choice of woman and the concept of beauty, daily labor, the function of God, and the concept of law. / The utopias of the Renaissance have various modern aspects: a utilitarian justice, a better place of woman in the society, the laicity of the government, the "rationality" of war, secularism, education, health, social justice, assistance to elderly. They also contain myopias, like an unrealistic economic model and a static society.

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Teaching and learning foreign languages has always been a source of debate. This research begins by tracing the evolution of teaching methods and approaches. It proceeds to describe how the teaching and learning of Standard Italian at the post-secondary level and in adult education in Montreal is affected by the multicultural nature of the community. The analysis of individual textbooks used in post-secondary and adult instruction in Montreal and the surrounding area follows. This study should provide an impetus for further investigation regarding the relationship between foreign language acquisition and the choice of textbooks for classroom use and it could provide solutions for some of the pedagogical problems arising from Montreal's linguistic plurality.

As women's literature emerged in late nineteenth-century Italy, female authors encountered many obstacles. Foremost among them was the near-total absence of Italian female literary role models. Female writers often expressed ambivalence towards the writing of other women, which was considered inferior to male writing. However, their reverence for male writers revealed how conflictive their identities as writers were, and it was an impediment to the establishment of a serious women's literary tradition. In addition to such personal conflicts, these writers also faced the challenge of gaining acceptance by the male-dominated literary community and by their readers. These two groups expected that women's writing conform to a moral code which did not apply to men's writing. This thesis is an analysis of the specific problems that female novelist Bruno Sperani and others faced as they strove to establish themselves in Italian literature.

The aim of this research paper is to analyse the literary works and the writers of Italian origin who have actively contributed to the creation of Italian-Canadian immigration literature, and above all, that referent to the Montreal milieu. For this and other reasons, it distinguishes itself from other Italian-Canadian productions and precisely due to this reality, the objective of this research is to: (1) examine its role, its characteristics, the difficulties its writers experience, its literary artistic value and the recognition it receives in our literary environment; (2) compare the creative approach adopted by some writers to the perfect example, Primo Levi; (3) expose its contents and reoccurring themes; (4) examine the question of the literary language of expression of these works; (5) demonstrate the social usefulness of this literary production.