These lyric poems were written between August 2003 and June 2005 and bear witness to the human condition in all its facets, from birth and the first taste of lemon ice to exile and suicide. Within a landscape that encompasses many locales, the poems included here attempt to portray the particular to denote the universal and are always confronted by the ineffable connection between the two.

This study attempts to revive T.J. Dunbabin's multi-dimensional approach to the history of Early Iron Age Sicily in The Western Greeks (Oxford 1948). Dunbabin recognised that archaic Sicily had no real history, and that any historical account involved combining the very scant documentary record with the fuller and ever-growing body of archaeological evidence to produce a framework for writing social and economic history. These innovative methods ended with Dunbabin, however: today the field is dominated by scholars impeded artificially by disciplinary boundaries, which discourage the productive combination of historical and archaeological sources, leaving a number of important questions in a sort of academic no man's land. In the introduction an overview of the study of Sicily since Dunbabin is given, and Dunbabin's own weaknesses are explored: Dunbabin modelled Greek colonisation in Sicily on modern British colonisation; such a decision strait-jacketed his image of the past, causing him to draw conclusions unacceptable today. The increase in the quantity of archaeological evidence since Dunbabin means that it is no longer possible to make an in-depth study of the whole of Sicily in a single volume. Consequently, the focus has to be considerably more restricted than Dunbabin's; specific questions need to be selected. Megara Hyblaia and Selinous offer two particular advantages for studying the evolution of Greek settlement in Sicily: besides being Megarian, both are sufficiently well explored archaeologically to make historical investigation profitable, but they were founded a century apart on different sides of the island, in different environmental and socio-political contexts. The study itself is divided into two main parts, the first focusing on Megara Hyblaia and the second on Selinous; each of these two parts consists of five chapters, in which the same questions are asked of the evidence from the two sites, for comparative purposes. Chapters I and VI explore the background to settlement, with such subjects as the native world encountered by the settlers at the time of colonisation, pre- and proto-colonial activity, and the respective foundations of the colonies examined. Settlement development is the subject of chapters II and VII; the emphasis here is to monitor the successive stages of the physical growth of the colonies, and also to study the size and nature of the settlement itself. Chapters III and VIII deal with demography (particularly population size). The following chapters (IV and IX) use archaeological and written evidence to reconstruct socio-political history. Chapters V and X investigate environment and economy. In the closing chapter, after a review of the conclusions reached, the question of why Selinous evolved so differently from it mother-city is addressed. The thesis ends with brief consideration of the (Megarian) Sicilian contribution to the study of the polis.

The author's thesis, Leyden. / "Addenda": leaf inserted. "Table de la littérature et des abbréviations": p. 137-138.

Thèse--Université de Paris.

The author's thesis, Leyden. / "Addenda": leaf inserted. "Table de la littérature et des abbréviations": p. 137-138.

No description available.

The famous wealth of Norman Sicily was due to the careful managing of regal resources and property rights. The loose hand with which the Normans governed their economy allowed the island and its inhabitants to flourish, which in turn increased the wealth of the Norman kings.

Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The purpose of this study was to conduct a sociolinguistic analysis of the regional Italian of Sicily in Andrea Camilleri’s Un mese con Montalbano (A Month with Montalbano). The lexical portion of a model developed by Sgroi (1990) to examine the use of regional Italian in literature was applied to the thirty short stories in Camilleri’s text to isolate the components of this variety. The study also attempted to identify the socio-economic features of the characters who speak regional Italian, the contexts of use of this variety and what the regionalisms in the stories indicate about Italy and the speech of Italians. The model revealed that Camilleri utilizes three main types of language to regionalize his prose: Sicilian Italian regionalisms; phonological adaptations of Sicilian dialect terms; and, hyperfrequent Italian words. The regional terms comprise only 24.4% of the lexemes identified by the model, while 40.4% represent Italianizations of Sicilian dialect that may be artistic adaptations of the author. A surprising 33.4% of the terms are standard Italian words that appear to have been chosen by Camilleri due to their similarity to equivalent Sicilian dialect terms. With respect to the sociolinguistic aspects of the study, the findings were somewhat problematic owing to the nature of the mystery genre. Specifically, middle-aged policemen and police-related contexts of use are disproportionately represented in the stories. Nevertheless, it was determined that regional Italian is spoken by male and female characters who represent a wide range of ages and occupations. Furthermore, results illustrated that regionalisms are uttered most frequently in professional, public and formal contexts. The requisites of the mystery genre also affected the findings in regard to Camilleri’s portrayal of Italy and Italian speech. Much of the regional language used in the text exaggerates the criminal aspects of Italian society and the expressive quality of this variety. In a more realistic vein, however, many regionalisms emphasize the multi-cultural makeup of the country and the intangible facet of Italianness. In general, the textual analysis indicates that regional Italian is a complex variety which may enjoy a broader usage in contemporary Italy than the traditional dialects. / text

A multidisciplinary research methodology based on the combination of literature review and spatial analysis is presented as a contribution to the historical ecology of olive trees in Sicily (Italy). The thesis crosscuts time and space at different scales for a new epistemological approach to allow the olive trees to “talk”. Structured around the identification of breaking points and nodes of connection, the social and ecological history of the olive trees in the island are explored. While recognising the full agency of trees in the spatial and temporal evolving dynamics of the landscape, the vital importance of their inner connections with other elements of the ecosystems is stressed in the analysis; as also the importance of Traditional Ecological Knowledge. The thesis is concluded with the hypothesis that the olive trees of Sicily could be seen as biocultural refugia, physical places which preserve both agricultural biodiversity and traditional ecological knowledge.