Francesco Goglia and Veronica Fincati

The Veneto region is among the regions with the highest number of immigrants (11.0% according to Istat). The majority of immigrants work in the local factories and in the services sector. The distribution of immigrants across the territory is even in both large and small cities. In recent years the process of family reunion has increased the number of immigrant children and teenagers. Children of immigrants account for 11.2% of the school population in the region (Anastasia and Fincati, 2011). The Veneto region’s linguistic repertoire includes Italian and the Veneto dialect, and there is a situation of de facto bilingualism with diglossia in which Italian is the H language and the Veneto dialect is the L language. Immigrant languages enrich this bilingualism.

This paper is based on research supported by the British Academy (SG110908), which entailed the distribution of 149 sociolinguistic questionnaires in three secondary schools with a high percentage of students with immigrant backgrounds in the provinces of Treviso and Padova. The questionnaires aimed to collect information on language choice, maintenance and attitudes. The pupils who filled in the questionnaire belong to 23 nationalities – 56% of the sample were Moroccan, Romanian, Albanian and Chinese, the four main immigrant groups in the region.

This study reveals that the use of Italian is prevalent in the school context or in contacts with local people, while immigrant languages are maintained in the family context with an emerging role of Italian within the family, mainly with brothers and sisters. The use of the Veneto dialect is also attested particularly with peers. Results also show different degrees of maintenance and use of immigrant languages according to different immigrant groups.

The paper explores metaphor from the perspective of the translator, attempting to understand better which characteristics of this linguistic resource promote, or conversely, inhibit the translator’s mediation. The language pair is Italian and English, the source texts are from both languages and are all works established in the literary canon of their respective cultures.

On the face of it, the existence of synonymous words in a language pair yields referential equivalence – until the multiple meanings of the word in question are unpacked. Such is the case of the metaphorically used Italian verb portare in an Ungaretti poem; in it are packed both the meanings of wear and carry, and the message of the poem in the original coheres around this polysemy. This instance is the point of departure for exploring a range of strategies translators into English have used to mediate such polysemy in a metaphorical framework.

The extent to which the meaning of a word may be viewed as being made up, at least in part, of the meanings of other words (Cruse, 1997) implies that any discussion of metaphor must look at its contextual relations and the strength of collocational constraints. The first example is the Dantean metaphor of the keys (… le chiavi … serrando e diserrando/ the keys … locking and unlocking, Inf.13, 58-60); the commensurability between the ST and a number of translations of this image points to the acknowledged conceptual simplicity of complementaries and the widespread representation of opposites across languages. Counter examples are provided by an Italian translation of Patrick White’s The Eye of the Storm where several metaphorical collocations support the findings of Kenny (2001) that collocation can be the site of creative mediation on the part of the translator.

At the end of the thirty-fourth canto of Ludovico Ariosto's epic, Orlando furioso, during a journey back from the moon, the apostle St John takes the knightly champion Giovanni Astolfo to visit the palace of the three Parche, the Fates of Graeco-Roman mythology. In the palace, the Fates have rooms filled with linen, silk, cotton and wool, in a variety of colours, which they are busily spinning into ‘life-threads’. Ariosto tells us that some are belli, and others brutti, opposing categories which seem, at first glance, like the lists found in contemporary fashion magazines, itemising what is currently ‘in’ and what ‘out’. But, despite having established these categories, Ariosto fails to allocate the fibres he lists to one or the other, or, more importantly for my purposes, to nominate the colours belonging to each. In this, he differs from other writers of the period, who were less reticent in evaluating specific colours. Jehan Courtois, for example, in his manual on heraldic colours, debates the relative merits of each as he ranks them, nominating gold as the most beautiful. He evaluates the colours aesthetically, morally and on a scale of nobility, and, although he does not explicitly mention economic values, his ranking corresponds closely to the relative costs of fabrics in each of these colours. This paper follows coloured threads through some of the literature read in early modern Venice, exploring the colours of ‘written clothing’ in connection with fashion, and focusing particularly on the ways in which these colours were valued.

Keywords: history early-modern Venice colour clothing textiles fashion
Luigi Gussago

La Trobe University

The role of comparative literature in Italian Studies: the example of the Picaresque novel

This paper attempts to underline the importance of comparative literature not only as an area of intersection between distant national cultures and languages, but also in the light of Italian studies in particular, as a result of a stimulating contrast with other cultural experiences. In order to survey more than one option of literary comparisons, I will follow Ulrich Weisstein’s account of comparative methods, such as influence and imitation, reception and survival, thematology, etc., with a focus on the European context. On a doubtless lower key to Goethe’s ambitious plan of a Weltliteratur, I will describe the evolution of one of the oldest forms of story-telling, the picaresque novel, and its influence on recent Italian prose. Originating in late-Renaissance Spain as a polemical response to the conformism imposed by the Catholic Counter-Reformation, this kind of narrative centred on a rogue’s farcical adventures has crossed frontiers and divides incessantly, from Britain to Germany, Italy, Russia and France, to name but a few, becoming the unreliable messenger of Enlightened modernity and its inevitable quandaries. In more recent history, the pícaros have joined the voices of Post-War disillusionment and the outcry announcing the end of all ideologies, in keeping with their usual understatement and unyielding self-indulgence. In this perspective, the novels of contemporary Italian authors who have reshaped the figure of the rogue in a modern way, e.g. Stefano Benni, Aldo Busi, Cesare De Marchi, etc., can be better appreciated when compared with other representatives of a similar picaresque anti-epos.

Keywords: Comparative Literature, Italian Studies, Picaresque Novel, Contemporary Italian Literature
John Hajek and Yvette Slaughter

University of Melbourne

Is this the end of the Italian wave in Australia? What happens when demography and education come together?

Since mass migration began to Australia after the Second World War, the wave of Italians arriving in the country has forged an indelible path across the Australian landscape. Just as Australia’s identity and demographics have changed fundamentally over time, so have the characteristics of the Italo-Australian community in Australia. This paper utilises data from Australian censuses as well as on the study of Italian in schools to identify areas of success, ongoing concern, and change in the Italo-Australian community – particularly on the language front.

First, the presenters use census data to track the changing demography of Italo-Australians. Based on home language, country of birth and ethnicity statistics, they look at patterns of shift across ages groups, time and location, as well as at correlations between identifying as Italian and the use of the language in the home. They also consider the implications of a new sudden influx of young Italians landing on Australian shores.

Second, they give consideration to the learning of Italian in Australian schools and the possible implications for assisting language maintenance in the Italian community, as the number of Italian-born residents in Australia declines. While Italian has become one of the most studied languages in Australia, the impact on the maintenance and development of bilingualism among those of Italian background appears to be largely negative for reasons identified during our presentation.

Given current demographic and educational trends across the nation, they ask whether we might be witnessing the end of the Italian wave that began to hit Australian shores in the post-war period.

Keywords: demographics, migration, language education, sociolinguistics,

The link between opera and cinema, dominant sites of cultural history in the 19^th and 20^th century respectively, is perhaps strongest in the case of Italy. Of Gallone’s 1937film Scipione l’Africano, Jeremy Tambling writes: ‘we may see grand opera reaching its apotheosis in cinema, the medium of twentieth-century Italian popular culture, a fulfilment of Italian opera.’² For Gramsci, popular reception of Verdi operas led to a whole ‘repertory of clichés’,³ a kind of musical library of pulp fiction. Verdi’s music is crucial for an understanding of the engagement with history in films by some postwar Italian directors, notably Bertolucci (in the direction of Gramsci) and Visconti. Beyond that, the status of Verdi as freedom-fighter and political icon was drawn on by the Italian political spectrum to underpin false analogies between the Resistance and the Risorgimento, as a way of rendering the checkered history of Italy in World War II less complex and more comfortable. In Italian film history, the swansong to this direction aptly comes with the Tavianis’ use of the Verdi Requiem in The Night of San Lorenzo, after which Verdi in particular seems to return to the fold that was also ongoingly occupied by Italian opera, namely global music (cf. the three tenors).

The national vis-à-vis the international resonances of Verdi, on soundtracks far from confined to Italian films, make him a rich object of research into this balance. The bigger issue is the relationship between history and myth. It converges in a figure like Verdi, both in his biography (the fortuitousness of his name, as initials, serving as a rallying call to Italian unification) and his reception. The use (Syberberg’s Hitler) and avoidance (by most directors of the New German Cinema) of Wagner can serve as a contemporary counter-example. Music in film evokes not just a particular era, but the subsequent reception of that era in relation to other aspects of the film narrative. It suggests, in other words, nothing less than the simultaneity of historical layers and debates.

Keywords: Verdi cinema cultural memory

The systematic study of language borrowing was established in the 1950s (Weinreich, Haugen). The earliest studies of Italian in migration contexts focused almost exclusively on borrowing and were brought to full scientific rigour in the early 1980s by the work of Bettoni, who adopted Clyne’s taxonomy of ‘transference’. In the half-century since then the body of research into Italian in Australia and other migration settings gives rich analysis of the processes of borrowing and insights into language structure. These analyses and insights will be tested in this paper against a corpus of written Italian produced in the 1850s. The ‘Martelli letters’ are a set of private correspondence, written in Western Australia between 1854 and 1864. This corpus is distinctive, with respect to most studies of Italian in Australia, since it is from a century before mass migration, it is written and it was produced by a person highly proficient in ‘standard’ Italian (as well as in English). The paper will demonstrate that the trends identified in post-1950s migration Italian are consistently present already in this earlier corpus of written Italian. In particular patterns of integration – at the levels of morphology, syntax and discourse – are remarkably consistent with more recent corpora. Some significant exceptions will be identified and discussed. The project will also contribute to back-dating the presence of a number of common Anglicisms in the Italian language.

Keywords: Italian language, language contact, 19th century
John Kinder

University of Western Australia

An Italian in 19th century Western Australia: Raffaele Martelli and his networks

The presence of Italians in nineteenth-century Australia is usually accounted for in descriptions of lone travellers – aristocrats, political refugees, missionaries – who forged their own fortunes in difficult colonial territory and generally disappeared into anonymity. Such travellers or migrants may, however, have belonged to wide-ranging and active networks of persons who shared information, ideas and material support. One such figure is Raffaele Martelli. Born in Ancona in 1811, Martelli was a priest and professor at the local seminary and the local liceo, and was in good relations with the large Jewish population of Ancona. He participated in the First War of Independence as chaplain of the Battaglione Universitario Romano. He found it increasingly difficult to remain in the Papal States as events unfolded during 1848, with the Papal Allocution and the War, and then with the Repubblica Romana of 1849. Through a series of chance encounters, and a coincidence of friendships, he travelled to the Swan River Colony in 1853 and lived his remaining 27 years there, in comparative anonymity. His letters, however, and those of his friends, reveal on-going contacts with various parts of Italy, Malta, Spain and France. This network exchanged information about personal and public life, swapped books, newspapers and photographs, put persons in contact with others of potential interest in the circles of missionaries, church authorities, the Roman art world. This paper will describe the network and will argue that, while most of the participants in the network have left little trace of their individual lives, the network itself made a significant contribution to nineteenth-century Australia and also, in part, to cultural life in Italy.

Keywords: Travel, migration, 19th century
Sara King

National Archives of Australia

Promoting innovative Italian Migration History teaching in Australian universities using contemporary archival sources

Migration records held by the National Archives of Australia have been a long-standing major source of evidence for researchers and postgraduate students with an interest in Australian migration studies. However, in recent years, shifts in technology and in the approach to dissemination of information of the National Archives allow for significant integration of migration primary sources in the teaching of undergraduate subjects. In particular, the contemporary process of digitisation of migration records significantly increases the capacity to unlock original, case-specific material – traditionally accessible only through national and state offices – as they are now available online. With over 8 million records and 23 million pages already available in a digital format, undergraduate students now enjoy unique opportunities to become accustomed with archival sources and gain innovative perspectives on migration history. This reverses the physical engagement with archival research and offers teachers new opportunities to ‘bring the archive to the classroom’. Importantly, this technological shift has even stronger implications for distance learners.

Keywords: contemporary archival sources; digital records; migration history; Italian diaspora
Raffaele Lampugnani

Monash University

Re- Envisioning Rejection Down Under: Clay, Mangiamele’s Self-effacing Dream of Acceptance

Giorgio Mangiamele is arguably the most important first generation Italo-Australian filmmaker of the post-war period, but his work has experienced much renewed critical interest only in the past two years. The film Clay (1965) marked a turning point in Mangiamele’s career as it was his first film not specifically dealing with a migrant theme and the second to represent Australia at the Cannes Film Festival. Yet, in spite of Mangiamele’s achievements, his pioneering spirit and the relatively good reception obtained at Cannes, his work as a whole remained marginalised and his attempts to be accepted into mainstream Australian cinema were constantly frustrated, achieving some recognition and limited financial support only towards the end of his life.

In this study, I argue that the film Clay, though not overtly focusing on the migrant experience, is nevertheless a reflection of Mangiamele’s sentiment of the perceived rejection by the cinema industry and society in general: a metaphor of Mangiamele’s inability to be accepted as a person and as artist filmmaker. As the filmmaker explained in an interview, the film was ostensibly based on a personal dream and incorporates contrasting images of acceptance and situations depicting fear and alienation, persecution, and ultimately loss of illusions and death. I argue that Clay can be interpreted as a desire to give visual expression to the filmmaker’s own unsuccessful professional experience, but also as a representation of the migrants’ condition in the assimilationist Australia of the immediate post-war period.

Keywords: Italian Migration Studies, Italo-Australian Cinema, Cinema, Mangiamele

It is now more than twenty years since Italian migrant writers stepped on the national literary scene. Their peculiar voice has raised growing attention worldwide and has created new methodological and critical issues, starting from the contested role they play within the Italian literary tradition. Despite their significant contribution, non-native Italian writers have suffered a process of isolation, being in most cases separated from the rest of the Italian literary tradition. But can migration be considered as a literary category? Can authors with very different poetics go under the same label just because of their shared migrant condition? Is there any common aesthetic aspect able to eventually justify this categorisation? This paper explores the boundaries of the Italian literary canon in order to identify the position of non-native Italian writers, with a particular focus on poetry. On one hand, it proposes a theoretical synthesis of some key-concepts that are animating the global debate on contemporary literature. On the other, based on textual evidence from selected poets, it proposes an extended taxonomy for Italian contemporary literature.

Keywords: migration literature, multilingualism, contemporary Italian poetry, transcultural writing
Rocco Cesare Loiacono

University of Western Australia

Practical aspects of legal translation: the translation of an Italian land sale contract

This paper examines the difficulties associated with the translation of contracts concluded between companies or individuals of two different countries. These difficulties arise from the nature of legal language, which has both a universal and a specific character: universal in that it distinguishes itself from ordinary language usage in all cultures, yet particular in that the legal language of each nation is linked to the peculiar culture and traditions of that nation. This intercultural aspect of legal translation becomes even more problematic when one considers that contracts are prescriptive legal texts, since they have the fundamental objective of determining the rights and responsibilities of the parties in a particular situation. The translation of a contract at an international level must have the same binding effect, and outline with precision these rights and responsibilities, with respect to the original language text. Any misinterpretation on the part of the translator in this regard could lead to (potentially costly) disputes. Such requirements underline the increasing need for translations of legal texts which convey appropriately in both languages the meaning and objectives of the original.

In an increasingly globalised world, the need to bridge the legal and cultural divide between nations is of growing importance. Many Australians are acquiring land in Italy given the favourable exchange rate of recent times. Italy is a civil law nation; Australia is a common law nation, thus two distinct legal cultures are involved. This paper will analyse various problematical translations in an Italian contract for sale of land and propose possible resolutions that can bridge the legal and cultural divide whilst at the same time ensuring that the meanings of the terms in question are transmitted in the target text so as not to pose interpretation problems.

Keywords: Legal translation – Italian / English – land sale contract

Per poter riflettere consapevolmente sul futuro degli studi di italianistica nel mondo e in particolare in Australia è necessario capire a fondo la mentalità italiana contemporanea. Dalla costruzione ad Affile del monumento al Generale Graziani, riconosciuto criminale di guerra, al dibattito sullo ius solis, gli italiani sembrano, nella migliore delle ipotesi, impreparati ad accettare la multiculturalità tanto quanto sembrano continuare a rifiutarsi di riconoscere le responsabilità dell’epoca coloniale. Cieca verso il passato e sorda al futuro l’Italia sembra davvero condannata ad un eterno presente di disoccupazione, corruzione e nepotismo in cui, gattopardescamente, tutto cambia per rimanere sempre uguale a sé stesso e in cui l’Altro non smette mai di essere tale. L’intenzione di questo intervento è di tratteggiare brevemente la rappresentazione dell’Altro per eccellenza, ossia la donna africana, nella letteratura italiana contemporanea, per cercare di contestualizzare i continui attacchi al Ministro dell’Integrazione Cécile Kyenge e valutare come evitare di allevare generazioni xenofobe e sensibili alle sirene dell’estrema destra che cercano d’incantare l’Europa nel tempo della crisi.

Margaret Mazzantini is an actress and writer, daughter of the Italian writer Carlo Mazzantini and the Irish artist Anne Donnelly. In this paper I will look at two of her most successful novels, Non ti muovere (2001) and Venuto al mondo (2008), with the intent of analysing the traumatic violence portrayed in these works and its symbolic construction.

This analysis will be based on Cavarero’s distinction between terror and horror as two possible effects of violence. According to the Italian philosopher, horror and terror are to be distinguished on the basis of the reaction they instigate in their victims. Following a complex etymological analysis of the two terms, Cavarero links the term ‘terror’ to movement, while horror paralyses its victims. Horror is qualified as the reaction to a form of violence that annihilates the self by striking at its very ontological status: the uniqueness inherent in human beings. Horror can have multiple outcomes. For instance, it can result in abjection, social marginality, self-loathing, emotional paralysis, and self-degradation. Mazzantini’s novels offer multiple examples of this form of violence, which is often linked to her female characters.

Keywords: Cavarero, horror, otherness