Joseph ben Samuel Tsarfati, one of the great Jewish poets and scholars of the Italian Renaissance, first translated the Spanish work Celestina (1499) by Fernando de Rojas into Hebrew in 1507. At present, only Tsarfati’s introductory poem to his translation remains. This study seeks to answer the questions: What may have been Tsarfati’s motivation to translate Celestina into Hebrew so soon after its Spanish composition? How might a Jewish audience in Rojas’s day have understood his work? In response to these questions, this study will primarily concern itself with the similarities between Rojas’s and Tsarfati’s historical situations and the literary interests that they expressed in their works, interests that could have drawn Tsarfati to translate Rojas’s work. Close readings of sections of Celestina, as well as an overview of Tsarfati’s two hundred and thirty-poem corpus and close readings of several of these poems, make up the most important part of this study’s analysis. Through this analysis, I argue that both Rojas and Tsarfati stood as transitional figures during a period of literary change, which allowed them to explore and exhibit similar themes and interests in their works. Their works thus served as a type of “go-between,” moving their audiences from the attitudes and behaviors of one era into those of a new era. Additionally, and more importantly, both men found themselves at the nexus, or point of contact, between two cultures. Rojas – as a converso serving as a lawyer and leader of a Christian community – and Tsarfati – serving as a Jewish physician to the pope – were both in a position to feel the heavy pressures of the dominant culture and to communicate with their Jewish culture in ways that subverted that pressure and power. Both Rojas and Tsarfati were fascinated with the power of language to conceal and reveal meaning and to exert influence. As men of their time, both saw romantic love as having true, intrinsic value, but at the same time used it as a metaphor for the false hope offered by the dominant culture. / text

This thesis explores the function of literary genres in the production and reception of the literary text, examines the ideological significance of the generic system operative in postwar Italy, and analyzes the five novels written by Italo Calvino from 1950 to 1963. The emphasis is on the relationship between the author's ethico-political stance and his negotiations of the generic system. The first part of the study (Chapters I--III) develops the theoretical tools and historical parameters which are applied to the textual analyses carried out in the second part (Chapters IV--VII). In Chapter I the notion of literariness is examined against the background of recent criticism. The distinctiveness of the literary text is found to reside in the cognitive performance it makes possible. This performance is then analyzed relying on the categories of sense and reference developed by the theory of Possible Worlds. This leads to an examination of two strategies---realist and non-realist---for the articulation of reference, which in turn raises the issue of the role of literary genres in the dialogical interaction mediated by the text. The second chapter focuses on the producer of the text. A connection is established between the epistemic configuration of "modernity" and the emergence of a particular type of producer, namely the "intellectual," who is also the primary interlocutor of "modern" literature. This analysis is then brought to bear, via Gramsci, on the particular situation of twentieth-century intellectuals in Italy. The third chapter provides a panorama of postwar Italy, with an emphasis on the relationship between political events and cultural developments such as the emergence of neorealism as the dominant literary current. The chapters in the second part present a reading of the five novels written by Calvino between 1950 and 1963, namely: I giovani del Po, Il visconte dimezzato, Il barone rampante, Il cavaliere inesistente, and La giornata d'uno scrutatore.

Note: / During the past few years a number of thorough studies have been made of immigration into Canada and the United states. These have not only revealed the quantitative movement of large numbers of people across international boundaries with the expressed intention of establishing permanent residence, but have also indicated the precise nature of the social process of immigration. The studies of’ the latter have been most profitable in bringing out the causative factors of migration and the by-productual results affecting individual personalities and the general body politic among which they seek an economic and social niche. [...]

Previous studies of the left have tended to focus on groups or movements within the confines of national boundaries. Yet the adherents of these organizations were often migrants who traveled to and lived in multiple states. The Italian anarchist movement emerged during the latter half of the nineteenth century during the process of that country’s unification. As the need for cheap labour in the industrializing nations of north-western Europe and North and South America grew, a mass exodus of migrants left Italy. Among those migrants were anarchists who established networks that spanned continents and the Atlantic Ocean. Wherever Italian anarchists settled they began to publish journals, engage in anarchist activism, and re-create the radical culture that had its roots in Italy. This dissertation examines a portion of the transnational anarchist movement that existed in Canada and the United States between 1915 and 1940. The themes explored in this work include the formation of these transnational anarchist networks, the divisions within the Italian anarchist movement and their repercussions, how transnational activism was conducted, and the culture these transnational radicals created. / Thesis (Ph.D, History) -- Queen's University, 2010-11-14 12:18:45.49

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Over time, the Italian community has become an integral part of Canada's ethnic mosaic. However, to what 'ethnic' cost has this integration occurred? This thesis looks at issues of ethnic retention among successive generations of Italian families living in Montreal. Focus is placed on three fundamental questions: (a) How did the Italian community change through generations? (b) Are the young generations displaying signs of symbolic ethnicity? and (c) How can the ethnic identity of Italians in Montreal be defined in 2005? Drawing on Herbert Gans' symbolic ethnicity approach, the initial hypothesis suggests that socio-economic upgrade spurs an ethnic consciousness founded on cultural symbols rather than on cultural values. Through ethnographic-based interviews, data was collected on 60 individuals grouped into 20 Italian families. Based on in-depth intergenerational comparisons between grandparents, parents and youth, results seem to confirm that young Italians reflect a pattern of symbolic ethnicity.

A large part of Canadian literature being produced today is being done by immigrants and the children of immigrants. Struggling between the dominant culture and the history and traditions of their parents, whom they desire to honor, these writers adopt modes of representation ranging from the elegiac to the ironic. / Nino Ricci's first book Lives of the Saints begins from the perspective of Vittorio as an adult, but the narrative that the reader follows is developed from his perspective as a child focusing on his ethnic roots. The narrative structure is two-fold: it is a combination of the objectivity of a child's innocent observations with a child's sense of wonder and magic and a strong influence from the adult narrator's voice. / This thesis will examine the narrative approach, the rhetorical devices and the use of myth that Ricci harnesses in his novel in order to show how his work is marked with ambiguity and paradox which points to the psychological condition of immigrants in Canada. The discussion will also focus on some of the literary models that influenced Ricci's narrative, such as Alice Munro, Carlo Levi and Corrado Alvaro.

During the language debates of the 1960s, Montreal's Italian community found itself in the middle of a conflict between Anglophones and Francophones. Forced to chose, the Italian community aligned itself with Anglophones. / The portrait which has been cast by numerous authors evokes the image of an Italian immigrant used as a pawn in a fight which generally was not his and which he could not understand. / An examination of the Italian press gives us a different image. St. Leonard represented more than a fight over the language issue. It was as much a dispute over the status of ethnic minorities in Quebec as it was over the language question. This study examines the immigrant's "Italianita" and how it helped shape his response to the ethnic tensions in St. Leonard.

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Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal